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For more than thirty years, the Gallup Organization has investigated the nature of human talents and strengths. By interviewing the approximately 2 million people in a wide range of roles and industries, Gallup has discovered that our talents--defined as our naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior, that can be productively applied--are our greatest opportunities for success. Further, by refining our dominant talents with skill and knowledge, we can create strength--the ability to provide consistent, near-perfect performance in a given activity.

During the 1950s, the Nebraska School Study Council, supported a statewide research project to identify the relative value of different methods for teaching rapid reading (the methods were: tachistocope, film, and determined effort). About 6,000 tenth-graders participated. The results showed no statistically significant differences between the methods; the …