Talent = (Motivation)*(Practice)*(Coaching) + Myelin | The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown....

Scientifically proving what your mother told you. | The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How. | Daniel Coyle

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	• The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How. Daniel Coyle Bantam, 2009 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 78 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Amazing

This is an amazing book.
I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in knowing how to develop skill. I'm a musician and its concepts and examples are helping me to speed up my learning.
This book talks about skill in general, so no matter what you do, if you want to get better, this book is a must read.
The only complain I have is that the book is written in informal English. But maybe that's not a problem for you.

Talent = (Motivation)*(Practice)*(Coaching) + Myelin

Author Daniel Coyle develops an interesting thesis with "The Talent Code" which seeks to abate time-honored adages such as "natural born talent." Coyle argues that talent must be cultivated and grown. He argues that there are two fundamental components of talent. The first being myelin, the biological insulator which allows humans to achieve broadband-speed neural circuitry. The second component is psychological, defined in three distinct layers: motivation, practice and master coaching.

Through a series of stories and anecdotes, Coyle uncovers the roots of talent (what he calls talent hotbeds.) We learn about all-star athletes, musicians, students and celebrities. Most importantly, we learn not to accept the rhetoric of "overnight sensation" and "natural born star." The truth is that every one of us has innate and exceptional talent--but only a few the opportunity to discover what we are truly passionate about, and then even fewer, the stamina to pursue our passions with rigor. As we read, in numerous success stories, the children who develop into world-class virtuoso's start like any other student: average (or less than) ability with numerous mistakes. However, those who persist and develop their passion with disciplined practice see the fruits of their labor after a mere 10,000 hours (this number has been studied extensively, in fact.)

Readers may find this book confronts similar themes as Malcom Gladwell's Outliers(also an excellent book.) However, there is more scientific evidence presented to readers here in Coyle's analysis of talent. I would suggest this book for both young adults and certainly future parents. It sheds a unique and interesting light on the subject of human talent and learning in a very accessible and entertaining way. "A+"

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Scientifically proving what your mother told you.

I had always heard that lots of practice is required to be good at anything. Now neuroscientists have used Functional magnetic resonance imaging to show how the brain changes when we practice. A substance called Myelin coats neurons that are used for a particular task. The more you practice the thicker that coat gets. This increases performance at that task.

The Talent Code is one of a recent spate of books that basically explicate the work of psychologist Anders Ericsson's work on expertise. He is the source of the idea that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at anything. Talent Is Overrated is another in this genre.

The Talent Code is the best written of the books and articles I have read in this vein. It is very well written and his large selection of examples and anecdotes are entertaining and enlightening.

Coyle focuses more on the need for good mentors and coaches. He looks for what ignites the passion which causes someone to persist with the deliberate practice that is necessary to make talent bloom and become an expert.

This book may not help you become great at anything, but it might help you recognize talent in your children. It is also worth reading to understand what creates the talent and greatness we sometime see in others.

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In Praise of Myelin

With its inspiring dust jacket message -- "Greatness isn't born. It's grown. Here's how." -- Coyle's book rounds out the egalitarian excellence trilogy, taking a refreshing new slant on ground already covered by Geoff Colvin ("Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World Class Performers from Everybody Else") and Malcolm Gladwell ("Outliers: The Story of Success").

Colvin's basic message from "Talent is Overrated" is as follows: Greatness comes from something called deep practice, which amounts to working your butt off and enduring insane doses of psychological pain (because deep practice is hard and taxing and it hurts).

Gladwell's message from "Outliers" was even more succinct (or clichéd, depending on one's point of view): All greatness pretty much boils down to the 10,000 hour rule. If you want to be world class at something, put 10,000 hours into it. Period. Child prodigies like Mozart, we are told, merely got a head start on this onerous requirement.

Daniel Coyle puts a uniquely scientific spin on the pursuit of excellence, focusing on the neuro-physical essence of skill formation and boiling it down to a strange waxy substance called myelin.

"We are myelin beings," Coyle intones with a sort of mystic reverence. Myelin is the speed-enhancing stuff that wraps the signal-generating nerve fibers in our brains, turning slow, sluggish 56K modem connections into the mental equivalent of fiber-optic cables.

"Skill is a cellular insulation [i.e. myelin] that wraps neural circuits," Coyle writes, "and that grows in response to certain signals."

With this wonky definition in tow, Coyle travels the world in search of "Chicken-wire Harvards" -- hotbeds of excellence where unlikely concentrations of talent spring up, usually in sparse surroundings. His examples range from Brazilian soccer players to Curacao baseball kids to cello players in upstate New York.

At a fairly compact 220 pages (give or take), the book is organized into three main sections: Deep Practice, Ignition, and Master Coaching.

"Deep Practice" is all about the means of "earning myelin," i.e. building skill, as effectively and rapidly as possible. The essence of deep practice is a sort of intensely focused start-stop observation and experimentation, in which the practitioner is constantly making mistakes and looking to correct them one by one. It is not so much about speed as relentless repetition in the pursuit of small, incremental improvements... pushing the edge of the envelope inch by relentless inch. There is even a universal facial expression: As Coyle describes it, deep practicing kids all over the world bear uncanny resemblance to a squinty-eyed Clint Eastwood.

The section on "Ignition" is all about the critical factor of motivation -- the source of passion and desire that keeps the fire burning. Without ignition, i.e. the presence of that constant burning fire, the energy and mental drive to continue on in the grueling path of deep practice is not there.

"Master Coaching" focuses on the methods of top instructors and teachers -- the older, wiser souls who are great at helping others become great. Surprisingly, the profile of the master coach is not so much aggressive and enthusiastic as focused, personalized and low key. Coyle's investigation reveals the perhaps surprising truth that master coaching, in its essence, is far more cerebral than emotional. There is indeed an emotional component to it, but the emotion is strategic and applied with calculated purpose. Everything the master coach does, down to the slightest interaction, is meant to maximize skill transfer. In a way it comes down to a sort of brute force mathematics: The greater the number of meaningful small adjustments a coach can pack into a tight time space, the faster the student learns (and thus the faster the myelin forms). This idea of coach as rapid-fire iteration machine is eye opening.

As for personal takeaways, Coyle's book has inspired me to take even more deliberate strides towards excellence -- to sort of hire myself on as my own Master Coach. The practical application of this involves more routinely stepping outside myself... evaluating a performance or a piece of work from a distance... recording detailed critiques in a journal or personal recorder... and looking for as many rapid-fire points of incremental improvement as possible before moving on to the next project.

The book's payoff was greater than just that, though, in fostering more commitment to learning processes I had already embraced intuitively. I was delighted to discover the concept of "automaticity," for example, as this term (which I had not heard before, in spite of having read a number of brain books) synched up with a phrase of my own invention. Automation and Documentation, or "autodoc," is the self-styled terminology I had previously used to describe the process of articulating and unpacking information into the subconscious mind, such that commonly executed skill routines gradually become automatic. I did not realize there was already a term in the field for this.

One question "The Talent Code" brings to mind is this: What does it mean for the human race now that we are getting so much better at skill development, i.e. figuring out what deep practice really is (and how to do it)? Are we going to see more prodigies, and ever greater levels of achievement, now that a new generation of kids -- and more importantly their doting parents -- are getting a clearer sense of where "talent" actually comes from and what it's really all about?

On the one hand, you have inspiring books like this one, complete with the egalitarian excellence battle cry and the nascent promise of rapidly spreading competence. We are finally learning to maximize human potential, huzzah! On the other hand you have all these laments -- which seem to be growing at about the same rate as video game popularity -- about how the mind is being destroyed by Xbox and Playstation, mindless Google and Youtube searches, Facebook friends and Twitter feeds, cell phone texts and so on... all these never-ending distractions that are turning our collective brains into ooze.

As the "Talent Code" revolution takes hold of a motivated minority -- while passing the majority by -- could we be headed into a society with an even greater divide between haves and have nots than before? A world where talent-enabled kids find themselves even more advantaged than before, competing against a mass of bogged down lumpen content to sink into the pleasant quicksand of sugary information stimuli? In other words, will we have "myelin megachievers" stomping around like godzillas amidst slack-jawed dodos? Or is that a bit much?

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What is the secret of talent? How do we unlock it? In this groundbreaking work, journalist and New York Times bestselling author Daniel Coyle provides parents, teachers, coaches, businesspeople?and everyone else?with tools they can use to maximize potential in themselves and others.

Whether you?re coaching soccer or teaching a child to play the piano, writing a novel or trying to improve your golf swing, this revolutionary book shows you how to grow talent by tapping into a newly discovered brain mechanism.

Drawing on cutting-edge neurology and firsthand research gathered on journeys to nine of the world?s talent hotbeds?from the baseball fields of the Caribbean to a classical-music academy in upstate New York?Coyle identifies the three key elements that will allow you to develop your gifts and optimize your performance in sports, art, music, math, or just about anything.

? Deep Practice Everyone knows that practice is a key to success. What everyone doesn?t know is that specific kinds of practice can increase skill up to ten times faster than conventional practice.

? Ignition We all need a little motivation to get started. But what separates truly high achievers from the rest of the pack? A higher level of commitment?call it passion?born out of our deepest unconscious desires and triggered by certain primal cues. Understanding how these signals work can help you ignite passion and catalyze skill development.

? Master Coaching What are the secrets of the world?s most effective teachers, trainers, and coaches? Discover the four virtues that enable these ?talent whisperers? to fuel passion, inspire deep practice, and bring out the best in their students.

These three elements work together within your brain to form myelin, a microscopic neural substance that adds vast amounts of speed and accuracy to your movements and thoughts. Scientists have discovered that myelin might just be the holy grail: the foundation of all forms of greatness, from Michelangelo?s to Michael Jordan?s. The good news about myelin is that it isn?t fixed at birth; to the contrary, it grows, and like anything that grows, it can be cultivated and nourished.

Combining revelatory analysis with illuminating examples of regular people who have achieved greatness, this book will not only change the way you think about talent, but equip you to reach your own highest potential.

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