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The Talent Code: Unlocking the Secret of Skill in Sports, Art, Music, Math, and Just About Anything |  | Author: Daniel Coyle
Creator: John Farrell
Publisher: HighBridge Company
List Price: $26.95
Buy New: $15.14
as of 3/21/2010 11:21 CDT details
You Save: $11.81 (44%)
New (25) Used (12) from $14.46
Rating:  73 reviews
Sales Rank: 131627
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Media: Audio CD
Edition: Unabridged; 6 hours on 5 CDs
Number Of Items: 5
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 5.9 x 5.1 x 0.7
ISBN: 1598878735
Dewey Decimal Number: 153
EAN: 9781598878738
ASIN: 1598878735
Publication Date: April 28, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | ISBN13: 9781598878738 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Product Description
A New York Times bestselling author explores cutting-edge brain science to learn where talent comes from, how it growsand how we can make ourselves smarter.
How does a penniless Russian tennis club with one indoor court create more top 20 women players than the entire United States? How did a small town in rural Italy produce the dozens of painters and sculptors who ignited the Italian Renaissance? Why are so many great soccer players from Brazil?
Where does talent come from, and how does it grow?
New research has revealed that myelin, once considered an inert form of insulation for brain cells, may be the holy grail of acquiring skill. Journalist Daniel Coyle spent years investigating talent hotbeds, interviewing world-class practitioners (top soccer players, violinists, fighter, pilots, artists, and bank robbers) and neuroscientists. In clear, accessible language, he presents a solid strategy for skill acquisitionin athletics, fine arts, languages, science or maththat can be successfully applied through a persons entire lifespan.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 73
 In Praise of Myelin March 4, 2010
Justice Litle (Nevada)
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?
 WoW! What a book! Genius....about genius. March 3, 2010
Nate the Great (Shawnee OK)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Eye opening new science. Written in a digestible entertaining form. Learn how to understand your own brain better. If you want to be excellent at something, if you have a child and want to help her find her calling or if you are intrigued by the mysterious workings of the brain, this is a MUST READ.
Learning Hand Skills March 3, 2010
Van B. Haywood Dmd
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you are interested in teaching hand skills, or learning to be better at anything that uses your body and mind, this is an excellent insight concerning how people learn. The classic "10 years, 10,000 hours" of deep practice is an encouragement to those who are not considered "gifted".
 Disappointed February 21, 2010
G. Thomas (CA)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
The title perked my interest and since I had read several other text dealing with deliberate practice, I expected great things. Unfortunately, I feel that Coyle promised much, but failed to deliver anything of significant applicalbe value. He broached the concept of myelin wrapping in relation to increased performance, etc. He then proceeded to use an "examples" of hot beds of training; however, the attempted tie in with performance became anecdotal. I did not except a "how to do book", but I did expect valid insights in the process of talent development -- Basically, Coyle fell well short of proving anything of value. On the positive side, the book was well written even if it circular in its content.
very insightful, a must read for teachers, coaches, and parents February 11, 2010
Christopher Hayes (washington dc)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
"Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell, is an awesome book on greatness. Like a great general science manuel.
"The Talent Code" is like physics. It is breaking down how the mind works when principals such
as "10,000 hours" of training to master a craft (soccer, art, teaching) are applied. It gives
great insight into how the mind processes learning. It even tells you how to train the mind to think
when learning to play the violin (perfection is hitting the one note "exactly right") vs playing soccer,
which has an infinite number of reactions and actions that equal perfection. I really enjoyed the book and
hope he comes out with more reads to help understand the awesome process of learning.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 73
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