Day 2 book One - Talent Code

I finished my first book of 2010 (which happens to also be a library book). The book is called the Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. Very fascinating look about how one becomes great at something. The book reads a lot like Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers and it argues that breakout 'greats' are not born they are grown through a concept called Deep practice. The coolest thing is that there is a brain component in this that is a more recent discovery of its role in skill building. When one does deep practice (which is the act of trying something, failing and trying again until you've hit the 'sweet spot') builds myelin around the neurons in our brain. The more you practice the more myelin you produce which insulates those neurons/synapses so that it is a stronger path within your brain. Along with the deep practice (or actually before the deep practice) you need what he calls "ignition" and that is the trigger with which drives you to do the deep practice in the first place. Ignition can take several forms such as losing a parent and needing to fill the void, or witnessing someone "like you" doing something and getting the sense that you can do it too, or the pure exposure to something that sparks a passion in you. A final component of what makes the greats "great" is master coaches which are those skilled leaders that guide the student through their deep practice through perceptiveness, directive commands, and motivation. Coyle researched 'hotbeds' of talent where more talent is produced from one area that most (eg Renaissance artists in Florence, Brazilian soccer greats, Russian tennis stars, South Korean women golfers). It turns out that the combination of ignition (eg watching someone like you succeeding), deep practice techniques (breaking skill down to is component parts), and master coaches are what seems to be the elixir for creating 'more greats' from one area than most. Besides looking at sports, art, music and the such, Coyle showed how this applies to education by highlighting the innovative teaching methods of KIPP (Knowledge is Power Programs) schools around the US.

This book was a great start to my year, it was educational, interesting, fascinating, thought provoking and "advanced"in its concept and helped to potentially 'debunk' the concept that you have to be 'born with it' to be great. For some reason this kind of book gets me excited. The good thing about it is that it takes what could be a complicated topic (the role of myelin in the brain) and makes it readable and applicable to 'lil ole me'. I recommend this book just to have a little wiggle room in how we perceive how talent is made. I will now question the 'tabloids' when they say "She came out of nowhere to become a great singer"...I call BS on that!