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Daniel
Coyle
THE TALENT CODE: Greatness isn't Born, It's Grown, Here's How New York. Bantam. 2009. ISBN-10: 055380684X ISBN-13: 978-0553806847 Reviewed by Patrick Killough I. for epinions Title of this review: Use talent or lose it? No, use it and then go produce even more! Written: May 08 '09 Pros: A tasty smorgasbord of case studies and theories of talent: wanting it and acquiring it. Cons: Scrumptious baked alaska melting before our eyes. Ephemeral as journalism. Nourishing only for a week. The Bottom Line: If you have lacked time to think about talent and how to get it, now is the time for THE TALENT CODE. But read quickly. It will soon be obsolete. aohcapablanca's Full Review: Daniel Coyle - The Talent Code: Greatness isn't Born, it's grown, here's how. Daniel Coyle's 2009 book THE TALENT CODE is only the second book I have read after downloading its text on my amazon.com KINDLE reading apparatus. Kindle reading does not lend itself to my reading-for-reviewing techniques, starting with marking passages with paper clips. I downloaded this book five days ago because I was tempted to do so by New York Times columnist David Brooks and an op-ed of his on "genius" -- essentially his review of two books, including Coyle's. I did not want to wait for a hard copy, I was that impatient. For the first half hour Coyle held my attention and made me want to click faster and faster to the next page on my Kindle. Then, slowly, the appeal abated. I lost my usual drive to read slowly and meditatively and fill 3" by 5" cards with notes. THE TALENT CODE is good. I do not regret reading its every last word. But once is enough. Thanks to Daniel Coyle's ample, up to the minute bibliography and his giving generous credit throughout to every clearly identified coach, teacher, musician, tennis player and such whom he interviewed around the world in a two-year, 50-thousand mile odyssey, I know where to turn next, should I care to. THE TALENT CODE is a classic, breathless quick and dirty, in and out, cutting through the underbrush introduction of a new course or subject to novice learners. In that genre it is at least average in quality and depth. The book has two main slants on talent: -- (1) examples from real life of high achievement and the author's synthesis tying them all together in two generic schemes, and --(2) explaining high motor skill achievement through reference to building myelin channels in our brains. I did not total up Daniel Coyle's case studies ranging from Russian athletes through Curacao little leaguers to singers and violinists (one being the author's own daughter). But if you tell me there are as many as 50 I will not argue with you. They are well and graphically presented. The author uses his examples to argue several theses: -- (1) If there is such a thing as innate, genetically inherited "talent," it is not as important as enthusiasts claim. -- (2) People learn new skills and stoke them up to championship levels because some one or something makes them imagine themselves reaching that height and determed to stay there forever. -- (3) There are two basic, irreducibly different kinds of motor skills. You cannot teach piano, ballet, tai chi or even reading in the same free style self-propelling way you coach soccer. Mozart's first step to his REQUIEM was not via winging Chopsticks. If you make a mistake in a soccer practice, you don't need a coach to tell you that you have goofed. Your opponent is your teacher: he simply takes the ball away from you. People, by contrast, who insist on teaching themselves to play a harp or a piano without a teacher and outside discipline almost never reach the heights. Basketball and soccer players often do. "Skills like soccer, writing, and comedy are flexible circuit skills." Our obstacles are never the same from moment to moment. "Playihg violin, golf, gymnastics and figure skating ... are consistent-circuit skills." -- (4) Nonetheless those who demonstrate the greatest talent in either area will inevitably have done a demanding apprenticeship of at least 10,000 hours of serious "deep" practice. -- (5) Certain commonalities are observed in the way most great performers learn. They often practice sedately: a golf swing is best learned by slowing it to 90 seconds from beginning to end. They train with practice balls half normal size but twice as heavy in an extraordinarily cramped space; we are talking here of soccer training in Brazil. Brazilian soccer practice is "deep." Brazlians don't train by making long passes, because they cannot. There is not enough space. Their practice game is called "futsal." Futsal players touch the ball six times per minute more often than regular soccer players. It's "feet on" learning -- not "hands on." Musicians, by contrast, are immensely conscious of every minute detail of what they do. When they make a mistake, they instinctively stop, back up and do, for example, their piano piece until they get it right. Learning to fly enclosed on the ground in a cramped Link trainer, making mistakes that would kill them up in the air in a real plane, novice pilots have for decades made themselve aces in weeks -- instead of the corpses their predecessors often became in the 1930s. For such reasons it is better to let a baby do her own thing: sitting up, stumbling around wobbling on her pins than to let Baby Einstein wash over her. Mistakes are good, essential to learning, to talent. Mistakes imply that there is a standard we learners are judging ourselves by. The Bronte sisters as children did deep practice by writing bad little books before, as adults, they produced such good big books as WUTHERING HEIGHTS and JANE EYRE. The Z-Boys learned the art of skate boarding first in the ocean and then in empty swimming pools. Physiologically, all those achievers were building up their myelin through incessant practice. Renaissance sculptors and painters like Michelangelo became great in social interaction -- through their classical apprenticeships under great masters. --(6) All achievers have "cracked the talent code." And thanks to laboratory scholars we know where that code lies unseen: in the human brain's white matter or myelin. Muscle habits are built up by electrical impulses (signals) passing through a circuit. Myelin wraps together related impulses and makes their signals stronger. We can fire those circuits the right way or many wrong ways when we seek to bowl 300 or hit home runs. Autopsies of Einstein's brain show twice as much myelin as samples from his agemates. The longer you keep practicing in the right place, in your "sweet zone" the faster you attain mastery, because the thicker your myelin is growing and the more powerful your talent manifestation. THE TALENT CODE has three parts, covering motivation (ignition), deep (= the right kind of) practice and master teaching. I have sketched Coyle's treatment of the first two already. (7) Master teachers and coaches share characteristics. They tend to be older. They adapt their message to the individuals in their classes or on their teams. Those messages are short, sharp, punchy, clear -- always about behavior, less often about praise or blame. It is when ignition, deep practice and master teaching come together and when students are keen to work 10,000 hours that talent always rises and sometimes reaches genius. * * * * * Coyle can be repetitious. Here are some of his constant mantras and their settings. -- (1) Talent is a product of deliberate myelin formation. And "Myelin is the insulation that wraps ... nerve fibers and increases signal strength, speed, and accuracy." If he says this once, Coyle says it a hundred times. "Q:What is the best way to get to Carnegie Hall? A: Go stright down Myelin Street." -- (2) Think of skill as a muscle. Like kung fu or tai chi praticioners, those Davids who have become talented through deep practice "have found the right leverage against Goliath." -- (3) "We are myelin beings." We are not prewired for specific skills. Myelin provides a "broadband installer system." And broadbands hugely accelerate signals. ''Skill is insulation that wraps neural circuits and grows according to certain signals." --(4) In deep practice we "chunk it up," build complex structures slowly, by hit and miss, by trial and error. We analyze. We also grasp wholes as wholes. {NOTE: for the concept of chunk and chunking up, see http://creatingminds.org/tools/chunking.htm} 6/6/9 We slow things down, three times, five times slower than we are used to swinging a golf club or playing a violin. We repeat and repeat and repeat. We practice every day. If we are musicians, we learn to feel a piece's internal blueprint. Top athletes don't just fool around or express themselves. They learn to sense their errors, to feel them coming. We all struggle. We all work hard. We require and, thanks to myelin, we have vast amounts of energy. -- (5) Master teachers make students say: "I can do that. And I want to do that -- for the rest of my life." We also learn much by simply watching the masters as they work, as Michelangelo did in strolls around Florence. Ditto Shakespeare in London. And Plato in Athens. We are social, hands-on learners. Teachers in the famous KIPP schools motivate by making their often disadvantaged students yearn to go to college. -- (6) After age 50 we begin to suffer a net loss of myelin. But we still keep on making it. As we face problems, stumble, correct ourselves, we build new myelin channels and therefore new energy. A neurologist said, "Use it or lose it" needs upating. "It should be 'Use it and get more of it.'" Conclusion of the book: a few months before publication of THE TALENT CODE, author Daniel Coyle and two other local dads took over the thankless job of coaching the perennially losing little league team of Homer, Coyle's Alaskan hometown of 5,000. In three weeks of training, Coyle and colleagues deliberately tested all Coyle had learned in his just completed two year odyssey of traveling, interviewing, reading and thinking about talent creation. His little children didn't win the state championship. But they did far better than they ever had before, notably against that Alaskan Goliath of a team, Kodiak. The Homer team and their parents at least felt like winners. And who knows what the 2010 season will bring? My recommendation: Read this book very soon or not at all. In two years, I fear, it will be obsolete, surpassed by other writers with deeper theories and fresher examples. Read it for your current favorite skill: chess, ballet, skateboarding, spelling, English grammar mastery, whatever. Expect little from THE TALENT CODE and you might be pleasantly surprised by the sparkling little nuggets you find here and there. -OOO- Recommended: Yes http://www0.epinions.com/reviews/Book_The_Talent_Code_Unlocking_the_Secret _of_Skill_in_Sports_Art_Music_Math_and_Just_About_Anything_Daniel_Coyle =-==-==- II. for biblio.com Daniel Coyle's THE TALENT CODE will dip a novice reader into the ocean of books and academic articles on talent: what it is, how to develop it, how to teach it faster and the like. The author spent two years traveling to Russia, Brazil, Curacao and other talent "hot spots"to find why a few places here and there consistently produce more talented violinists, soccer stars, chess masters and other standouts. Using often catchy jargon (ignition for motivation, sweet spot for the next step beyond present comfort level in an activity like tennis or golf), Daniel Coyle also roots his empirical findings in theories of the brain and especially myelin. He finds common denominators among talented performers from Mozart through Einstein to Pele. If you find any great, mature practicioner of bowling, tai chi, novel writing (e.g. the Brontes), they will start with a minimum of 10,000 hours of "deep practice." As the link trainer taught thousands of pilots instrument flying in record time, so certain sports like soccer improve when their practice space is radically reduced. Golf swings are improved when each one is made to last 90 seconds and every minute error is noted and instantly corrected. Generally speaking, progress in any muscular activity is a matter of tiny corrections rather than grand psychic intuitions transforming amateur to professional within 24 hours. The book has a large bibliography, good illustrations and dozens of examples of talent from bank robbing to the reading debate between the advocates of phonics and holistic learning. The book begins far better than it ends. Coyle soon makes its case that talent is learned behavior rather than genetic in origin. And he offers the brain's "white matter," myelin as the biology-based explanation. In one sense, however, THE TALENT CODE promises more than it delivers. It is for beginning students of the mysteries of talent, not for advanced psychologists or athletic coaches. -OOO- http://www.biblio.com/books/236525345.html =-==-=-=-=- I. amazon.com (not reviewed for amazon.com by TPK as of 6/6/2009) http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-Greatness-Born-Grown/dp/055380684X/ref=sr_1_1?ie =UTF8&s=books&qid=1241345733&sr=1-1 http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/coyle_talent.html |