THE LITTLE BOOK OF TALENT by Daniel Coyle

• Talent begins with brief, powerful encounters that spark motivation by linking your identity to a high-performing person or group. This is called ignition, and it consists of a tiny, world-shifting thought lighting up your unconscious mind: I could be them.
• STARE AT WHO YOU WANT TO BECOME
• Studies show that even a brief connection with a role model can vastly increase unconscious motivation.
• SPEND FIFTEEN MINUTES A DAY ENGRAVING THE SKILL ON YOUR BRAIN
• What’s the best way to begin to learn a new skill?
• Many hotbeds use an approach I call the engraving method. Basically, they watch the skill being performed, closely and with great intensity, over and over, until they build a high-definition mental blueprint.
• The key to effective engraving is to create an intense connection: to watch and listen so closely that you can imagine the feeling of performing the skill.
• STEAL WITHOUT APOLOGY
• All improvement is about absorbing and applying new information, and the best source of information is top performers. So steal it.
• When you steal, focus on specifics, not general impressions.
• BUY A NOTEBOOK
• A high percentage of top performers keeps some form of daily performance journal.
• What matters is not the precise form. What matters is that you write stuff down and reflect on it.
• Results from today. Ideas for tomorrow. Goals for next week.
• BE WILLING TO BE STUPID
• Feeling stupid is no fun. But being willing to be stupid—in other words, being willing to risk the emotional pain of making mistakes—is absolutely essential, because reaching, failing, and reaching again is the way your brain grows and forms new connections.
• CHOOSE SPARTAN OVER LUXURIOUS
• luxury is a motivational narcotic: It signals our unconscious minds to give less effort.
• Simple, humble spaces help focus attention on the deep-practice task at hand: reaching and repeating and struggling.
• When given the choice between luxurious and spartan, choose spartan.
• BEFORE YOU START, FIGURE OUT IF IT’S A HARD SKILL OR A SOFT SKILL
• The first step toward building a skill is to figure out exactly what type of skill you’re building.
• Every skill falls into one of two categories: hard skills and soft skills.
• HARD, HIGH-PRECISION SKILLS are actions that are performed as correctly and consistently as possible, every time. They are skills that have one path to an ideal result; skills that you could imagine being performed by a reliable robot.
• Hard skills are about repeatable precision, and tend to be found in specialized pursuits, particularly physical ones.
• Hard skills are about ABC: Always Being Consistent.
• SOFT, HIGH-FLEXIBILITY SKILLS, on the other hand, are those that have many paths to a good result, not just one.
• These skills aren’t about doing the same thing perfectly every time, but rather about being agile and interactive; about instantly recognizing patterns as they unfold and making smart, timely choices.
• Soft skills tend to be found in broader, less-specialized pursuits, especially those that involve communication,
• Soft skills are about the three Rs: Reading, Recognizing, and Reacting.
• TO BUILD HARD SKILLS, WORK LIKE A CAREFUL CARPENTER
• To develop reliable hard skills, you need to connect the right wires in your brain. In this, it helps to be careful, slow, and keenly attuned to errors. To work like a careful carpenter.
• When you learn hard skills, be precise and measured. Go slowly. Make one simple move at a time, repeating and perfecting it before you move on.
• Pay attention to errors, and fix them, particularly at the start.
• Learning fundamentals only seems boring—in fact, it’s the key moment of investment.
• TO BUILD SOFT SKILLS, PLAY LIKE A SKATEBOARDER
• While hard skills are best put together with measured precision (see Tip #8), soft skills are built by playing and exploring inside challenging, ever-changing environments.
• In other words, to build soft skills you should behave less like a careful carpenter and more like a skateboarder in a skateboard park: aggressive, curious, and experimental, always seeking new ways to challenge yourself.
• When you practice a soft skill, focus on making a high number of varied reps, and on getting clear feedback. Don’t worry too much about making errors—the important thing is to explore.
• HONOR THE HARD SKILLS
• Prioritize the hard skills because in the long run they’re more important to your talent.
• DON’T FALL FOR THE PRODIGY MYTH
• Early success turns out to be a weak predictor of long-term success.
• If you have early success, do your best to ignore the praise and keep pushing yourself to the edges of your ability, where improvement happens.
• Great teachers, coaches, and mentors, like any rare species, can be identified by a few characteristic traits.
• Avoid Someone Who Reminds You of a Courteous Waiter
• Seek Someone Who Scares You a Little
• Seek Someone Who Gives Short, Clear Directions
• Most great teachers/​coaches/​mentors do not give long-winded speeches.
• Instead, they give short, unmistakably clear directions; they guide you to a target.
• Teaching is not an eloquence contest; it is about creating a connection and delivering useful information.
• Seek Someone Who Loves Teaching Fundamentals
• Great teachers will often spend entire practice sessions on one seemingly small fundamental—for
• Other Things Being Equal, Pick the Older Person
• Great teachers are first and foremost learners, who improve their skills with each passing year.
• The key to deep practice is to reach. This means to stretch yourself slightly beyond your current ability, spending time in the zone of difficulty called the sweet spot. It means embracing the power of repetition, so the action becomes fast and automatic. It means creating a practice space that enables you to reach and repeat, stay engaged, and improve your skills over time.
• FIND THE SWEET SPOT
• Deep practice is not measured in minutes or hours, but in the number of high-quality reaches and repetitions you make—basically, how many new connections you form in your brain.
• Instead of counting minutes or hours, count reaches and reps.
• BREAK EVERY MOVE DOWN INTO CHUNKS
• No matter what skill you set out to learn, the pattern is always the same: See the whole thing. Break it down to its simplest elements. Put it back together. Repeat.
• EACH DAY, TRY TO BUILD ONE PERFECT CHUNK
• Deep practice has a telltale emotional flavor, a feeling that can be summed up in one word: “struggle.”
• CHOOSE FIVE MINUTES A DAY OVER AN HOUR A WEEK
• DON’T DO “DRILLS.” INSTEAD, PLAY SMALL, ADDICTIVE GAMES
• The governing principle is this: If it can be counted, it can be turned into a game.
• Whenever possible, create a vivid image for each chunk you want to learn. The images don’t have to be elaborate, just easy to see and feel.
• PAY ATTENTION IMMEDIATELY AFTER YOU MAKE A MISTAKE
• People who pay deeper attention to an error learn significantly more than those who ignore it.
• Develop the habit of attending to your errors right away.
• Take mistakes seriously, but never personally.
• Smaller practice spaces can deepen practice when they are used to increase the number and intensity of the reps and clarify the goal.
• SLOW IT DOWN (EVEN SLOWER THAN YOU THINK)
• Super-slow practice works like a magnifying glass: It lets us sense our errors more clearly, and thus fix them.
• One of the quickest ways to deepen practice is also one of the simplest: Close your eyes.
• Removing everything except the essential action lets you focus on what matters most: making the right reach.
• WHEN YOU GET IT RIGHT, MARK THE SPOT
• TAKE A NAP
• The science: Napping is good for the learning brain, because it helps strengthen the connections formed during practice
• TO LEARN A NEW MOVE, EXAGGERATE IT
• Always focus on the positive move, not the negative one.
• TO LEARN FROM A BOOK, CLOSE THE BOOK
• The biggest problem in choosing a practice strategy is not that there are too few options, but that there are too many.
• Small changes in method can create large increases in learning velocity.
• STOP BEFORE YOU’RE EXHAUSTED
• PRACTICE IMMEDIATELY AFTER PERFORMANCE
• JUST BEFORE SLEEP, WATCH A MENTAL MOVIE
• END ON A POSITIVE NOTE
• Use the First Few Seconds to Connect on an Emotional Level
• Effective teaching is built on trust, and when it comes to trust, we humans are consistent: We decide if we’re going to trust someone in the first few seconds of the interaction. This is why good teachers use the first few seconds to connect on an emotional level, especially on the first encounter.
• Avoid Giving Long Speeches—Instead, Deliver Vivid Chunks of Information
• Be Allergic to Mushy Language
• One of the most common mistakes teachers and coaches make is using mushy, imprecise language.
• All good teaching follows the same blueprint: Try this concrete thing. Now try this concrete thing. Now try combining them into this concrete thing. Communicate with precise nouns and numbers—things you can see and touch and measure—and avoid adjectives and adverbs, which don’t tell you precisely what to do.
• Make a Scorecard for Learning
• Maximize “Reachfulness”
• Reachfulness is the essence of learning. It happens when the learner is leaning forward, stretching, struggling, and improving.
• Aim to Create Independent Learners
• Your long-term goal as a teacher, coach, or mentor is to help your learners improve so much that they no longer need you.
• EMBRACE REPETITION
• Repetition is the single most powerful lever we have to improve our skills, because it uses the built-in mechanism for making the wires of our brains faster and more accurate (see the Appendix, this page).
• Embracing repetition means changing your mindset; instead of viewing it as a chore, view it as your most powerful tool.
• FOR EVERY HOUR OF COMPETITION, SPEND FIVE HOURS PRACTICING
• A five-to-one ratio of practice time to performance time is a good starting point; ten to one is even better.
• DON’T WASTE TIME TRYING TO BREAK BAD HABITS—INSTEAD, BUILD NEW ONES
• TO LEARN IT MORE DEEPLY, TEACH IT
• GIVE A NEW SKILL A MINIMUM OF EIGHT WEEKS
• WHEN YOU GET STUCK, MAKE A SHIFT
• Grit is that mix of passion, perseverance, and self-discipline that keeps us moving forward in spite of obstacles.
• Grit isn’t inborn. It’s developed, like a muscle, and that development starts with awareness.
• KEEP YOUR BIG GOALS SECRET
• Telling others about your big goals makes them less likely to happen, because it creates an unconscious payoff—tricking our brains into thinking we’ve already accomplished the goal.