The key ideas

The Talent Code

Daniel Coyle, 2009

A girl with no special ear for music did a month's worth of work in six minutes, and a poor Moscow club with one court raised stars of world tennis. Journalist Daniel Coyle traveled to places that turn out one talent after another and found the code they share. The book shows how to practice, where to find the energy for it and what kind of teacher you need to grow mastery.

Who it is for

For anyone learning something new who keeps running into the thought “I have no talent.” And for parents, teachers and coaches who want to help others grow faster.

If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.

Clarissa's six minutes

Thirteen-year-old Clarissa is learning to play the clarinet. The tests, her teacher, her parents and she herself all agree: she has no special musical gifts, and she sits down to practice because she's supposed to. The Australian music psychologist Gary McPherson spent several years filming her practice sessions.

One morning the camera recorded something strange. Clarissa plays two notes of a new tune and stops. She hums the phrase, starts again, makes a mistake and freezes again. It sounds bad, but by McPherson's count, in under six minutes she is learning ten times faster than usual. Then she plays another piece straight through, without stopping, and the progress vanishes. She herself doesn't notice the difference.

Journalist Daniel Coyle traveled to places that grow masters one after another: soccer players in Brazil, women golfers in South Korea, women tennis players in Moscow. His conclusion is in the book's subtitle: greatness isn't born, it's grown.

According to Coyle, this growth has three parts: a special kind of practice, fuel for it, and a teacher. Ahead: a simulator on which pilots learned to make mistakes without risk, sheet music cut up with scissors, and an island where two swings of a bat woke up a whole generation. And you'll also find out what happened to Clarissa the day before that morning.

Make mistakes on the ground so you don't crash in the sky

In the winter of 1934, American military pilots assigned to fly the mail were crashing in storms: nine pilots died in twenty days. Training back then was simple. The instructor did loops in the air, and if the student didn't get sick, he was considered fit to fly.

As early as 1927 the inventor Edwin Link had built, out of organ bellows, a simulator only a little roomier than a bathtub. In it you could take off and land, go into a dive and level the plane out, and a light on its nose came on with every mistake. When the military finally saw its value, half a million pilots went through ten thousand of these machines during the Second World War.

According to Coyle, these pilots were no braver than the ones who crashed. They could make mistakes often and without risk. The author has a name for this: deep practice. It is work at the edge of your ability, where you stop at a mistake and correct it.

Coyle found the same technique in Brazil. Almost all of its great soccer players played futsal as children: a cramped court and a heavy ball that barely bounces. According to a study the author cites, players there touch the ball six times more often per minute than in regular soccer.

Find a simulator like this for what you do: a place where the task is a little above your level and a mistake is cheap and happens often. It could be one hard bar of music, one sentence in a foreign language, one rehearsal of a difficult conversation.

Read in Livria

About the author

Daniel Coyle is an American journalist who has written for The New York Times sports magazine and spent a year alongside the cyclist Lance Armstrong for a book about him. For this book he spent fourteen months traveling to places where champions grow, from Moscow to São Paulo.

All books by this author: Daniel Coyle

Terms from the book

  • Einstein
  • Myelin
  • Federer
  • Ericsson
  • Jones
  • Dweck
  • Epperson
  • Clarissa: A girl from Gary McPherson's study who was learning to play the clarinet. Her name was changed in the study.
  • McPherson: Gary McPherson, an Australian music psychologist. For several years he followed how children learn to play instruments.
  • Link: Edwin Link, an American inventor. He built one of the first flight simulators, on which pilots trained during the Second World War.
  • Deep practice: The author's term: working at the edge of your ability, when you slow down, make mistakes and correct them. Coyle considers it nearly the same as what psychologists call deliberate practice.
  • Futsal: A small-sided form of soccer: five against five on a small hard court with a heavy ball that barely bounces.
  • Fields: Douglas Fields, an American neuroscientist who heads a lab at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. He studies myelin.
  • Synapses: Points of contact between two nerve cells, where a signal passes from one to the other.
  • Meadowmount: A summer music school in the mountains of upstate New York. Known for students who became famous violinists and cellists.
  • Carman: Owen Carman, the director of the Meadowmount School of Music, and his sister Skye Carman, a violinist and teacher at the same school.
  • Spartak: A Moscow tennis club that produced many stars of world tennis.
  • Tuning peg: A small wooden rod on the head of a stringed instrument. Turning it tightens the string and changes its pitch.
  • Se Ri Pak: A South Korean golfer. Her win in 1998 inspired a whole generation of women golfers in Korea.
  • Christina Kim: An American golfer of Korean descent, one of those inspired by Se Ri Pak's win.
  • Bannister: Roger Bannister, a British runner and doctor. In 1954 he became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes.
  • Ignition: The author's term: a burst of desire that gives you the energy for long deep practice.
  • Primal cues: The author's term: simple signals from outside that switch on motivation without the conscious mind taking part, for example “these people are like me, and they made it.”
  • Curaçao: A small island in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Venezuela, part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
  • Aruba: An island next to Curaçao, very similar to it in population, language and culture.
  • Pitcher: In baseball, the player who throws the ball to the batter.
  • Ponson: Sidney Ponson, a baseball pitcher from Aruba. In his youth he was considered a very promising player.
  • Curiel: Frank Curiel, the founder of the youth baseball league on Curaçao.
  • Engblom: Skip Engblom, part owner of a surf shop in California and mentor of a skateboarding team that became famous in the 1970s.
  • Gallimore: Ron Gallimore, an American educational psychologist. Together with Roland Tharp he studied how John Wooden coached.
  • Tharp: Roland Tharp, an American educational psychologist, coauthor of the study of John Wooden.
  • Wooden: John Wooden, an American basketball coach. His UCLA team won the national college championship ten times.
  • Bloom: Benjamin Bloom, an American educational psychologist. He studied the development of people who reached world-class level in their fields.

All terms

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