The Little Book of Talent by Daniel Coyle

How do we help our daughter learn her multiplication tables? How do we tell a genuine talent from a momentary interest? What’s the best way to spark motivation? How do we encourage improvement without becoming psycho parents or creating stressed, unhappy kids? As it turned out, visiting these remarkable places was not just a chance for me to be a journalist. As a family, we struggled daily with the usual questions and anxieties that revolve around the process of acquiring and developing skills. Besides being a journalist, I happen to be the father of four, a volunteer baseball coach, and the husband of a hockey-playing wife. In their place, a new view is being established, one in which talent is determined far less by our genes and far more by our actions: specifically, the combination of intensive practice and motivation that produces brain growth.* My project evolved into a book called The Talent Code, which was about how the hotbeds succeed by aligning themselves with the brain’s natural mechanisms for acquiring skill.Īlong the way, however, the journey had an unexpected side effect. Robert Bjork, the old beliefs about talent are being overturned. But now, thanks to the work of a wide-ranging team of scientists, including Dr. For centuries, people have instinctively assumed that talent is largely innate, a gift given out at birth. My research also took me to a different sort of hotbed: the laboratories and research centers around the country investigating the new science of talent development. A ski academy in Vermont with an enrollment of a hundred that has produced fifty Olympic skiers over the past forty years.A Dallas vocal studio that has, over the past decade, developed millions of dollars’ worth of pop-music talent.A San Mateo, California, inner-city charter school that, in four years, transformed a student population perennially ranked at the bottom of state math scores into one that scored in the ninety-sixth percentile.A humble Adirondacks music camp where students accomplish one year’s worth of progress in seven weeks.A ramshackle Moscow tennis club that had, over the previous three years, produced more Top 20 women players than the entire United States.

An Excerpt from The Little Book of Talent IntroductionĪ few years back, on assignment for a magazine, I began visiting talent hotbeds: tiny places that produce large numbers of world-class performers in sports, art, music, business, math, and other disciplines.

The Little Book of Talent by Daniel Coyle