The Talent Code

Review: Daniel Coyle. The Talent Code: Greatness isn’t born, it’s grown. Here’s how. Issue.com: Rabberson Docs (Extract from Chapter 1 – The Sweet Spot) 50 years ago, schools, trainers, coaches etc, once carried an assumption, “Talents are born in those who are blessed with these gifts”. These Talents are scouted in prestigious schools where auditions are held to determine if they had the natural talent in their niche before they are enrolled into a particular institution. No doubt this process has seen many greats that succeeded in making human history, does that mean that not everyone can be great? Is it inevitable that only a handful of “lucky” ones will be able to achieve greatness? Daniel Coyle in his book The Talent Code: Greatness isn’t
Beginning in tennis in Moscow, Soccer in Sao Paolo, Brazil, Vocals in Dallas, Texas, California, and to Caribbean, so on and so forth. These “chicken wire Harvards” revealed, in his opinion, an unexpected pattern. He suggested that mainstream worldview expects to see a fantastical process or program to witness a world-class result from these talents. “Those expectations were met and exceeded --- about half the time”, he states, “During the other half I witnessed something very different.” (1) In one particular case, Coyle introduced an 11 years old boy, Brunio, who practices a ball handling movement, elastico, in a very peculiar pattern. It was slow and had momentary pauses through each step of the process before there was what Coyle describes as the “Sweet spot” as the boy started to nail the move. (1) Coyle went on to share different stories yet each spotting the same pattern, a pattern he would like to call, “deep practice”. Coyle argues that Deep practice is built on a paradox: struggling in certain targeted ways --operating at the edges of your ability, where you make mistakes --- makes you
These stories were persuasive in a way that it touches the hearts of many who had dreams yet was disappointed by the “reality” of institutions and standards that the world has set in many places. He drew an impressive picture of Brazil from how she started as a normal country to one that prides herself with her own champions. Having used such stories, although persuasive, it seems to be biased into defending the underdogs by proving the point there talents aren’t born but rather, made. Many events proved that there are people who truly are, born with talent. For instance, Michael Phelps’ coach spotted Phelps’(2) due to his unique constitution that allows him to take less time to recover from each training, his long arms and double jointed ankles allow him to be a world leading champion in swimming. Phelps’ was never labeled as a great swimmer but a man born with talents that propelled him greatly in the swim world. Beethoven(3), a man that was the world’s most prominent and talented figure in the music world through his love of his craft, yet his most famous works occurred when he was deaf. In Chapter 1 “The Sweet Spot” Coyle, may have perhaps, misrepresented the idea of discipline as well. Describing the idea of deep practice being reinforced by fun stories masked the