The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How. Hardcover – April 28, 2009

I'll say it right away: Dan Coyle's book did much to inspire my quest to "crack the code" of writing. In fact, I named my own book and learning system The Writing Code: The Only Comprehensive Guide To Writing Well in All Fields (The Writing Code Series). My Coyle-inspired quest transformed my approach to writing -- and to teaching writing to people of all ages and backgrounds.Years ago, when Dan Coyle started work on "The Talent Code," he called me looking for contacts with the baseball world of Curacao. I had just written Little League, Big Dreams, which featured the Curacao team in the Little League World Series. He told me he was trying to figure out the secret of talent "hot spots," and he was intrigued that such a tiny country could produce such talent. I didn;t really know what he was trying to do, but I was happy to help.When "The Talent Code" came out, it was just the book I was looking for. I had started teaching writing at Yale and SUNY-Purchase and I was working on a book about the 1963 March on Washington (Nobody Turn Me Around: A People's History of the 1963 March on Washington was published in 2010). I had embarked on my own quest to bring my own writing to a higher level and to help my students transform their writing. I read everything I could about learning and the brain. And I started to develop a number of simple tricks to help students to write better and faster.Then Dan Coyle's book came out. I was blown away by his clear, lucid description of "deep practice" and "myelenation." These concepts supplied the missing elements of my own quest. The idea, in a nutshell, is this: We learn better when we break complex skills into their smallest parts, and then focus intensely on those pieces. As Coyle says, the old saying that "practice makes perfect" is not completely right. In truth, practicing the right way, with with total concentration -- and repeating simple actions, again and again -- is what makes the difference. So to master a skill like writing, we need to break it down, isolate each simple skill, and make each one interesting and usable. And we need to figure out a way to "burn" the skills into the brain.I brought that insight into my teaching and writing. What a difference it makes! Following the approach that Dan Coyle explains in this masterpiece, I found it much easier to apply -- and teach -- all of the essential skills of writing. With this system, almost anyone can master all the basic skills of writing in a fraction of the time you spend in school. And, as Dan Coyle suggests, it's fun. Because when you make progress, when you gain real mastery, you develop confidence and a desire to practice what you've learned.I hope this doesn't sound like a commercial. I just want to say how grateful I am for this book -- not just for me and my students, but for anyone who cares about learning. It's hard to imagine a more important book for education and the changing economy that depends so much on creativity.

Daniel Coyle's The Talent Code, explores the origin and construction of talent in humanity. Within the roughly 200 pages of text, Coyle explores a variety of modern talent hotbeds, Brazilian soccer players for example, in an effort to isolate the factors behind greatness. Coyle begins his exploration by starting with the biological facilities possessed by all humans--the building of neural pathways through the addition of myelin, a compound that serves as insulation and thus allows the neuron to fire more effectively and efficiently. In this section, a section that breaks scientific expertise down into basic terminology, Coyle allows the reader to understand how practice literally makes perfect through the extended construction of improved neural pathways.Coyle then heads to the hotbeds themselves, observing the world's best becoming the best. First providing an analytical breakdown of their deep practice, and then expanding upon this explanation, Coyle breaks down genius and greatness into the combination of deep practice, practice in which students engage in their field of study in an intense, driven manner, a manner that allows them to expand their abilities rapidly, and the ignition of said practice. Deep practice does involve and in fact thrives off of frequent and repeated error, error that is corrected and built upon by master coaches. Yet such practice requires a key component: desire. Desire comes through an area that Coyle terms as ignition, something that lights a fire among the youth and creates a desire to be great. For example Anna Kornikova's early success in her tennis career ignited a desire for young, Russian girls to play professional tennis.Lastly, Coyle explores those behind talent hotbeds and everyday talent growth: Master Coaches/Teachers. He provides extensive examples of these individuals in action--not only describing their methods and pedagogy, showing them in action, but also digging deeper, demonstrating how they became who they are. The skills of the master, what he terms as a Matrix of skills, are the product of years and years of practice, of trial and error, of undergoing the very same deep practice in the method of instruction that their pupils undergo in terms of their desired craft.Overall, the text is a quick read, one that all teachers, coaches, and parents should invest in so that they can understand those they influence.