How to Imagine More Effectively

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code Blog, May 18th, 2012


We usually think of our imaginations as idea-fountains: wellsprings of creativity.

What’s interesting, though, is how often imagination is used by highly successful performers in their practice techniques. These people channel the fountain’s energy in a very particular way: they use their imagination to build a sensory template for the action they want to learn, speeding the learning process. They focus on pre-creating the feeling of a skill, projecting themselves inside an action so they can learn it faster and better.

Exhibit A: Wayne Rooney, Britain’s resident soccer genius. As this terrific article explains, Rooney spent much of his youth imagining as he practiced. He played in the dark, alone, inventing little games; imagined bricks as defenders; imagined street signs as goalposts. To this day, on the night before a game, he asks the equipment manager what color jersey his team will be wearing, so he can more vividly imagine himself going through game situations, over and over.

Rooney, famous for being a mumbly, half-literate lout, practically turns into a scientist/poet when he describes his technique: ”You’re trying to put yourself in that moment and trying to prepare yourself, to have a ‘memory’ before the game,” he says. “You work out what decision is the best, and then if you get in that position in the game, that comes back to you. It’s basically stored in your mind.”

Exhibit B: Two people, paralyzed from the neck down, who have taught themselves to use a robotic arm to reach out and grab objects. A chip is implanted in the motor area of the brain which responds to the electrical firing patterns.

So how did they learn this? Simple: the patients were instructed to stare at the robot arm while they watched researchers manipulate it, and to imagine themselves controlling it — reaching, twisting, tilting, grabbing. Like Rooney, they stared at the skill, they imagined, and then they did it. One woman, who suffered a stroke 15 years ago, was able to control the arm to a phenomenal extent: she grasped a cup of coffee and brought it to her lips (and also brought the researchers to tears; here’s the video).

These cases and others like them indicate that we carry around powerful, built-in mental machinery (perhaps mirror neurons) that assists us in skill acquisition, when we use it properly. Let’s call this technique projection, and let’s name its basic qualities:

1. It’s highly specific and detailed. You are imagining a single move (a chunk) in the deepest possible detail. The color of the jersey, the smell of the grass, the feeling of grasping the cup. It’s visualizing in sensory HD.

2. It has two steps. First, you stare at the target skill until you’ve built it in your mind. Then you project yourself inside that skill, focusing on what it would feel like.

3. It’s solitary. This isn’t something that’s done in groups, but alone, in quiet places, where you can operate without distraction.

4. It’s used in combination with intensive practice. All the vivid projecting in the world doesn’t help until it’s combined with a lot of high-quality reps.

In our busy lives it’s tempting to spend our learning time in a frenzy of activity. Maybe it would be smarter to spend more time with our eyes closed.

Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) on the Big Stuff

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code, May 8th 2012


I love this for a lot of reasons, especially for Sendak’s thoughts about the unmistakable feeling of doing good work at the 2-min mark. But really, the whole thing is worth watching.

http://youtu.be/U68bZbMM7q8

“It’s sublime, to go into another room and make pictures. It’s magic time, where all your weaknesses of character, the blemishes of your personality, whatever else torments you, fades away, just doesn’t matter. You’re doing the one thing you want to do and you do it well and you know you do it well, and… you’re happy. The whole promise is to do the work, sitting down at the drawing table, turning on the radio, and I think, what a transcendent life this is, that I’m doing everything I want to do. In that moment, I feel like I’m a lucky man.”

(From ”Tell Them Anything You Want,” a beautiful film by Spike Jonze and Lance Bangs)

The Social Power of Sharing Mistakes

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code, May 3 2012


Much of the research about learning and the brain could be distilled into a few simple words:

Mistakes are good. Struggle makes you smarter.

When it comes to applying this lesson to our lives, the problem is not with the science, but rather with our powerful natural aversion to mistakes and struggle.

Try as we might to convince ourselves otherwise, mistakes feel crummy; struggle feels like a verdict. Also, mistakes often carry a social price — they can cost us our job, our money, our pride. So we instinctively hide them.

The question is, how to fix that? How do you overcome your natural mistake allergy?

One good answer: do it as a group.

Last week I heard of a nice strategy from the headmaster of a private high school in Utah. It’s called the Mistake Club, and it got started, as most of these things do, by accident.

Backstory: A new assistant headmaster (let’s call him Ernest) had been asked to speak to one of the school’s biggest donors about an upcoming project. For various reasons, the conversation didn’t go well; by the time it ended the rich donor was royally ticked off. Ernest’s first instinct, naturally, was to hide the mistake; to tell no one.

But for some strange reason Ernest didn’t. He did the opposite. He told the headmaster and staff the whole fiasco, describing each detail of the train-wreck conversation. Someone made a joke that they should start awarding points for each screwup.

The Mistake Club was born. Meetings were weekly; points were awarded on a 1-10 scale — the bigger the screwup, the more you “earned.” At the end of the year, a “prize” was awarded to the person who’d accumulated the most points.

The benefits, of course, go far beyond the pleasure of the joke. The Mistake Club established a culture of trust and communication. When someone shares the details of their mistake, the whole group learns vicariously. Social ties are strengthened. The meetings turn into coaching sessions; the organizational brain gets smarter.

Here are few other ways to do that:

Control expectations: I’ve seen sports teams and businesses sign contracts at the beginning of a season affirming that people will make mistakes, struggle will happen.

Deliver praise during the struggle: instead of praising someone at the moment of their achievement, praise them during their effort — since this is the behavior that really matters, and that you want to create again.

Encourage fallibility in leaders: it’s far easier for everyone to be transparent when leaders set the tone. For example, I recently heard of a hospital CEO who wanted to encourage hand-washing. She offered a reward of $20 to any worker who noticed her entering a sterile area without washing her hands first. Showing her own fallibility makes it easy for others to show theirs.

Legislate risk: Some companies build risk-taking requirements into their culture. For instance, Living Social, the online coupon company, encourages its people to take a business risk that scares them once a week.

The point is to find some way to create a safe social place where mistakes can be made and then used to accelerate learning — an inoculation for our natural mistake allergy. As with any inoculation, a small dose can have a big effect.

The Power of Small Wins

Daniel Coyle, http://thetalentcode.com/, April 25th 2012


Most of us instinctively spend a lot of time and energy seeking the big breakthrough: that magical moment when, after a lot of effort, everything finally clicks: when you play the song perfectly, ace the test, win the big game. Those moments are incredibly satisfying. But they’re also a problem.

Here’s why: focusing on the big breakthrough can cause you to overreach. It can create a steady diet of disappointment (after all, breakthroughs are rare, by definition). Worse, you stop focusing on the smaller, incremental things that really matter.

The best performers and teachers I’ve seen don’t get caught up in seeking big breakthrough moments. Instead, they hunt the little breakthroughs — the small, seemingly insignificant progressions that create steady daily progress. In short, they love baby steps.

Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer explore this idea in their fascinating book The Progress Principle. In it, they analyze 12,000 diary entries from 238 subjects to get a picture of the subjects’ inner work lives. They conclude that the common trait of highly successful subjects is that they are focused on achieving “small wins” — those tiny, daily progressions that don’t seem like much but which add up, over time, to big things.

The payoffs of a “small-win” mindset are clear: you tend to be less disappointed, and more motivated. You stay focused on the present. You don’t overreach by taking shortcuts and trying to do everything at once.

Perhaps most important, the “small-win” approach is aligned with the way your brain is built to learn: chunk by chunk, connection by connection, rep by rep. As John Wooden said, “Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens – and when it happens, it lasts.”

A few ideas for a small-win mindset:

Keep a daily notebook: Name the small changes you make each day.
When you get a small win, freeze: Don’t breeze past small improvements; instead, take a few seconds to acknowledge and celebrate them.
Aim for a daily SAP — Smallest Achievable Perfection. Pick one little thing to perfect in a single day — one move, one action, one chunk. Work on it until it’s polished, until you can’t not do it right.

I’d love to hear if you have more ideas for making small wins.

Three updates from Daniel Coyle's blog...


How to Make Learning Addictive
April 10th, 2012

I’m about the ten-millionth person to make this point, but wouldn’t it be great if we could learn everything as fast and efficiently as we learn video games? If we could learn to play violin or write computer code as quickly as we learn Madden or Halo?

With that in mind, here’s a video-game term that might apply: replay value. It refers to how much a user wants to play a game over and over. You know the feeling — the irresistible itch to repeat a game just one more time, and just one more time after that (Angry Birds, anybody?).

Though the motivation feels internal, in fact replay value doesn’t come from the user; it comes from the design of the game itself. Games that provide lots of roles, lots of paths, lots of possible outcomes have high replay value — people love to play them, and get addicted. Games with few roles, few paths, few outcomes have low replay value; people play them once and then quit.

If you look at the practice routines of high performers, you’ll find they have high replay value. They are designed in such a way that you naturally want to do them again, and again, and again. For example:

Bubba Watson, who won Sunday’s Masters golf tournament with an “impossible” curving shot from the woods, learned to control the ball by hitting a small plastic ball in his yard when he was a small boy. The game young Bubba invented was to see if he could go around his house clockwise, then turn around and do it counterclockwise.
Earl Scruggs, the greatest banjo player who ever lived, practiced his sense of timing by playing with his brothers. The game went like this: the brothers would all start a song, then walk off in different directions, still playing. At the end of the song they’d come together to see if they’d stayed on time. Then do it again. And again.
Pretty much any skateboarding or snowboarding practice has a high replay value: think of how the sides of a half-pipe or ramp literally funnel the athlete into the next move. No wonder they learn so fast: the replay value in most gravity sports is off the charts.

The larger pattern here is that practices with high replay value tend to be practices the learners design themselves. One of the reason the learners can’t help but repeat them over and over is that they have a sense of ownership and investment — they’re not robots executing someone else’s drill; they’re players immersed in their own fun, addictive game.

Which leads to an interesting question: how else can we raise the replay value of our practice? Here are a few ideas.

1. Keep score — and I’m not talking about on the scoreboard. Pick exactly what you want to learn, and count it, or time it. Musicians could count the number of times they play a passage perfectly; soccer players could count number of perfect passes; math students could count the time it takes to do the multiplication table — just as they do in addictive math-learning apps like Math Racer and Kid Calc.
2. Provide multiple roles. Basically, switch places a lot. Everybody should periodically trade positions, to experience it from a new angle and come to a deeper (and more addictive) understanding. Batter becomes pitcher; salesperson becomes client; musician becomes listener.
3. Set near/far goals. The most effective goals have two levels, one near and one far. The near goal is today’s immediate goal; the far goal is an ideal performance far in the future which serves as a north star. Putting both goals out there (as video games do so well) add a dose of sugar to the practice process, and keeps people coming back for more.

How else can you make your practice more addictive?

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Q: What Stands Between You and Better Performance? (A: You)
April 4th, 2012

Call it “Flow” or “The Zone” — we’ve all had moments when it all comes together: when we can do no wrong, when our performance jumps to a higher level. The old cliche is that we go unconscious; our normal selves vanish and we’re replaced by someone better.

Now, science is showing us the useful truth beneath that cliche. Higher performance is not about addition; it’s about subtraction — specifically, subtracting the chatty, busybody part of your brain that focuses on your internal state. In fact, the lesson can be summed up as follows: get out of your way.

Exhibit A: Sally Adee, a writer for New Scientist, just wrote an extraordinary story that takes us inside the expert brain. The story involves a new technique called transcranial direct current stimulation, or TDCS, which sends low-voltage electricity to certain parts of the brain. The current turns off your prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain that creates critical thought — and lets you act without interference.

The skill Adee tried to improve was marksmanship, via a military-designed video game. Before TDCS, Adee was average. After, she was transformed into an expert (she couldn’t miss!). Tests by the military show that TDCS more than doubles subjects’ ability to detect a threat. Other studies using related types of neurofeedback show similarly promising results.

The takeaway, I think, is not that we will all soon be sporting electrode caps (though we might!), but rather that the expert brain is a quiet place. A place where concentration and relaxation coexist, and where attention is 100 percent focused on the external, not the internal. Where the self, for a rare and lovely moment, disappears.

The other takeaway is that we should make a habit of developing this kind of relaxed, concentrated focus. It might be yoga, or exercise, or meditation, or prayer, or just a daily walk — it doesn’t matter, so long as it takes you to the sort of quiet place where you can vanish, and develop a sense for knowing when you’re there.

As Dan Millman writes: “The essence of talent is not so much a presence of certain qualities, but rather an absence of the mental, physical, and emotional obstructions most adults experience.”

(A belated, but big thanks to Rob Nonstop for the heads-up!)

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How to be Brave
March 26th, 2012

Girl's first ski jump

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ebtGRvP3ILg

I love this video because it shows something you rarely see: the anatomy of a courageous moment.

Improvement isn’t just about getting better — it’s also about getting braver. It’s about encountering thresholds, and taking big, scary steps across them; it’s about jumping into uncharted territory where you don’t know if you’re going to fly or flop. This girl, who’s in the fourth grade, is experiencing the same kind of moment that happens on a theater stage, or on an athletic field or in an office, and she gets past it with a great bit of strategy.

First, positivity. She assures herself that she’s going to do it, and she’s going to be fine.
Second, simplicity. She’s not caught up in remembering a bunch of stuff, but focuses on two things. (Go straight. Don’t snowplow.)
Third, a reference point. She reminds herself that this is like what she’s done before, just a little bigger.

It’s a good combination — a nifty three-step program for getting past a threshold — and shows us the old truth: courage isn’t about transcending fear; it’s about dealing with it and moving forward anyway.

From The Talent Code blog:

Okay, it’s happened: 10,000 hours is officially in the mainstream. Athletes, musicians, students, businesspeople are counting away, waiting for their practice odometer to tick over and — presto! — they’ll be world-class experts.

Sorry, but that ain’t how it works.

Why? Because when you count the hours, it’s easy to lose track of the real goal: finding ways to constantly reach past the edge of your current ability.

The real lesson of 10K is not about quantity; it’s about quality. It’s about getting the maximum possible gain in the shortest amount of time — and to get that, you don’t focus on the time, but on the gain. You put your focus on improving the practice, which happens two ways: through better methods or increased intensity.

To be clear:

1. Certain kinds of learning — deep, or deliberate practice — are transformative.
2. That transformation is a construction process.
3. That construction process depends on your intensive reaching and repeating in the sweet spot on the edge of your ability.

You are what you count. If you count hours, you’ll get hours. But if you find a good way of measuring your intensity, or measuring your improvement, that’s what you’ll get.

For me, the best books are not the ones that come out of left field, dazzling you with their original genius.

No, the best books are ones that, the instant you read them, feel titanically obvious. The ones that take something right under your nose and show it to you in a way that makes the whole world pivot and seem fresh.

That’s why you should read The Power of Habit, By Charles Duhigg, who also happens to be a friend. Here’s the thesis:

Habits — automatic loops of behavior, triggered by cues, nourished by rewards, driven by cravings — make up a large percentage of our behavior.

To control your life, it helps to understand how these loops operate — to control the cues, rewards, and cravings. In short, the same neural machinery that makes you reach for a jelly donut can also make you reach for the tennis racquet or the math book, or perform a certain skill better, or build a productive practice routine.

In the book, Duhigg gives the example of the champion swimmer Michael Phelps. Phelps’s coach, the remarkable Bob Bowman, designed Phelps’s workouts as a series of strong, productive habits.

For example, each night Bowman would cue Phelps to “watch the videotape before you go to sleep and when you wake up.” There wasn’t an actual videotape — Bowman wanted Phelps to visualize himself performing every element of the perfect race. During practices, Bowman would have Phelps swim at race speed and tell him to “put in the videotape.” Eventually, at races, Bowman would simply whisper, “Put in the videotape.” (We know what happened next.)

There’s a great deal more, but my main takeaway is the crucial importance of the central craving. Strong habits are not built around a vague desires, but rather around deep and powerful cravings that dominate our conscious and unconscious minds, our identities.

To build good habits, then, put the craving first and foremost. Figure it out. Define it. Nourish it. Do everything to ignite and support the craving, because the craving is the engine around which powerful, productive habits can be built.

As Saint-Exupery said, “If you want to build a ship, don’t assign people tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

Kai,

Another quality post - two in a row! WOW! Thanks for this one. I am going to look into this guy more deeply. Again, Wayne is sounding a lot like myself and John.

I will provide more thoughts on this later...

More about "The Dan Plan"... http://thedanplan.com/

WHAT IS THE DAN PLAN?

It’s a project in transformation. An experiment in potential and possibilities. Through 10,000 hours of “deliberate practice,” Dan, who currently has minimal golf experience, plans on becoming a professional golfer. But the plan isn’t really about golf: through this process, Dan hopes to prove to himself and others that it’s never too late to start a new pursuit in life.

WHO IS DAN?

Dan is an average man by most standards. When The Dan Plan began, he was a 30-year-old commercial photographer with no previous experience as a competitive athlete, nor was he in particularly good physical condition. Dan is slightly under average height and weight, had never played a full 18 holes of golf, and had only been to a driving range a handful of times. He was not even sure if he was a left-or right-handed golfer. Dan currently resides in Portland, Oregon.

WHY?

Through his journey Dan hopes to inspire others to start exploring the possibilities life affords them. Though his isn’t an easy endeavor and is quite possibly impossible, if it inspires even one person to quit their day job and find happiness in their own plan, then the Dan Plan is a success.

THE DETAILS

On April 5th, 2010, Dan quit his day job as a commercial photographer and began The Dan Plan. Logging in 30-plus hours a week he will hit the 10,000 hour milestone by October of 2016. During this time, Dan plans to develop his skills through deliberate practice, eventually winning amateur events and obtaining his PGA Tour card through a successful appearance in the PGA Tour’s Qualifying School, or “Q-School”.

THE THEORY

Talent has little to do with success. According to research conducted by Dr. K. Anders Ericsson, Professor of Psychology at Florida State University, “Elite performers engage in ‘deliberate practice’–an effortful activity designed to improve target performance.” Dr. Ericsson's studies, made popular through Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers and Geoff Colvin's Talent is Overrated, have found that in order to excel in a field, roughly 10,000 hours of "stretching yourself beyond what you can currently do" is required. "I think you're the right astronaut for this mission," Dr. Ericsson said about The Dan Plan.

BE PART OF THE DAN PLAN

Every step of Dan’s journey from novice to professional golfer will be documented. He will rely on a support network created through social media sites (Facebook, Twitter) and his website at thedanplan.com. Supporters can watch video footage, check out photos, offer advice and view The Dan Plan stopwatch as it counts down his 10,000 hours of training.

The Team:
Dan McLaughlin, Golfer in Training | Christopher Smith, PGA, Golf Instruction | Shawn Dailey, Strength Trainer | Kelsey Sullivan, Nutritionist | Jeremy Dunham, cinematography | Peter Lasser, Webisode Producer |

Ahh, You Da Man Kai! Thanks!

I forgot about Ericsson. I have a couple of his books sitting here... still waiting to be read. They are on the list!

Looking forward to checking out your links and attachments too.

Good thought about MS - the myelin could be deteriorating faster than it can regenerate.

How goes the battle with your team this year? I know you haven't posted much... busy with work and as a dad, but I am hoping things are good!!

Now regarding the 10,000 hour rule. John the Colombian and I were debating this last week: Who came up with this? I can't find anyone attributed to the origin of this.

Dr. K. Anders Ericsson

One of the core observation of Ericsson’s research is that expert performance seems to take a minimum of 10 years or 10,000 hours of ‘deliberate practice,’ progressively more challenging, and expert coaching, even with people labelled by others as ‘prodigies’ (see Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Römer 1993). As Ericsson, Prietula and Cokely (2007) describe, repetition is not enough:

http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson.dp.html

http://neuroanthropology.net/2009/05/20/talent-a-difference-that-makes-a-difference/


Myelin research by R. Douglas Fields

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2007/03/02/sports/1194817108368/the-brains-behind-talent.html

Aberdeen.

What do you think about the 10,000 hour claim?

Myself, I possess healthy skepticism in most things. I like to think I possess more of a 'scientist mindset' but when time to research everything becomes an issue, I reserve judgement and use my "Uncommon Sense"!

It seems to make sense to me that if you want to get better at something, the more time you spend in deliberate practice, the better you will become. We learn by doing; we learn quicker if it is under game-like situations (implicit learning). But 10,000 hours... I don't know. Sounds like an arbitrarily assigned 'big number' to impress upon the masses that it doesn't happen overnight!

That's why I believe we are de-training using traditional hockey practices... I watched more last night at a local Bantam AAA and Minor Midget AAA (15 year-olds). <SIGH> Now you got me going. I might have to post something about these practices under my Game Intelligence forum. Stay tuned...

Hi Aberdeen - I remember your previous comments about this book. I always enjoy a healthy conversation! I appreciate your wife's background. She is probably much more qualified than I!

Daniel Coyle is a writer. Not sure of his credentials, other than below:

Daniel Coyle is a contributing editor for Outside magazine and the author of three books, including the New York Times bestseller Lance Armstrong’s War. He has written for Sports Illustrated, The New York Times Magazine, and Play (including this March 2007 cover story which sparked The Talent Code), and is a two-time National Magazine Award finalist. Coyle lives with his wife, Jen, and their four children in Homer, Alaska.

However, I am presuming he has done research talking to people about this. Hopefully, they have medical backgrounds.

I must admit, I never believe anything I read or hear without trying to find corroborating evidence. Unfortunately, there just isn't time to research everything!!!! Typically, everyone has their own level of comfort in accepting supposed facts as facts. Scientists have to be skeptics... "Correlation does not imply causation."

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is a phrase describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments, and the tendency of people to disparage statistics that do not support their positions. It is also sometimes colloquially used to doubt statistics used to prove an opponent's point.

The term was popularised in the United States by Mark Twain (among others), who attributed it to the 19th-century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881): "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." - Wikipedia

I really liked David Shenk's book, "The Genius in All of Us". The first half was his book. The second half is an exhaustive list of references. Nice to see he is being so detailed and transparent, but unless someone confirms all of his sources, who's to say what Shenk presents is true either? <SIGH> I guess what I am saying is that if a large number of 'experts' says it's true, probability would suggest it is. Else you might go crazy and become obsessed trying to find "the Truth". If you do, let Mulder and Scully (X-Files) know! (Mind you, wasn't it an accepted fact, presented by the 'experts' of the day, that the world was flat; and we should 'bleed' sick people to make them feel better?)...

Anyway, back to your question.

I think Coyle is saying that Myelin growth can be sparked through practice. I don't know 'how': Does it grow at a quicker rate? Does it grow to a greater volume (for lack of a better word... I don't know how you 'measure' myelin)? Can this growth occur in anyone - even someone who has finished growing? Can it be 'topped up' to previous levels, or increased to a larger size than before? I don't know...

I heard something last week on the news about the growth of myelin in experiments, but only caught the last part of it. Wouldn't it be great if they could 'grow' it and help MS sufferers?

Perhaps your wife can share some reasearch articles with us? If so, please post them. Healthy discussion will ensue...!

Here are some comments from his site that help provide insights about the book:

Brandon says:

January 8, 2011 at 1:27 am

Great book like everyone has said, but it actually made a huge change in my thinking. Everything is learned; social skills, sports skills, academics skills, it makes the world so much more open. I have two questions for the author.

1. The idea of greatness is personal correct? People have different levels of ability and greatness? Not everyone can be Federer, if they did the same training as him? Or anyone can anyone be Federer, if they had the same amounts of hours of deep practice?

2. There are some exceptions to the theory. Some professional athletes have not put in the same amount of hours? Some musician have a better ear for music which changes the learning curve for them? Some people never had a coach and were self taught? Or are these just urban legend?

3. Last one, some people learn golf skills faster than others and are more coachable. It is just a fact. I take two people with same amount of skill (zero) and one will learn faster? Do they know how to train better or is there talent involved with this scenario?
They are all basically the same question with a little variation. Let us know what you think.

Thanks


djcoyle says:

January 10, 2011 at 8:47 pm

Hey Brandon, Thanks a lot. And you are putting your finger on the Deepest Question — one that I’m sure I can’t answer fully. But here goes anyway.

There are basically three truths:

1) Not all of us can be Michelangelo/Federer/Mozart/etc.

2) We all share roughly the same path forward.

3) The brain is very large, and it grows.

Well, that’s sort of four points, but you get mine. Yes, there appear to be aptitudes — and yes, some people learn at different rates. And if you believe that genes are destiny, then it’s easy to get hypnotized by these early differences Because no matter who you are, you’ve got to put in the time/effort/motivation to get better. It’s the way we’re built.

“Natural talent” is code for “started earlier and practiced harder.” — I don’t recall where I read that, but there’s some truth in it.

juan2thepaab says:

January 24, 2011 at 9:37 pm

Just finished the book. Overall I enjoyed it. Here are some thoughts…

Something I feel that was not clear in the book was that the statement “once a skill circuit is insulated, you can’t un-insulate it (except through age or disease)” seems to contradict the “Rule Two: Repeat It” section where you explain that myelin is in a “constant cycle of breakdown and repair”, (e.g. “What’s the simplest way to diminish the skills of a superstar talent? Don’t let them practice for a month”). Could you clear this up?

Secondly, something I am personally curious about that I wish was covered is why development is not always gradual or linear. Sometimes student’s ability can plateau for an amount of time and then suddenly make a giant leap in their progress (from their own point of view, not just others’).

And lastly, I can’t help but notice the parallels between the book’s concepts and the much talked about parenting beliefs of Amy Chua. For example, “What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you’re good at it. To get good at anything you have to work” sounds a lot like “the truth is, when you are starting out, you do not “play” tennis; you struggle and fight and pay attention and slowly get better”– although, Amy pushes it to the extreme by not letting her kids go to the bathroom until they’ve got it perfect, or threatening to deprive them of dinner if they don’t practice.

That’s my two cents. Thanks for the great book on a very valuable topic!

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Now regarding the 10,000 hour rule. John the Colombian and I were debating this last week: Who came up with this? I can't find anyone attributed to the origin of this. However, Gladwell, Coyle, et al have all mentioned this... as has Canadian Sport For Life, USA Hockey, etc. Lots of people reference it. But what is it's origin? How does one quantify this and if you can, is this quantification legit / true? How did whomever arrive at it? I almost think it has become a popularized way of saying that "the more you practice, the better you will become" in an offhand, dismissive fashion. Add some numbers and voila, a marketing ploy. (How to Lie With Statistics.) Seems to make sense to me... but why was the needle (allegedly) pointed to 10,000 hours?

I suggest you read the entire book. (I myself should probably re-read it... but I have about 30 other books calling my name first! I will add it to my list...) You don't have to suspend your belief - a healthy skepticism is what causes one to ask questions and cause change! - but it might help paint a clearer picture for you - of what Coyle is trying to say.

Ultimately, I too would like to hear more definitive things about myelin. If anyone can help, please chime in and share it. If I can find more stuff about this, I will post it.

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This site looks interesting... http://axonpotential.com/about/

Not sure what to make of it yet.

Forget 10,000 Hours. Try Hans’s 2-Minute Method.

Daniel Coyle, www.thetalentcode.com, October 10th, 2011


By now, most of you have heard of the Rule of 10,000 Hours, the finding that most world-class experts have spent a minimum of 10,000 hours intensively practicing their craft.

Likewise, many of you are probably familiar with the sensation known as the Rule of 10,000 Hours Wince. This occurs where you realize (whoa!) just how intimidatingly far you still have to go.

Counting hours is a bad idea. Not only because it’s difficult to accurately measure quality practice (the original studies have created a worthy debate, seen here), but also because it tends to lead us toward a royal bummer of a mindset. Developing talent is about enthusiasm and energy. Counting hours can turn us into drudges, marking our tally like a doomed prisoner marking the days on the cell wall. Besides, most of us aren’t trying to become world-class — we’re just trying to be better tomorrow than we are today. What to do?

One good idea was recently offered by one of my favorite people. His name is Hans Jensen, and he’s one of the world’s best music teachers (here’s his website). Hans looks exactly like you’d expect a mad scientist to look, if the mad scientist taught cello and liked to run marathons. His hair is always a little disheveled; his eyes are always wide open, and his mind is always churning with new ideas. Here’s his latest: I call it Hans’s 2-Minute Method.

It works like this:

Pick a specified target you want to perfect. It needs to be small and definable — a chunk, in the parlance. If it’s a tennis serve, target just the toss. If it’s a song, target just the toughest ten seconds. If it’s public speaking, target just the introduction.

Pick a time of day. (Morning works best.)

Be alone. This isn’t about a teacher or coach telling you what to do — it’s about you doing it, by yourself.

Work as urgently and intensively as humanly possible on that target skill for two minutes.

Stop. Walk away. And tomorrow, do it again.

This technique originated with one of Jensen’s students who was strapped for time, but who wanted to learn a complicated etude. “We were shocked at how well it went,” Jensen said. “The key was total focus and being ruthless about noticing and fixing every tiny mistake from the start.”

Why does it work?

It forces you to prioritize and strategize — to look critically at your skill and pick the elements that matter most.

It eliminates the sloppiness that often marks shallow practice.

It creates a daily habit.

It increases intensity. It’s hard to practice with 100 percent intensity for an hour. But for two minutes? That’s achievable.

I also like the 2-Minute Practice because it nudges us toward counting things that matter. Learning is a construction process. It’s possible to get a lot done in a short amount of time, because in the end, it’s not really about time — it’s about making intense, high-quality reaches toward a target.

This also makes me wonder — what other techniques might work like this? How else are you improving the quality of each minute? I’d love to hear about your mad-scientist experiments.

Thanks for posting this link. Very interesting... as a father of two young children, it is interesting to see the similarities and differences between these two... they are my personal, real-life laboratory and I enjoy experimenting with them! I am going to try new things that I learn with them.

My boy is 41 months old, fairly independent and quite sensitive. He has an amazing vocabulary (started signing at 9 months and talking and walking at 12 months) and after two tries, seems to have picked up the essence of riding a bike without training wheels (after a year with a 'run bike' - no pedals).

My daughter, 14 months old, seems to be more cuddly but still independent and much tougher than her big brother (hypothesis: she sees her brother getting to try other stuff and wants to join in... she saw him riding the bicycle, so she walked over to her helmet, brought it over to grandpa and then tried to climb on the bike!)... we didn't do as much signing with her, or read to her as much (she started walking at 13 months, points and grunts at things she wants us to look at / get for her, but it sounds like she is trying to form words... she understands what we say because if we as her to do things, she does them.) She seems to be more competitive than my boy.

It is still early, but time will tell how they will develop... it will be a fun journey!

Thanks for sharing Eric! This book sounds great... wish it was out NOW before I leave on holidays tomorrow. Hopefully it will be available as an e-book so I can download it to my Kindle...