The Talent Code: Unlocking the Secret of Skill in Sports, Art, Music, Math, and Just About Everything Else

Authored by bestselling and critically acclaimed journalist Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code claims to be myth-buster and promises to get down to the secrets of talent, in various fields ranging from sports to music, art to math, and more. It cites ‘myelin’, a microscopic neural substance that contributes to the accuracy and speed of one’s movements and thoughts, as the holy grail to human talent.

Coyle has based his writing on frontier research in neurology and his personal findings in various talent hotbeds, such as Brazil’s football scene New York’s classical music academia, and his findings are without a doubt highly motivating. Myelin can be trained and cultivated; hence talent, its corresponding manifestation, can be too. He discloses that ‘deep practice’, ‘ignition’ and ‘master coaching’ are the three aspects we must get right to learn effectively, and that learning effectively is the main – if not sole – path to intelligence and brilliance. We’ve long known that effort, self-discipline and openness to feedback is conducive to learning, but rarely has it been laid out so convincingly, in such scientifically-backed terms. Through exploring ‘talent hotbeds’, where brilliant individuals are spotted and trained in disproportionate numbers for particular sets of talent, the book proves that talent is made, not born.

There are many collectively-held beliefs about the human potential and its limitations that subvert the credit of effort and perseverance; there are many others that overamplify the benefits of brute repetition and mindless practice. The Talent Code stands out in the way it proves that hard work is worth it, and in the way it stresses the fact that it is worth it only when hard work is done the right way. An riveting piece of advice that tells us to work both hard and smart, it is a good read for someone looking to learn the skill of learning.