PNTV: The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle (#152)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book, the Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. Subtitle Greatness Isn't Born, It's Grown. Here's how. This is one of the best books in the 10,000 hours genre. We have another note on Talent is Overrated and Carol Dweck's mindset. Check out those. This is fantastic. Daniel's a great storyteller. Super fun, inspiring a bunch of biographical sketches on people we admire and how they got to that place of greatness. It wasn't a matter of being born great, as he says. It was built, it was grown. What was the primary thing that was grown in great people? They're myelin. Myelin, what's that? Myelin is the stuff that's the technical word for it that insulates your neurons such that the messages between them can more reliably and more quickly be communicated, be transferred. It's kind of like rubber insulation on a copper wire. If you don't have nice insulation, then electricity is going to leak out. You're not going to have efficiency. There's. Well, it's the same thing with our brains. We need to develop neural circuitry that is well insulated, such that we can repeat certain behaviors with more speed and grace and power and all those things. You do that through the cultivation of myelin. It's the secret sauce, the holy grail of skill development. And this is what Daniel tells us about that. Whether you're learning how to swing a baseball bat, play a note of box, it's all the same thing. All skill development comes down to one thing. Cultivating and building and developing your myelin. That's the first big idea here. The second one. Okay, well, that's nice. How do you build your myelin? I'm glad you asked. You build it through deep practice. And he talks about a bunch of stuff. Obviously, in the book. We talk about a few of them in our Philosopher's note. We'll look at a handful here. But deep practice is the primary way through which we built our myelin. What is deep practice? Well, it's often called deliberate practice. Deliberate or purposeful practice. The basic idea is, here's your comfort zone. Here's where you're playing. When you're in deep practice, you're not sitting here doing what's easiest for you. You're willing to go out of your comfort zone and stretch yourself tall. Bencherhart talks about your comfort zone, your stretch zone, then your snap zone. We don't want to go into the snap zone. We don't want to be in our comfort zone. We want to be in our stretch zone. That's the realm we want to play in, in this deep practice. And he has a great quote from one of the leading neuroscientists who says struggle isn't an option, it's a biological requirement. Struggle is a biological requirement for building myelin. It's kind of like strength training. If you want to build your muscles, you have to what strength physiologists call overload your muscles. You need to overload yourself with weight you can't currently easily handle. You're heading out here, you're not heading out here where you're going to injure yourself, but you're stretching yourself. You overload. Then what your body does is it overcompensates. It builds muscle so that you can handle that load the next time. Right? It's the basic idea and it works whether you're talking about muscles in your body or myelin in your brain. Deep practice. Now, like I said, Daniel talks about a ton of great people who have experienced different things and done different things in their lives to embody their greatness. One we'll talk about here, Michelangelo. So Michelangelo, a lot of people think, well, Michelangelo, my gosh, he's just a genius. He was born that way. No, he wasn't born that way. He grew his genius by building his myelin via deep practice. Michelangelo, when he was six years old, started apprenticing with a stone cutter, lived with his family, apprenticed with him from 6 to 10. He learned how to use a hammer and a chisel before he learned how to write. Then he was apprenticed to another master, did some work with him and another master between 10 and 17. He started working on his own. At 24, he created what was recognized as a masterpiece. And people said, wow, this guy is just a genius. And he said, if people knew how hard I worked, they wouldn't think what I do is so wonderful. He worked unbelievably hard. And again, this is the theme we come back to again and again and again. Fixed mindset. People, Carol Dweck tells us, think that Michelangelo was born a genius. Jordan was born a genius. Picasso was born a genius. They weren't. They cultivated their skills and their myelin and they became great. It's a huge distinction. So Michelangelo, think about that. The next one is four minute miles. Four minute miles. The four minute mile, as I imagine you've heard at this point, was thought to be physiologically impossible to run. Right. You could not do it. It was just not possible. I think it was 1959 or so that Roger Bannister, a skinny student in med school at Oxford, broke the four minute mile barrier. And Daniel talks about the fact that what that did was ignite people to the possibility that they too could do it. So Sports Illustrated rewarded Bannister or honored him after the fact or whatever with what they viewed as the greatest sports accomplishment of the 20th century, breaking the four minute mile. What's fascinating though is that weeks later somebody else broke it. And within three years, 17 people did the impossible. How is that possible? Nothing changed in our biology, but what changed was the belief that we could do it. People were ignited to believe they could do something. So when we look at the source of greatness and how we build it, Daniel tells us we need to think about what's possible. We need to see the impossible as possible in order to go for it. We need to ignite our dreams and say, I can do that too. It's huge. You're not going to put in the deep practice unless you have that ignition and then, oh, by the way, you're not going to practice as much as you need to practice to actually rewire your brain. That doesn't happen overnight. It happens after thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of practice. And you don't put in thousands of hours of practice in this uncomfortable zone doing something you don't love to do. That level of persistence requires a deep level of passion. Alright, final big idea. Action cubed. Action cubed. So he talks about Albert Ellis, the founder of the cognitive behavioral movement. And Albert Ellis was one of the 20th century's leading psychologists. And Daniel shares a quote from him where he said neuroses is just a high class word for whining. A lot of Freudian therapy might make you feel better, but it doesn't make you actually better. The only thing Albert Ellis says that will make you feel better and truly be better consistently is action, action and action worth writing down. Action. A little more action and a little more action. We need to actually do the things we know to be best for us. We can't think about it and talk about it and then kind of feel a little bit better while we think about it theoretically, we've got to do it. We've got to take action consistently, diligently, patiently, persistently. We're bound to be successful. So there you go. Super quick look at the talent code. Daniel Coyle. Great book. Highly recommend it. Remember, all skill development, whether it's a baseball bat being swung or a piece of Bach being played. That skill is cultivated via developing your myelin, insulating the communication between your neurons so it's faster, more reliable, etc. Do that through deep practice. Stretch out of your comfort zone, not too far that you snap. But don't be hanging out here again and again and again. Deliberate, purposeful practice, getting better day in and day out. Michelangelo learned how to use a hammer and chisel before he could write. Put in countless hours before his first masterpiece. If people knew how hard I worked, they wouldn't think it was quite so wonderful. He said. Genius was built. Four minute miles. Ignition. We need to see what's possible. So you need to ignite yourself to what's possible. Roger Bannister fired up a legion of runners to believe they could break the four minute mile. It was impossible that it's possible they did it. What do you see as impossible? How do you imagine that as something you can go do and then take action and then a little bit more action and then a little bit more action and you're well on your way to rocking it. Alright. Hope you enjoyed. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have another awesome day. See you.