The Little Book of Talent

The author, Daniel Coyle got involved in researching talent development from a magazine assignment. He visited many places noted for developing world class talented people.   How one can improve their skills--sports, music, comedy and business.  He started taking notes and at one point decided to see if they worked in his own household environment.  He wrote a book called "The Talent Code".  The "Little Book of Talent" is written to make a series of quick points.

Talent is limited, but everyone has the potential to develop skills..  To develop skills that interest you, you need to practice.  Daniel feels that small actions repeated over time can transform us.  For most of us practice can be tedious and we give up before new habits are locked in.

The author has spent time studying hotbeds of success in the fields of sports, music and others.  There were a lot of commonalities, but at each location he picked up a new idea and made notes of them.  In fact tip #4 is to use a notebook for your own ideas.

None of the 52 tips is very long and most are very easy to understand.  The key thing is to practice defined skills.  Time is critical, but so is attitude.  A few that caught my attention:  Don't waste time trying to break bad habits as it is better to develop new good ones; be willing to look stupid with a reference to Wayne Gretzky; and to learn something more deeply, teach it.  There are lots more and I suspect most people will pick and choose.

One of the most memorable tips is to take a test, called the Grit Test that has proved to correlate closer to successful efforts than just about any other indicator.  Grit has proven to be more important than talent.  You can read more about it here:  http://99u.com/articles/7094/The-Future-of-Self-Improvement-Part-I-Grit-Is-More-Important-Than-Talent

Daniel is someone looking for new ways to develop talent.  You can keep up with him at http://thetalentcode.com/