The Little Book of Talent

52 Tips for Improving your Skills
Also by Daniel Coyle - The Talent Code
What follows is a collection of simple, practical tips for improving skills, taken directly from the hotbeds I visited and the scientists who research them. The advice is field-tested, scientifically sound and most important concise. Because when it comes down to it, we're all navigating busy, complex lives. Parents or teacher, kid or coach, artist or entrepreneur, we all want to make the most of our time and energy. When it comes to developing our talents, we could use an owner's manual, comething to say Do this, not that. We could use a master coach that tucks in our pockets.

We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. - Aristotle

Part One: Stare, Steal and Be Willing to Be Stupid (Ideas for igniting motivation and creating a blueprint for the skills you want to build.)
Part Two: Find the Sweet Spot, Then Reach (Improving Skills: methods and techniques for making the most progress in the least time.)
Part Three: Embrace Repetition, Cultivate Grit and Keep Big Goals Secret (Sustaining Progress: strategies for overcoming plateaus, keeping motivational fires lit, and building habits for long-term success.)

1. We all possess talents
2. We're unsure how to develop those talents to their full potential.
You are born with the machinery to transform beginner's clumsiness into fast, fluent action. That machinery is not controlled by genes, it's controlled by you. Each day, each practice session, is a step toward a different future.

Always exaggerate new moves; Shrink the practice space and Take lots of naps.

Small actions, repeated over time, transform us.
This ain't magic, and it ain't rocket science. It's about working hard and working smart.

We are often taught that talent begins with genetic gifts - that the talented are able to effortlessly perform feats the rests of us can only dream about. This is false. Talent begins with brief, powerful encounters that spark motivation by linking your identity to a high-performing person or group. This is called ignition and it consists of a tiny, world-shifting thought lighting up your unconscious mind: I could be them.

#1 Stare at who you want to become
If you were to visit a dozen talent hotbeds tomorrow, you would be struck by how much time the learners spend observing top performers. When I say "observing", I'm not talking about passively watching. I'm talking about staring - the kind of raw, unblinking, intensely absorbed gazes you see in hungry cats or newborn babies.
We each live with a "windshield" of people in front of us; one of the keys to igniting your motivation is to fill your windshield with vivid images of your future self, and to stare at them every day. Studies show that even a brief connection with a role model can vastly increase unconscious motivation. For example, being told that you share a birthday with a mathematician can improve the amount of effort you're willing to put into difficult math tasks by 62 percent.

#2 Spend Fifteen Minutes a Day engraving the skill on your brain
What's the best way to begin to learn a new skill? Many hotbeds use the engraving method which is basically they watch the skill being performed, closely and with great intensity, over and over, until they build a high-definition mental blueprint. Emulate Emulate Emulate

#3 Steal without apology