The Myth of Talent: How to Get World Class at Anything

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Too many people attribute success to luck, or they complain that the best

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have some kind of God given talent, which is a pretty defeatist

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attitude to take towards something, especially if that thing is something you want

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to have a career in, like music. So what if there was a formula

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for creating skill that was backed in science? Wouldn't knowing that

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we all have an equal opportunity to be great inspire you to get to

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work and do it?

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Welcome back, y'all. I'm Travis Farrantz, a Grammy nominated recording engineer and mixer. And I

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started this show to help people like you achieve their dreams of a career

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in music. So I've been in this industry for about 20 years, and I've gotten

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the chance to see a lot of people grow to become insanely talented

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and successful. And unfortunately, I've seen a lot of people burn out

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and fade away as well. And the common thread of those that became great

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was always focused practice and hard work. It was never that. They just

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happened to get lucky. And if you've never been in the studio with a band

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full of a list session musicians or hit songwriters, you'd

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probably think that it must be inspiring, right? And it

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is. But at the same time, it can leave you thinking, holy, I

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will never be that good. Which is a limiting belief that we've

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all had pop up in the back of our mind at least once. Don't lie.

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You've thought it. And so I used to think that way as well, before I

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read a book called the Talent Code by Daniel Coyle, which

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really breaks down the science of skill mastery and basically throws the

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excuse of luck or God given talent right out the door. So, in this

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episode, we're going to talk through Daniel's book and cover what deep practice really

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is, the importance of what Daniel calls ignition for your career,

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and the role of mentors, coaches, and peers. But

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before we get into that, we have got to talk about the

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science. Every human skill is acted out by

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chains of nerve fibers carrying electrical impulses from

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point a to point b. A neural insulator called

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myelin wraps these fibers and allows those impulses to travel

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faster, also prevents them from leaking out. The more we

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fire a particular fiber translation practice that

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skill, the more myelin our body wraps around it,

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essentially building a bigger freeway for those impulses to travel on.

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Now, the thicker the myelin layers get, the more that associated

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skill develops and improves. There are four main points to note about

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myelin. One, it's the firing of the nerves that builds

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it, the act of constantly watching tips, videos, or watching someone play

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guitar is not going to develop your skill. Myelin build is a

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response to the repetition of that nerve firing. Two,

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myelin is universal to all manners of skill, mental

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and physical. Three, myelination happens in one

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direction. Once a skill is well developed and the nerve is wrapped, it does

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not unwrap, except through age or disease. This is why your friend

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that golfed in high school can still beat you, even though he only plays once

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a year and four, age matters. So, for children, myelin

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arrives in a series of waves. Hence why you'll notice big jumps in development as

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your kids grow up. These waves continue all the way into your

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thirties. This is why some of the greatest talents we know usually started

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at a younger age. Now, this isn't to say that you can't build

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myelin later in life. We never lose the ability to develop it. It

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just develops at a much slower pace. Now, the reason I wanted to

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share the science side of this with you is that we can now draw a

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very simple comparison to muscle growth, something that we all

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understand. If you want to build a muscle, you target it with a

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specific workout, and skills are the exact same. If

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you want to grow your skill, you just have to target it with the right

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form of practice. Deep practice. So what is deep

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practice? Are you deep practicing when you sit down at the piano for 3 hours

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and play whatever comes to mind? Unfortunately, no.

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That's how I practiced guitar. I'd play for hours every day, but I was

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just playing what was fun to me at the time. And when I walked into

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my first guitar class at music school, I quickly learned that I was lucky to

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have even. Even gotten in. The growth of myelin is dependent on

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practicing in what Daniel calls the sweet spot where you're

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stretching the limits of your abilities, but not so far that it seems

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impossible. You have to be operating at the edge of where you will make

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mistakes, so that you're forced to recognize those mistakes, slow them

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down, and then correct them. If you're not pushing your abilities,

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then you are not adding wraps to your myelin. So while researching his

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book, Daniel traveled the world visiting and studying talent hotbeds to try to

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understand how specific places and periods of time

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generated so much high level talent. Through those travels, he

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came up with three rules for deep practice. Rule one is

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chunk it up. First, you must take in the skill as a whole, absorb

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it, and imagine yourself doing it. Daniel saw this escalated to the next

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level at a small single court tennis training club in Russia that

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somehow produced more top 20 ranking women than the

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entire United States. Did from 2005 to 2007.

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Here, he saw players perform a ballet like choreography

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of slow motion tennis, but without ever hitting a ball, they just

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imagined that they were playing the game. The next step of chunking is to

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break things down into smaller segments and then master those segments

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along with this is the act of slowing things down to really notice the nuance

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and recognize your mistakes. These were demonstrated to the extreme

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at Meadow Mount School of Music in upstate New York, which boasts

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graduates such as Yo Yo Ma and Joshua Bell. One of the

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practices at this school is for students to cut their sheet music up into

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horizontal strips and pull them out at random, with the goal of

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mastering the individual components of a piece. They also have a

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philosophy of practicing sections at such slow tempos

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that the piece is unrecognizable. And that brings us

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to the second rule of deep practice, which is

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repetition. Now, this seems fairly obvious, but there is a

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key requirement to this repetition, that you must

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remain at the edge of your ability. 2 hours of practice is

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only twice as productive as one if you're in that sweet

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spot. Shockingly, Daniel found that the amount of time spent practicing at some

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of these talent hotbeds was remarkably low. That russian tennis club, for

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example, practiced only 15 hours a week. Finally, the

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third rule of deep practice, learn to feel it. This is a bit

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harder to grasp onto, probably because as humans, we hate to be wrong.

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So it's really easy for us to ignore our mistakes. But the goal here is

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to feel and recognize that you have made a mistake, then stop and correct.

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Don't just practice through it without acknowledging it. Now, Daniel asked people at the

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various talent hotbeds he visited for words to describe their best practice sessions.

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And I think that this is actually the best way to understand this concept of

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learn to feel it. And they gave him words like attention,

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connect, build, mistake, repeat,

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alert, and edge. Nowhere in the list were words like

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flow, natural, or effortless. So, with all that in

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mind, I think it's pretty obvious how deep practice would accelerate your skill development.

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But it also seems pretty obvious that it's not going to be very much fun

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to do. That's where Daniel's term ignition comes in.

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Ignition is the motivation you need to commit to doing the hard

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work necessary to become world class. Many times, this motivation

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passion is triggered by someone achieving the seemingly impossible, thus

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making it now within the realm of possibility for everybody else.

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An example from Daniel studies is when 20 year old South Korean Sa ri Pak

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won the 1998 LPGA championship. She was the first South

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Korean to achieve that level of success in golf and became a national

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icon. Ten years later, the LPGA would be dominated by South

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Koreans, with 45 players winning over one third of the

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events. Another example of being motivated by others. I've been reading Arnold

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Schwarzenegger's book recently, and he talks about how he was shocked

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during one of his first international competitions when he saw the

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form on some of the american bodybuilders calves,

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a muscle that he himself wasn't really focusing on. He then used

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that as his motivation to go back and do the work necessary to return

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and, I believe, win the competition the following year. Daniel

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also mentions that ignition comes from actually being in a hotbed

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itself. Imagine being a young artist in Florence during the

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Renaissance, or if you want a more current music industry example, maybe

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an up and coming engineer working at Sound City in its heyday. It's hard not

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to wanna be better every day when you're surrounded by people operating at

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the top of their game. So the takeaway here is that in order to commit

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to doing the hard work that you'll need to do, you'll likely need some

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motivation. And that might be from being inspired by someone else's

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achievement, frustrated with your own failures, or being

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energized by your peer community. And speaking of peers, that brings us to

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the final section, the role of coaches, mentors

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and your peers. Now, this is an area I have a lot of opinions on,

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so I'm going to stray from the talent code, but definitely still in the spirit

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of Dan's writing. So few people, if any, have the ability to

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become the greatest version of themselves on their own. Sports is

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definitely the most public representation of this. Right? Great athletes

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obviously have great coaches, but they also have great trainers and likely great

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nutritionists working with them as well. In the business space, executive coaches have

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been around for years now. High performing CEO's that want to push themselves even

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further, they bring in a coach. And in music, there are so

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many coach roles, everything from instructors to producers. There are so

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many situations in the music making process where one person is helping

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another perform at their best. You're probably a coach

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to someone you're working with right now. So to go beyond the traditional

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coach or mentor roles, I actually think that your peer group

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is as important to your development as any one coach might be.

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It's that ignition example of being motivated by a hotbed.

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There's a saying that you are the average of your five closest friends. If

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you are surrounding yourself with people that are all as driven to achieve their goals

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as you are, then you're all going to motivate each other to do the work.

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That's why networking plays such a big role in this industry.

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Everybody's looking for people to collaborate with who all want to make

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each other better. So I cannot emphasize enough the importance of

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immersing yourself in a peer group of like minded music

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professionals. And lastly, in today's digital world, I don't think you necessarily

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have to know your coaches or mentors. There are so many smart

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people putting amazing information out into the world that you can just have

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for free. If you live in a place where working with hit record producers is

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just not an option, that doesn't mean you can't still learn from

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those people's podcast, interviews, articles, videos, et cetera. It's

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also not stopping you from hitting them up on social media or an email

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either. I hope this was helpful to you or that you found it interesting. I

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think I'm definitely going to read the talent code again. Scanning through it to make

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this video reminded me how many interesting stories are in there. It's it's a good

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read. And if you're into science backed career improvement, then you might want to check

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out this video I did on the Super Mario effect.