Daniel Coyle, the author of the book, The Talent Code, claims that, “Greatness isn’t born, it’s grown.” Coyle supports his claim by first explaining why the Brazilian soccer team is so great. He then explains how his theory, “deep practice”, can be proven by doing a word recall exercise. Lastly the author applies his theory to a real life situation, trying to remember a person's name at a party. Coyle’s purpose is to convince people that one doesn’t need to be born with a talent to become talented. Instead, one can achieve their desired talent by following his method of deep practice. The author writes in a formal and passionate tone, his writing is directed toward teens. This writing is significant because it shows a new way for someone to …show more content…
This is because, “Deep practice is built on a paradox: struggling in certain targeted ways-operating at the edges of your ability, where you make mistakes-makes you smarter” ( Coyle 18 ). Simply, it says that making mistakes is good, that making them forces one’s mind to think harder ( deep practice ) which will result in one’s developing a superior talent. Coyle explains how this method of deep practice works by a word recall exercise. In the exercise there are two columns, column A has a pair of words while column B has fragmented pieces of words. When one tries to memorizes words from both coulombs, one will memorize more words from columns B because as Coyle explained, “ You stumbled ever so briefly, then figured it out. You experienced a microsecond of struggle, and that microsecond made all the difference. You didn't practice harder when you looked at column B. You practiced deeper” ( Coyle 17 ). This proves Coyle’s theory because when one struggles it makes them practice deeper. Coyle shows a real life example of trying to remember a person's name at a party. Again, Coyle emphasis that practicing deeper is the key to becoming great in a …show more content…
Coyle states that the Brazilian soccer team is so exceptional because they practice using the deep practice method. He disregards the obvious reasons for why the Brazilian team is so great, like: genetics, environment, and the country's passion for soccer. Genetics may not play as much in making someone great at a talent. If someone isn’t the right height or size they may not be able to become great in their desired talent. For example, there are no short players in the NBA. Michael Phelps is a great swimmer because he uses deep practice, however he also has the perfect genetics. He has extremely large feet for powerful kicking and a large wing span for powerful strokes. Michael Phelps wouldn’t be such a great swimmer if not for his
The author only looked at two athletes in one sport to make his argument which could mean that in other sports the same kind of genetics beats practice would not work.
If we go way back to 1879, we can take a look at one of the most iconic examples in history of how repeated attempts, or practices, if you will, led to one of the greatest inventions in history: the invention of the light bulb. This highly respected inventor, Thomas Edison, once said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” Thomas Edison certainly had his extreme amounts of practice in while trying to develop the perfect concoction to complete the light bulb. It is estimated that he tried more than 3,000 different ways to invent the light bulb, before he found the one that worked. I don’t have exact numbers here, but I would say that he got in his 10,000 hours of practice. Instead of letting his mistakes hold him back, letting them drag him down, letting them cause him to quit, he used them to help get him where he wanted to be. He learned what he should and shouldn’t do each time, and with all this practice of trying to create a light bulb, he ends up inventing the same thing that caused him so many long and hard hours of practice. Another example of how the mistakes you can learn from and fix through practice to come out on top is the story of another Olympics gymnast known as Aly Raisman. In the
Do you have a natural born talent or know anyone with a gift or talent? Some people believe that if you do not practice that talent you will not reach your ultimate success and you will not be as successful as you can be. In the story, Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell he reveals the true definition of success by researching various groups of people ranging from different ages, socioeconomic backgrounds, and family culture and their path to success and how they got there. Everyone’s story of success wasn’t the same, and that was his main objective in writing this book to show society that everyone has the chance to succeed or fail regardless of your situation in life. Although many people may believe that having talent is
Many successful people are born with special talents or skills. Specifically, talents are such as height, speed, strength, awareness, smartness, and many other abilities. Such as, Yao Ming. He was the tallest Chinese center to ever play basketball. He was born with that height, and put it into use. In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell finds analytics and found that the younger players were more selected than older in hockey. As it also goes with when you are born. You could have big hands like Odell Beckham, speed like Usain Bolt, or even be as smart as Einstein. However, some people may need to work hard in order to achieve their dreams.
Throughout the text, Gladwell does not deny the fact that there is such a thing as talent, however he shows through the studies that practice plays a bigger role over talent as ultimately, those with talent only succeeded through the same amount of practice as other people who have reached the professional level. In fact, he provides an example of the musical genius, Mozart. “But, writes the psychologist Michael Howe in his book Genius Explained… Of those concertos that only contain music original to Mozart, the earliest that is now regarded as a masterwork (No. 9, K.271) was not composed until he was twenty-one: by that time Mozart had already been composing concertos for ten years. The music critic Harold Schonberg goes further: Mozart, he argues, actually ‘developed late,’ since he didn 't produce his
We often believe that success is created due to luck; however, this is frequently not true. In Geoffrey Colvin’s article, “What It Takes to Be Great,” he describes that greatness is not gifted to inherited because if needs continually practice and time in order to be achieved. First, Colvin explains that when people practice more with their wills, then that will help them to improve, achieve their goals, and be experts; and that what he called “deliberate practice.” For example, he shows “For example: Simply hitting a bucket of balls is not deliberate practice, which is why most golfers don’t get better. Hitting an eight-iron 300 times with a goal of leaving the ball within 20 feet of the pin 80% of the time, continually observing results and making appropriate adjustments, and doing that for hours every day--that’s deliberate practice” (Colvin 2, paragraph #13).
In the article "The Surprising Problem of Too Much Talent." by Cindi May was published on October 14, 2014. May argues that a lot of atheletes have their mindsets about being too talented. She explains that most athletes have the talent to compete and do whatever they can in a performance with their teammates. However, she disagrees because colleagues compared amount of talents on each teams and they figured out that they don't have a working partnership.
There are a lot of aspects that should be taken into account when determining what makes an athlete successful. One could argue that natural ability is one of the determining factors which leads to success. For example, if an athlete has dreams of playing in the NBA then height makes a difference. There aren’t many successful players in the league under six feet tall. One could argue that level of competition plays a role in the development of an athlete. This could include the skill level of the opponent or outside factors such as playing conditions or game circumstances. These types of arguments play a role in athlete success, but will not be used in this paper because they are factors that are out of the athlete’s control. This paper
Since day one of my musical interest, I have heard the term, “practice makes perfect,” in almost every setting imaginable. From the beginning of my sixth grade year, I had heard of what it was to be an All-West musician, but at that point I really didn’t grasp the concept of just
What makes a good athlete? What separates a person on the 1st line up from a bench warmer? Where does athleticism come from? Is it from our genes, or is it a product of the environment we live in? These are the types of questions that arise in the nature vs. nurture debate pertaining about athletic ability. In 1582, British educator, Richard Mulcaster wrote that ''Nature makes the boy toward, nurture sees him forward,'' he gave the world a euphonious name for an opposition that has been debated ever since; Nature and Nurture. People's beliefs about the roles of heredity and environment affect their opinions on an astonishing range of topics including sports. The nature versus nurture debate not only exists in the sporting community but also in many others. It is a very controversial topic that has puzzled researchers for centuries. There are two sides to the debate; Nature and Nurture. To be on the side on nature one believes that DNA and heredity make us who we are. In the case of sports, an athlete is born with genes that give them the ability to excel in a certain sport. On the other hand, many people believe that we become who we are because of the environment and people around us; Nurture. A nurtured athlete is an individual that has developed elite skills over time caused by rigorous training and their surroundings. Nature or nurture, which contributes more to the creation of professional athletes?
Growing up, I never considered myself as truly talented. I would watch my friends as they excelled in sports or received their black belt after playing the hardest song on the recorder. At that age, they probably dreamed of becoming a professional athlete or a musician, but where did I stand in all of this? Everything I did was either subpar or mediocre. There was never a field or an activity that I dominated in (except limboing but that won’t get me anywhere in life). It wasn’t until one day when I saw my friend crying on our first day back from spring break, when I learned that I did have a talent after all. After consoling her, I learned that her grandfather had passed over the break; but I also learned that I have a raw talent for comforting others, talking to them, making them feel just a little bit better about life. As I reflect on this day, I know that my young, psychoanalytic self was born to be a psychologist.
Cote et al. (2007) points out the principle of the power law of practice, where great improvements are seen in the initial stages of practice, but the improvements level-off as one becomes an expert. This power relationship seems to be converted into a more linear relationship with increased deliberate practice. Violinists were studied, and time spent in deliberate practice was examined. By 18 years of age, experts accumulated 7,400 hours of practice, whereas intermediate-level performers had 5,300 hours, and lower-level performers only completed 3,400 hours. This linear law of practice seems to be generalizable to other domains, namely sport and chess (Cote et al., 2007, pp. 185). Although deliberate practice is very important, it is not the sole predictor of elite-level
In order to become an expert performer Abbott and Collins (2004) suggest that talent development requires the possession of Psychological Characteristics for Developing Excellence (PCDE), which as the performer moves through the transition phases become further developed. PCDE’s are both trait characteristics and state related skills such as self-belief, dedication and discipline (Abbott and Collins, 2004). Another significant aspect of becoming an expert musician is deliberate practice. Deliberate practice requires determination with the correct motivation for the performer, and the necessary time and effort roughly equating to 10,000 hours (Ericsson et al., 1993). MacNamara, Holmes and Collins (2008) state that expert musicians require numerous aspects to reach the highest level; natural talent and/or deliberate practice combined with social context and significant others are needed to maintain performance at this high level. As talent is developed, the performer moves
Practice isn’t the thing to do once you are good. It is the thing that makes you good. In the novel “Outliers", in the chapter “The 10,000 Hour Rule”, Gladwell introduces a theory that signifies that 10,000 hours is the approximate amount of practice time it takes for someone to become a master at something, and therefore likely to become a successful being. Gladwell backs up the theory by discussing a study that was performed around the 1990s by K. Anders Ericsson. In the study, Ericsson and his colleagues examined the long-term practicing habits of musicians at an elite musical academy in Berlin. Gladwell exposes the practicing habits of a few well-known successors to prove his theory such as, Bill Joy, The Beatles, and Bill Gates. Psychologist Michael Howe even applied the rule to Mozart, greatly considered a child prodigy.
The next reason why talent is more important than hard work is natural talent boost your maximum potential, and your standards is set higher than everyone else. People with natural