It is a common sense that people have talent because they have the gift. It is no wonder when people with a gift are able to master a certain skill in a short period of time. But what about people without a gift can gain a talent by doing deep practices?
Reading Chapter 1 of 'Talent Code' was like being part of what Coyle. When I started visualizing Brunio's soccer practice and Jennie' vocal camp (p.13), it was synchronizing my experience when trying to play piano with trial, failure, then success. However, to gain the talent is not only by those three phases, as Coyle stated “When we see people practice effectively, we usually describe it with words like willpower or concentration or focus.” (p.13). But then he stated “those words don't quite fit, because they don't capture the ice climbing particularity of the event.”
I can say, this is because when we are practicing something to earn new skill, concentration will take a big role in it as our conscious thought are working effectively. For example, when first time driving motorcycle, car, bicycle, or any other vehicle, we mostly were focusing on our hand movement; things surround us; and/or the destination. Then when we earn the skill, concentration will not be big part of it, because the skill/talent will be formed effectively when the unconscious thought works. That is why we are able to talk on the phone while driving, daydream or even sometimes miss our next stop before getting on the destination (e.g. we forgot stop at the shop to buy grandma's order once we arrived at home). It is a common sense a pianist and other musicians often close their eyes while playing their instrument. Can we do the same thing when playing instrument beautifully for the first time? I believe not, as Dijksterhuis and Meurs (2006) stated that conscious thought may be focused and convergent, unconscious thought may be more associative and divergent.
Similar to Coyle‟s scenario (p.17) about the cabin steward‟s clear and smooth demonstration on how to put on a life vest. The cabin steward looks comfortably demonstrating it, as she does it for several times that we might think to do the same thing easily, then Coyle continued “But what happen when the captain's urgent voice comes on the intercom telling passengers to put on their life vests. How quickly could you do it? How do those black straps wrap around? What do the red tabs do again?” (p.17)
Coyle‟s illustration of the flight scenario above seems to directly reflect reader for doing the same thing like what other person do is not as easy/simple as it looks. Just like when we watch soccer matches, the spectators even look smarter than the soccer player that they usually blame the player when he misses the goal. It sounds wise what Coyle described "the collective talent of Brazilian soccer players‟ (p.14) where soccer stars like Pele, Zico, Socrates, Romario, Ronaldo, Juninho, Robinho, Ronaldinho, Kaka come from, and in detail he described how people in Brazil earn that talent including the history of popular term Futsal (p.26) that stand for futebol de salao (Portuguese) which means “soccer in the room" that most people including myself might not knowing that the word Futsal is actually an abbreviation in Portuguese.
In summary, echoing Coyle‟s quote “The best way to understand the concept of deep practice is to do it.” (p.16) Coyle‟s series of words on "the Sweet Spot‟ is a great piece of book chapter that reveals how talent can be formed by doing deep practice instead of having the talent because of a gift, from doing things with conscious thought to the unconscious.
Reference:
Dijksterhuis, Ap, and Teun Meurs. "Where Creativity Resides: The Generative Power of Unconscious Thought." Consciousness and cognition 15.1 (2006): 135--46.
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