The little book of talent
The Little Book of Talentis a manual for building a faster brain and a better you. It is an easy-to-use handbook of scientifically proven, field-tested methods to improve skills--your skills, your kids' skills, your organization's skills--in sports, music, art, math, and business. The product of five years of reporting from the world's greatest talent hotbeds and interviews with successful master coaches, it distills the daunting complexity of skill development into 52 clear, concise directives. Whether you're age 10 or 100, whether you're on the sports field or the stage, in the classroom or the corner office, this is an essential guide for anyone who ever asked, "How do I get better?" "The Little Book of Talentshould be given to every graduate at commencement, every new parent in a delivery room, every executive on the first day of work. It is a guidebook--beautiful in its simplicity and backed by hard science--for nurturing excellence."--Charles Duhigg, bestselling author of The Power of Habit "It's so juvenile to throw around hyperbolic terms such as 'life-changing,' but there's no other way to describe The Little Book of Talent. I was avidly trying new things within the first half hour of reading it and haven't stopped since. Brilliant. And yes: life-changing."--Tom Peters, co-author of In Search of Excellence
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What Hacker News says
- It's great to be an amateur learner, but if you want to get better (or just make learning more effective) I really liked the (very easy read) Little Book of Talent. It focuses on how to get good, but that's really about how we learn and practice. Highly motivational and some interesting counterintuitive ideas:
- I typically promote the little book of talent in this scenario. Sure, it's all common sense, but distilled and focused on this specific scenario.
https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Talent-Improving-Skills/d...
- Practice doesn't make perfect. Rather, practice makes Permanent - locks it in. And perfect practice makes perfect.
Practicing the wrong way is like having a bad habit. The habit (practice) is bad but it locks in nonetheless.
Perfect Practice
To reach perfection, care has to be taking when practicing to encode things the right way. Good coaches accomplish this by:
1. Slowing down the action e.g. playing a piano or a violin at a painfully slow rate to make errors more noticeable
2. Chunking - breaking down the skill into smaller components and practicing these chunks separately. E.g. tearing music notes into pieces and practicing the notes separately
Books: Little Book of Talent, The Talent Code
- Recently did the Myer Briggs test and read "The INTP: Personality, Careers, Relationships, & the Quest for Truth and Meaning". Now I just need to read more criticism of the Myer Briggs test so I can have a more balanced view of it all, but the results/book seemed pretty darn spot on.
Also been loving "The Little Book of Talent" from the author of "The Talent Code" (which is another one of my favourite books).
And after reading a lot of Stoic philosophy over the years, I've finally got around to "A Guide to the Good Life". Very clear explanation of Stoic ideas so probably would have been the best place to start. :)
