Think of your windshield as an energy source for your brain.

Improve Your Talent: Tip #1

Mike Crowden November 19, 2019

437 1 minute read

In his book, The Little Book of Talent, Daniel Coyle posits that though we all possess talents, we’re unsure how to develop those talents to their full potential. Coyle believes that the best way to develop your talents is to follow the proven techniques of the talent hotbeds. The tips offered by Coyle fall into three natural categories:

Getting Started: ideas for igniting motivation and creating a blueprint for the skills you want to build.
Improving Skills: methods and techniques for making the most progress in the least time.
Sustaining Progress: strategies for overcoming plateaus, keeping motivational fires lit, and building habits for long-term success.

One important takeaway from the introduction of this book follows: “We are often taught that talent begins with genetic gifts—that the talented are able to effortlessly perform feats the rest of us can only dream about,” Coyle writes. “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.”

Here are a few nuggets before we get into Tip 1:

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.

Improve Your Talent Tip #1

Think of your windshield as an energy source for your brain. Use pictures (the walls of many talent hotbeds are cluttered with photos and posters of their stars) or, better, video. One idea: Bookmark a few YouTube videos, and watch them before you practice, or at night before you go to bed.

Improve Your Talent Tip #1

Mike Crowden

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