The Little Book of Talent

This has been a truly great book in helping me improve my skills, particularly piano practising. The results were immediate. For example, practising a section three times with 10 minutes breaks in between. It felt weird and so unreal to a point of suspecting auto-suggestion on my part. I am so glad I bought this book.

Earlier I wrote "I like this book a lot and have been applying it for several months and find it profoundly useful. However, I have only read the first tip. Such a good tip, is tip #1, that I am very busy applying it and do not have time to read on to tip #2. I'm afraid if I read the whole book I will be overwhelmed with good new ideas to apply."

Update: I read the rest of the book and found that I already knew most of the advice in it. Beyond tip #1 the book was pretty ho-hum.

This book can be read in one hour. Despite its small size, it carries the usual Kindlle book price of $9.99, "set by the publisher."

The book describes the characteristics shared by "talent hotbeds" where great athletes, musicians, and other performance masters are developed around the world. The author provides an intentionally concise set of tips for improving your performance at any endeavor, drawing techniques used in the talent hotbeds. The tips can be used to coach yourself, your children, or anyone else.

The three stars I gave this book is mainly for the price. It makes some interesting points about how skills can be developed in anyone, and in that sense it has an inspiring message. The book could make you a better coach. However, the "little book" format does leave you feeling that the examples cited by the author are somewhat anecdotal.

Worth reading, though.

I did not find this helpful or informative. The first three discs are a biology lesson that I learned in middle school science class, and the next two review the teaching and coaching techniques that I have been using for over forty years.

I guess I had expected an epiphany. However that does not mean this book is a disappointment.

It is a collection of the author's observations on what achievers have in common.
In a nutshell, it isn't the most expensive training facility and it isn't the most flashy moves, but the tried and true, practice makes perfect.
Dedication, Repetition and Hard work seem to get you where you need to go.
I know we all would like a quick fix and the excuse of lacking natural talent, but the bottom line seems to be, you have to work for it.
However there are examples as the author points out of the best ways to go about it.

The chapters provide a glimmer of what these are:

Part 1: GETTING STARTED:
**Stare, Steal and be willing to be stupid.
In short, watch, see what works and try and try again.

Part 2: IMPROVING SKILLS
**Find the sweet spot and reach.
Here's the hard work part.

Part 3: SUSTAINING PROGRESS
**Embrace Repetition, Cultivate Grit and keep big goals secret.
I thought the last part was really interesting. By making a big goal known, in some ways we start basking in it like we have already succeeded and it takes away from the achievement. I have seen that. Great idea.

I plan to reread this book. It's short and sweet with lots of good points.

First you should know before continuing to read my review is that I am totally addicted to books about increasing productivity, developing talent and creativity, probing how the mind works and how to get the most out of it, and building good habits and influencing positive decisions. So how could I not like this book?

And yet because of said affliction, there were few ideas or concepts that were new for me, simply because I've read so much on these similar topics. Still, I enjoyed the book for its straight-forward delivery of so many practical suggestions. The pithiness of each tip's title make them memorable, if you need a mantra to help you apply these steps. And the stories from the various "hotbeds of learning" that Coyle visited and observed in preparation for his earlier book "The Talent Code" (and this one as well) help make the goal more vivid and inspirational to boot. (Who could forget his description of the younger students' rapt attention as they unabashedly stare in observation of the elder masters of their craft?)

Despite the glut of my related reading, I have not read "The Talent Code" before--but now the pragmatist in me says that I don't need to, as this book seems to contain and summarize what I imagine to be the bulk of the "actionable" data. In other words, if I am reading with a goal of improving myself, then this is all I need. (Nevertheless I'm sure the other book is an enlightening and engaging read.) Similarly if you have not spent as much time as I have devouring books on secrets to performance and skill development, then this book may be a shortcut to learning and applying the key points.

My foremost take-away right now is the impression that I should spend my practice time for whatever skill I am seeking to master in the zone at the leading edge of my abilities, where it requires the most mental effort--and thus achieves the greater reward. (I suppose it's much like weight-lifting, where they say, "the only rep that counts is the last," the one in which it is almost too much for your muscles to bear--that's what makes the muscle grow.) But I fully expect to revisit the book in he future so I can be reminded of more ways to stretch and grow.

[Full disclosure: I received an advance copy of the book thanks to Goodreads.com's "First Reads" giveaways... but I would've read the book anyway.]

I picked this up on an Audible Daily Deal and am glad I did. I actually read the author's longer work, The Talent Code, a couple years ago.

This book boils down the essential points of The Talent Code in an easy-to-follow numbered format.

This book will inspire you to dust off your guitar, enroll in a language class or pick up accounting. Because Coyle's premise is that talent is not is not inborn but learned. He breaks down the process of learning with suggestions for improving performance and retention. So, in the case of learning an instrument, you would want to practice for shorter bursts with 10-minute breaks in between, but going right back to it to reinforce learning.

Coyle also suggests breaking down your activity into well-honed exercises that zero in on a particular skill or a particular phrase in a musical composition. Be aware of mistakes and tackle them immediately.

This is only the tip of the iceberg of the info offered in this short yet pithy read.

Coyle's research can applied to any field and any age group. It is never too late to start; and once you do, practice, practice, practice.

Boy, have I read my share of self-help, inspiration books. It seems every year, the powers that be at my job give us these types of books to read for in-service purposes. They are usually filled with empty platitudes, activities and worksheets. And I usually find them lacking in real substance. Meh.

This book is not one of those books. A few pages in, I began to devour this pocket-sized handbook. Coyle studied all kinds of hotbeds of talent (sports, the arts, technology, you name it!), and his research shines through. He's scoured the planet for the best tips from performers and coaches in all types of fields and boiled the wisdom down to their essence. I found myself sharing some of the ideas with my colleagues and my spouse. I highlighted and sticky noted. I started to put things into successful practice. (Sample tip: In practicing anything, focus on working on skills at the very razor's edge of your ability. If you're practicing something, and not failing fifty percent of your tries, you're not struggling enough and you won't rewire your brain for brand new or better skills.)

I find these tips actually work! They inspire and give focus. I can take the ideas and use them to be a better writer, a better manager, even a better guitar player. I'll trade this little book for a stack of corporate self-help books any day. I was hesitant to pick this book up, but I couldn't be more surprised and happy with the useful content and smooth readability. This book is a gem.

A short, but incredibly useful book for improving talent in various areas of life, this book should end up being a big seller within the self-help community or anyone looking to reach specific goals that may seem intimidating to some at first. The book takes well-known concepts in the self-help/coaching community, adds a bit of neuroscience theory-as well as facts-and explains how they can be used to increase talent in various areas of one's life. It does this while giving the tips to the reader in a condensed format that can be read in a single sitting.

There are places were the author could have supported some of his tips with the science behind some of the theories that support them. In this way, you'd have a basic understanding behind why it is that the tips are so powerful, given that many people view self-help as a matter of 'simple' will, without understanding the underlying structures of the brain that create all these changes. Even though there are a variety or scientific bits dispersed throughout the book, some more evidence would've provided that extra "oomph" to get the point across. For anyone looking for such a book, "The Brain that Changes Itself" by Normal Doidge, is a powerful book for doing just that.

There are a lot of tips that use sports as an analogy for how to use these tips effectively. The "talent hotbeds" he refers to in many cases refer to camps that teach a particular sport incredibly well to students of average talent, who then go on to become extraordinary well in the sport, thereby breaking the "born talented" view that the author holds as a "myth". I can see where it may end up becoming extremely popular in high-school, college, or personal sports where a coach needs to motivate his/her students and where they might not have the benefit of a personal coach to provide them with their own personal plan. They would have the benefit of seeing how the tips not only effect their sports game, but also reach into other areas of their lives.

Without the heft of other personal/self-help books, the reader could easily fall into the read-and-forget camp that make up a good portion of the self-help audience. Without the investment of making a well-thought out plan, anyone can fall into the same trap (the author does speak on keeping a journal, in general). All-in-all, this is a very condensed version of many popular self-help books on the market that should provide those without the time or inclination to follow a lengthy plan with lots of motivation in helping them to reach new goals. If the reader is willing to trust the author and his tips, without needing much convincing, the tips will end up incredibly useful. Normally a skeptic of much of the self-help material out there, I could easily pull from my understanding of the cognitive neurosciences when reading the various tips throughout the book. In this way, I didn't need much convincing at all. With the book listed above (The Brain that Changes Itself), I believe any reader would find almost all the convincing they would need to reach those seemingly 'unattainable' goals in their lives, as well as the reader who simply needs the extra motivation to do so. Highly recommended.

I just loved reading this little book, and have had a lot of fun experimenting with the author's ideas. I am looking forward to reading his earlier book, "The Talent Code."

The book opens with an introduction, in which the author states, "When it comes to developing our talents, we could use an owner's manual...a master coach that tucks in our pocket....This book is made to be carried - to be tucked into a pocket, an instrument case, or a sports bag. "

The book consists of 52 simple but powerful ideas for developing ability, grouped into three sections: Getting Started, Improving Skills, and Sustaining Progress. The book is indeed small enough to fit into a pocket, and I found myself finishing the book in an hour or two. "The tips are brief," as the author says, "not because they are oversimplified, but because simplicity is the point... Small actions, repeated over time, transform us."

Here are just a few basic ideas:

(1) the idea of finding one's sweet spot for learning - just a little bit beyond what is easy to do right now

(2) the idea of repeatedly reaching just a little bit beyond one's current level of ability

(3) constantly breaking material down into chunks, mastering them, and then systematically reassembling them

and (4) the idea of "deep practice" - satisfying, committed striving as an end in itself.

Many of these tips are already very familiar, and of course more could be written about all of them. However, the point of the book is to be brief, and it is the combination of these ideas and many others that makes it all work so well.

This book could be very useful to anybody learning or teaching anything. It may be particularly useful to those who become stuck or overwhelmed by the magnitude of material to be learned - people who tend to procrastinate or shy away from challenges.

This is a great little book, profoundly useful. Highly recommended.

Daniel Coyle's "little book" packs quite a mighty punch. Coming off the heals of coaching my son's little league team, the author's own experience of coaching and how he implemented the knowledge gained from several intelligent and respected leaders throughout the country spoke volumes to me. Had I read this little book before coaching I'm sure I could've imparted more timing wisdom in limited, intentional quantities.

That's really what I gained most from the book: intentionality. Almost all of the 52 tips seemed birthed from a philosophy of intentionality. Be intentional when speaking. Be intentional about learning, growing, training. The list goes on.

The only thing I really wanted more from this book was content. Although the tips were excellent and well executed, I wanted to keep reading. Perhaps the author will come out with more tips to grow our interest. And our talent.

_The Little Book of Talent_ contains roughly 52 nuggets of solid advice for improving skills. Most of the advice can be broadly applied - whether you want to be a better golfer, champion chess player, or salesperson of the year, the tips can help you get to the level you desire. But it is also important to understand that the book JUST CONTAINS TIPS and is not any sort of blueprint for change (ala the "30 days to..." style books).

Format: each of the 52 tips has its own mini-chapter. The mini-chapters can be as short as a few paragraphs or as long as a few pages. The mini-chapters are further divided into three sections - getting started, improving skills, and sustaining progress. There is also an introduction, glossary, and a brief conclusion (listed as an appendix).

What I like: The vast majority of the tips are useful. If you've been training for a while, you've probably heard a lot of them before.. but it never hurts to review. Also, the book has a very quick-read format (once you skip the introduction) for easy absorption.

What I don't like: I disagree with two of the tips in the book. Tip 45 (5 hours of practice for every hour of competition) is completely wrong for most things (both in the sense that it is too low of a number and that some coaches view all training as competition in some form). Tip 44 (have a blue collar mindset) I found to be offensively worded, and could turn people off to the core concept of the tip (never feel entitled and always keep practicing).

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. This is a respectable collection of advice, most of which you've probably heard before (but maybe never really thought about).

In the Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills, the author provides an incredibly diverse set of suggestions (with each tip ranging from a single page snippet all the way up to a seven page long article) on how to make progress in sports, your professional life, or any passion that you pursue. The book is divided up into three sections: getting started, improving skills and sustaining progress, which provides a natural progression for readers picking up a new hobby, as well as an easy way to jump right into the middle of the book. Because each tip can stand on its own, readers won't short themselves by beginning in the middle, and can start back at the beginning when they pick up a new interest. Even so, the entire book can be read in a day, but the skills taught in this book can last a lifetime.

My favorite feature of this book was to seen an entire compilation of tips on proper training all in one place. I also really enjoyed the background research that supported the claims made in this book (which also validated many of the "best practices" training stories that I have heard in my professional life). Finally, the tip-based style of the book makes it incredibly easy to put down and pick up later, since even the longest tip (7 pages) can be quickly read by the time-conscious reader. On the negative side, the shorter length of this tome left me wishing there was more, and part three: sustaining progress, was noticeably shorter than the other two sections, which I felt might be most important for the life-long golfers, aging business person or the older musician who needs a little inspiration.

All said, this book is a great collection of tips for anyone pursuing their life's passion(s).

I liked "The Little Book of Talent" by Daniel Coyle. Like another reviewer, I found the tips a bit simple (so I didn't give the book five stars), though was still able to glean some nuggets of help like the part about taking a nap!

Since I'm a veteran teacher, my favorite part of the book (besides the justification of an afternoon snooze) was Tip 42: Six Ways to be a Better Teacher or Coach, especially the part about "flipping the classroom" where students read instructional text or listen to online instruction at home and then apply knowledge in the classroom under the coaching of the teacher. Freed from the task of giving group instruction, the teacher can then address students individually as they work. I'm not saying that I'm going to completely give up instructing my students, but I've been pursuing a more lab-styled Language Arts classroom for some time now. This "flipped classroom" idea is one more step toward that.

"The Little Book of Talent" by Daniel Coyle is good reading and a comfortable introduction to the basics of teaching/coaching and learning.

I was a little skeptical when I saw the format of this book: 52 tips, each presented on a page or two. However, the content is fresh, practical and realistic.

Coyle extracts these tips from research he'd discussed earlier, based on visits to the talent "hotbeds" he visited around the world. He argues that we can learn from the techniques used by these master programs, with some modification.

My favorite tip was "napping." A rested brain will be more productive and I can't wait to put this tip into practice.

I also appreciated the distinction between soft and hard skills, with the emphasis on practicing nad developing hard skills. By way of example, throwing a football in a certain arc will be a hard skill; reading the other team's defense is a soft skill. Quarterbacks practice basic throwing and footwork regularly, sometimes every practice session.

The tips on choosing a mentor or coach also are extremely useful, even for choosing business and life coaches.

The final tip was a little surprising: "Think like a gardener but work like a carpenter."

Best of all, the book really IS little: easy to carry and a great gift for colleagues, seminar attendees and graduating students.

This little book (and it is truly a little book) is chock-full of imminently practical, detailed instructions that can meaningfully impact your practices and your ultimate performance. Some of the ideas are surprising and even counter-intuitive, but the author is very persuasive. Each suggestion is short and clearly set apart from the others. Yes, some of the suggestions build on others, so the number 52 is a bit arbitrary, but there are lots and lots of distinct ideas.

The book is most useful when the reader is attempting to improve sport (or another physical) performance; playing a musical instrument would also benefit from the approaches in this book. It would be less helpful for academic pursuits such as learning calculus or becoming bilingual. Still, some of the tips would certainly transfer to non-physical endeavors.

I have actually used many of the tips while teach my daughter how to play volleyball (more specifically, how to serve underhanded -- she is nine). The tips gave me a paradigm from which to begin and did help focus our time together. While my daughter is still not the best nine-year-old volleyball server, we did make progress.

I would highly recommend it to the thoughtful athlete or musician.

It is hard not to admire a little book like this. Distilling masses of information into small applicable/usable bites is no mean feat. Putting it into an easy to carry around format is just icing on the cake.

The book is broken into 3 broad topics: Getting started, improving and continuing improvement. Each topic takes about 1/3 of the book although some tips are very short one paragraph type things and others are a few pages long.

The source material for the tips originate from notes made while researching his other book The Talent Code. Since that book has a decided tilt towards measurable performance activities (sports/music/etc) this book can't escape those confines and thank goodness it doesn't really try to awkwardly create generalities to fit specific observations. That is, Coyle spares us endless attempts at applying his observations to stuff he thinks his readers might use the information. I found that refreshing because any effort on his part along those lines would only create artificial boundaries to how you or I might proceed.

I haven't read the other book yet but so I am not sure how much of a companion this small book is to the other. From the blurb on the other book it seems like there is a lot of duplication. Of course, this book is distilled down and physically printed in 'fit in your back pocket' size.

It was interesting to me that, in broad terms, a whole lot of what Coyle talks about is also the sort of things that Zig, Tracy and Hopkins talk about too. A nice affirmation of their work through Coyle's independent research.

There's bad news all throughout the book. It takes hard work to be successful. It takes commitment. The good news is that if you have those traits the tips will give you a great path to follow and advice on how to turn your drive into a better chance for success.

Are you having a tough time admitting that hard work and commitment are not your strong suits? I think you need to read this book more than the other crowd. One thing that discourages hard work and commitment is poor initial performance. Right? Well, you can address that by applying these tips. I think. It is up to you.

This book would no doubt have been helpful for me years ago, when I was studying piano and playing intermediate tennis. The writing is tight and cogent. The principles well-explained.

These days, however, my skill-development falls more in the mental/intellectual realm, so most of the tips simply didn't resonate for me. (Perhaps I should have read the product description more closely and predicted the mis-match.)

Still, I would consider gifting this to a young athlete, musician, or anyone else seeking to perfect the physical aspects of a pursuit.

My Vine Reviewer copy was an uncorrected proof, so it's hard to judge the final product. The design is acceptable, though the paper quality feels unpleasant to the touch, like dry newsprint. Could be a personal preference, but it's not the kind of paper I'd expect in a book designed to be dipped into on a regular basis.

This handbook contains 52 rules for developing or improving any skill. It focuses on best practices that the author observed at what he calls 'talent hotbeds'. These are schools, training camps, and academies that have produced a high number of world class athletes, musicians, performers and academic stars. The book is concise, each of the 52 rules is covered in a few pages, so it is a fast read. But when you look at putting it into practice, it's not so easy. Some of the rules are refreshing - such as the finding that practicing as little as 15 minutes a day can be more helpful than longer but infrequent sessions. He also gives advice on how to pick the best coach for yourself and how to coach others. Its handy to have all of these rules in a compact package which could be kept in your purse or backpack and referred to frequently. I plan to pick a skill and work towards developing some proficiency using Coyle's tips. According to him it takes a minimum of eight weeks to start to change the brain. This is a short enough time that any reader should be able to apply some of the tips and begin to see real changes.

The title of the book is absolutely descriptive -- This is a little book (117 pages main text) that gives you 52 tips on improving skills, where a tip covers one or two pages. I usually look at this sort of book as gimmicky, but despite its short length, the tips really did present a good overall strategy for how to develop a skill over time, mostly by breaking things into pieces and practicing. There was nothing really profound here, but I think most people reading through this (which should take only an hour or so) will pick up some good ideas that will help them focus their attention and learn/improve their skills.

I recommend this book both as an initial read and also as a resource that would be worth going back to know and then.

Do not discount this book due to it's brevity. For it's small size it packs a wallop of outstanding information to propel you to success in a wide variety of endeavors. The ten dollar price tag makes it a perfect gift for coaches, teachers, mentors and any youth in your life. I enjoyed the small catchy illustrations to reinforce the individual tips in a visual snapshot. The quotes are worthy of top placement on your bulletin board or insertion in motivational speeches. The suggested reading list is wonderful and should include the author's first book on talent if it's anywhere near the quality of this one. Learn to legally steal and when staring is appropriate. Embrace mistakes and learn a new valuable use for watermelon :) I appreciate the list of what to look for in coaches and mentors. I'm passing this on as suggested reading to many of my friends and online associates.

This short book is quick to read through once and easy to reference as necessary when you feel yourself start to slip into a slump. It is a simple, straightforward collection of tips compiled from the author's research at a wide range of talent "hotbeds" scattered across the globe. The author suggests that you keep the book close at hand, and I'm inclined to agree -- it could only help to have it with you! The tips are easily adaptable to seemingly any skill area you might wish to improve in. The appendix addressing the science behind the tips could have been more extensive, but I suppose it isn't information that you'd really need to carry around with you. Presumably the more in-depth exploration of the science of talent is to be found in the author's book The Talent Code. After reading The Little Book of Talent, I'm definitely adding The Talent Code to my list!

This book is like a Cliff's Notes for building talent. While the books "The Talent Code" and "Outliers" show the principles and reality behind the success of world class athletes, chess players, musicians, business tycoons, etc. This book is a step by step guide in building talents in yourself or others through the same principles used in top schools and training grounds for Olympians and competitors of all kinds on the world stage, the author has done the homework and made the trips to learn from these top teachers and trainers and what works and what does not.

After reading many books about researched facts about success and the backgrounds of so many of the greatest winners in all fields of life it amazes me that many still believe with a religious fervor that people are born with world class skills. Time and time again when you look into it almost 100% of these child prodigies where worked with intensely in childhood to build their skills and talents through brutal training and practice including Michael Jackson, Tiger Woods, The Williams sisters in tennis, Beethoven, etc. Others that built themselves through practice like Michael Jordon was cut from his High School varsity basketball team and Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper becasue he "lacked creativity". Surely if they were born the greatest in their chosen fields they could accomplish such simple tasks in their youth.

Talent is not given, it is built through endless correct practice, the right mentor, the right method, and the right feedback loop by a person with deep perseverance and passion. This book shows 52 ways to create that talent.

I'd agree with other reviewers that a lot of this you already know if you've lived some and paid attention. But some of these tips are not so intuitive as to necessarily come to mind at the moment you need them, and almost all are surprisingly applicable to a vast range of skill sets.

Coyle bases this book on his prior book The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How., a considerably weightier tome that delves deeper into the case studies to back up his claims about optimal learning style. Incidentally, this is the one thing I really found wanting in The Little Book of Talent - there's some substantiation lacking to back up a lot of the tips. I know almost intuitively that if you have a big goal, it's better not to talk to everyone about it ahead of the "doing", so I agree with that tip from the author. But a 2009 study where students had to complete a 45 minute exercise, half of them discussing the goal with others and half keeping it a secret, doesn't seem to go very far in terms of confirming the usefulness of following that tip. I understand that The Talent Code goes into greater and more convincing detail, but be aware that this book is really just a concise summary of what the author has examined at length in his previous work - which may be all you need when you are looking for the utility of being able to work through the skill improvement exercises.

I'm not a huge fan of this decade's trend toward life coaches and patented "systems" for doing this or that, so I'm happy to see that Coyle tries to keep jargon at a minimum here - his glossary of terms has all of seven items. And he's not shilling for services or seminars to improve your learning - at least not in the chapters of his book.

Real life result for me: I'm a knitter. I already know to stretch myself and find my sweet spot, where I'm going a little beyond my comfort level and having to fix mistakes/repeat attempts. But I didn't regard my more hopeless efforts - stuffed into a box or drawer for some mythical "someday" when I'd be less of a klutz - as proof of actual progress, or at least not so much as I should have - before reading this book. Now I'm going back, examining those dreaded unfinished WIPs (works in progress) and either finishing or guiltlessly tossing them, thanks to tips #5, 13, 16 and 22. (Tip #22: Pay attention immediately after a mistake. I.e. don't toss the work aside in frustration and come back to it when you've "calmed down" - the best opportunity for learning comes at the moment you realize you've done it all wrong!)

As I write this, kids are going back to school - this would be a nice gift.

What a gem this book is! The 52 tips are so great and so succinctly presented - it makes this book a joy to read. I came away with so many tips that I could apply immediately in my own life. I've had trouble in the past inspiring my children to practice their music and to study more effectively for school, but this book has given me so many ideas that have already made a difference. It's a book that I'm sure I'll be returning to again and again.

This book is basically a very shortened version of Dan Coyle's first book on talent, The Talent Code. As such, this makes the key components of the larger tome easily accessible. Each chapter provides a short, core lesson on how to improve any talent, from slowing things down dramatically, to providing only sparse facilities in which to practice. The reader should be able to, for the most part, easily apply each technique to get the desired results, or, where some of the techniques require more time, understand the rationale behind the practice.

Sometimes You try to learn new skills by just doing what you’ve always done. Or, you assume that you have to be born with talent. This book helped me think outside the box and realize that talent can be developed by anybody if you were willing to put in the time and you some of these tools.

Not a bad writer, not bad advice, but each section was like small crumbs as opposed to large cookies. For example, Tip #4 Buy a Notebook. Yeah, cool, understood, but little deeper explanation please. Still, there are some really gold nuggets in here such as practicing immediately after a performance, game, competition, etc. His reasoning makes sense, and I feel this little book is more of a common sense guide a parent would pass onto their children while sipping lemonade on a Sunday afternoon. Good advice, but gimme a little more explanation behind your reasoning. Still, I did enjoy the micro chunks. Good advice.

Daniel Coyle has written 52 tips on improving talents and skills. One tip a week for a year. This a fun quick read and filled with good commonsense techniques. From taking a nap to picking someone to coach, this is one of those books that deserves to be re-read and studied. There are many good tips my favorite being tip 46 on not wasting time breaking bad habits-instead build new ones. When it comes to breaking the bad habits we form, it is so important to channel our energies on replacing them with better ones. Well worth the reading and having on hand to re-read.

I practically broke my highlighter, there were so many great tips and ideas. This is an easy and informative read and one highly recommended for anyone wanting to instill in themselves the habits of excellence. Excellence is not determined by birth or talent, but by the hard work of repeating the steps to achieve it.

This is a great little book! Little is the operative word--it fits in my purse. This way I can study, re-read or ponder a chapter on the development of talent--all of the chapters are only a few pages, sometimes only a page. I have employed some of the tips already--I'm a runner, but not a very fast one. I've been studying the elite runners on youtube and trying to incorporate elements of their form, and I think it's helped a little!

A couple of examples:

One of the best sections deals with choosing a coach or teacher. When I first received the book, I wasn't it the market, but I remembered the section was well written.

Later I decided to learn the Native American flute, and found some very useful hints. Same, yesterday, when I wanted to figure out how to ride a bike in our neighborhood -- safely. A hint in the section led me to just the right guy.

Robert Ross
November 2012

I am developing skills as a potter and a blog writer. This book is very helpful in getting a new perspective on the neuroscience of developing skills. Watching others, slowing down, working on technique vs focusing on outcome are great tips. Some tips on being a good coach are not very helpful and could have been a topic for another book.

I wish my first guitar teacher or grade school teacher would have drive these main points home about developing expertise and skill. This book was fundamental where the another book I was lucky enough to find early on Inner Skiing: Revised Edition. Where is this kind of fundamental understanding of how to learn such things in schools?

Quick and easy read. Great experiments to try to find what suits you and what you are trying to learn.

Between the covers of Dan Coyle's, The Talent Code and The Little Book of Talent, I have found a way to begin transforming my golf academy into a "talent hotbed." My career goal has become to coach my team to, as Coyle writes, "willingly, even happily, struggle" to improve. I am showing them to honor hard work, not talent. I could go tip by tip through the Little Book of Talent and tell you what each means to me, but I'll save you the time. If you work with kids, you can't do much better than to read and put into action the ideas found in Coyle's books. They are indispensable!

Mr. Coyle presents new and exciting concepts for learning and ingraining desired skills. Uncertain if it
truly works, but the read is fascinating, entertaining, short-and-sweet, and is certainly refreshing in the
world of "my-method-is-better" journalism. Might even improve my golf game if I am really willing to
devote the time and effort, not just read/dream about improvement.

This is a great little book to carry around with you in your bag and refer to on multiple occasions. For that reminder or inspiration, there are invaluable tips here for skill improvement. Give this book to a graduate or as a back to school gift. The information is easily digestible - broken out into small pieces, only a few pages short. Read over and over, imprint it onto your brain and then follow the advice within.

I enjoyed reading this booklet. It is a nice compilation of tips, many of which I have encountered elsewhere, about self improvement and practice. As a handy reference or tool that you might want to skim thru periodically to keep the ideas fresh in your mind, this is perfect. But if many of the ideas are new to you then you might want to read thru longer expositions of the subject matter.

This book takes you through some thoughtful ways to improve on your talent. If you have a skill or talent then this information will help you hone your skills and improve upon your talent. You can also use this to help stave off memory problems by reading and studying the tips. It is a proven fact that if you work your brain then you have a better chance of retaining your mental skills longer. Well worth a look.

Excellent book. This is a good follow-up to Coyle's book The Talent Code. This one centers on how to make the talent code come alive. It is short, to the point, and powerful. Good for someone who doesn't want to read a ton but wants a hard-hitting, specific plan for being better at study, practice or gaining skills, or as a more focused approach for those who liked the original.

The perfect primer for learning how to be better at something. 52 quick reading tips to acquire skills the way world class people do, be it sports, music, art, or business.

Once you've read this book, move on to his more in depth work: The Talent Code.
Get it here:
<a href="http://www.the store.com/gp/product/055380684X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=055380684X&linkCode=as2&tag=thew0a-20">The Talent Code</a>

Good content, but way to short to be priced as a book. It was little more than an in-depth magazine article. Disappointed to pay for a book I would finish in under 3 hours.... I spend more time with The Economist or The New Yorker

The ideas and concepts presented in this book have been around for a number of years; however, the uniqueness about this book is that it contains the best "tips" for improving your skills or if you coach the skills of others. The book is extremely easy to read and can be finished in one day. Coaching a team, and looking for that little extra boost to improve the team.... this book might be helpful.

This book is definitely one of my top three books ever. I wish I had it when I was in college. I definitely would have had a much much higher Gpa.
It's great for tons of stuff: math, coding, sport, music, ...

Simply put, this book is fantastic! Coyle's 52 tips are backed by research, and I know from personal experience that they're absolutely on the mark. The writing is also crystal clear, with plenty of good examples. Read it, apply it to your life, read it again, continue to apply it, and repeat over and over again. I'll be buying copies of this one to give away as gifts - it's that good, and that IMPORTANT.

I've read the Talent Code, and this is more like the concise application version of the Talent Code. The bottom line remains the same: practice -> build up the neural pathways -> skill, but it contains many valuable tips that one can apply. Now of course the problem remains that is beyond this book's control: if you just read it and never follow the tips, you will NEVER improve. KNOWING and not DOING is the same as not knowing.

Three key ideas:
1. Small actions, repeated over time, transform us
2. Instead of viewing repetition as a chore, view it as your most powerful tool
3. It is not how fast you can do it, but how slowly you can do it CORRECTLY

Reading this book is not enough. I intend to PRACTICE and LIVE the suggestions from this book.

For more than 20 years, Anders Ericsson and his associates at Florida State University have conducted research on peak performance. The results thus far have been discussed in dozens of books and articles, including Daniel Coyle's earlier book, The Talent Code, as well as Geoff Colvin's Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else and Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success.

In The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle gratefully acknowledges the importance of Ericsson's research, agreeing with Colvin and Gladwell that greatness isn't born; rather, it is developed by a combination of luck (i.e. being "given" opportunities); ignition (i.e. self-motivation activated by one or more "primal cues"), what Coyle calls "deep practice" (i.e. 10, 000 hours of focused and disciplined repetition, requiring an energetic and passionate commitment), and master coaching provided by "talent whisperers" who "possess vast, deep frameworks of knowledge, which they apply to the steady, incremental work of growing skill circuits, which they ultimately don't control."

In his latest book, Coyle focuses on myerlin in the Appendix, as he did in The Talent Code when observing, "We are myelin beings" and adding, "it's time to rewrite the maxim that practice makes perfect. The truth is, practice makes myelin, and myelin makes perfect. And myerlin operates by a few fundamental principles" that explain where extraordinary talent (defined as "the possession of repeatable skills that don't depend on physical size") comes from and how it can be developed.

According to Dr. George Bartzokis, professor of neurology at U.C.L.A., myerlin is "the key to talking, reading, learning skills, being human." It is a neural insulator that, Coyle explains, some neurologists now consider to be "the holy grail" of skill acquisition because every human skill "is created by chains of nerve fibers carrying a tiny electrical impulse - basically a signal traveling through a circuit. Myelin's vital role is to wrap those nerve fibers the same way that rubber insulation wraps a copper wire, making the signal stronger and faster by preventing the electrical impulses from leaking out. When we fire our circuits in the right way - when we practice swinging that bat or playing that note - our myelin responds by wrapping layers around that neural circuit, each new layer adding a bit more skill and speed. The thicker the myelin gets, the better it insulates, and the faster and more accurate our movements and thoughts become." Better yet, "we are all born with the opportunity to become, as Mr. Myelin [viewed as broadband] likes to put it, lords of our own Internet. The trick is to figure out how to do that."

What we have in Coyle's latest book, The Little Book of Talent, is a collection of 52 "Tips," several from his research for The Talent Code but many additional ones from his visits to various "hotbeds" of creativity during a five-year period. They include a "ramshackle" Moscow tennis club, a "humble" Adirondacks music camp, an inner-city charter school in San Mateo (CA), a Dallas vocal school, and a ski academy in Vermont as well as to major laboratories and research centers at which research continues on the new science of talent development. He explains how and why the combination of intensive practice (under strict and expert supervision) and motivation produces brain growth.

"Why brain growth? Because developing talent is all about growing the brain. `Muscle memory' doesn't really exist, because our muscles simply do what our brains tell them to do. This, the new science can be summed up as follows: You want to develop your talent? Build a better brain through intensive practice."

All of us possess undeveloped talents in areas of no interest to us but there are other areas that do interest us in which our talents are [begin italics] under-developed [end italics]. So what? The best career advice I have yet encountered is to do what you love and love what you do. All well and good but the challenge remains: How to do what you love well enough to have a career doing it? The "new science of talent development" reveals HOW and Coyle provides a non-scientific explanation in his latest book. Hence the importance of myerlin to "building" and then applying a better brain.

Of course, as is often the case, there's bad news and good news. First the bad news: Most people lack the motivation to commit the time, energy, and attention that intensive practice requires. What's the good news? Most people lack the motivation to commit the time, energy, and attention that intensive practice requires.

The Little Book of Talent is a collection of ideas and strategies on how to improve talent based on the authors experience visiting many of the top talent pools and training facilities around the world. Many of the ideas are good, some are obvious, and a few fall into the realm of being cliche. There is only a page or two of explanation of each idea making this book not just short, but a little lacking in terms of impact. I have little doubt Coyle has a good handle on what it takes to develop talent, but he substantiates too many of his points with anecdotal evidence. It somewhat ironic that the best idea from this book may in fact be its suggested list of books; references of books like "Outliers" by Gladwell and "Bounce" by Syed, both of which are outstanding books on the nature of talent that offer far more substance. This book is not without value, but you can certainly do better if you are interested in the topic of talent.

This is indeed a little book. It contains 52 brief techniques for improving skills, based on Daniel Coyle's research into human excellence, and how we get there. What you will not find here is a lengthy treatise expounding Coyle's theory of greatness, with footnotes. That would be The Talent Code. This book is an extended commercial for Coyle's other book, which was apparently effective, because I was curious enough to buy a copy after reading The Little Book of Talent.

The tips you find in this book seem pretty simple. I think that is a feature not a bug. Most excellent coaching seems really simple after the fact. The hard part is doing the right thing at the right time that will help the student push harder than they ever thought they could. With a new batch of tricks, that should help a coach find that right thing faster, and more often. The same idea could easy be expanded to one's self, along the lines of Getting Things Done or the The 4-Hour Workweek. Try to find ways to boost yourself just a little bit everyday, and aim for a cumulative effect to achieve a bigger payoff.

The tips are pretty interesting, and I find them intuitively accurate. They match up with my own experience. What I am less impressed with is Coyle's theoretical framework. The 10,000 hour rule serves nicely as a synecdoche of Coyle's theory:

Rule of Ten Thousand Hours (n): The scientific finding that all world-class experts in every field have spent a minimum of ten thousand hours intensively practicing their craft. While this number is sometimes misinterpreted as a magical threshold, in reality it functions as a rule of thumb underlining a larger truth: Greatness is not born, but grown through deep practice, no matter who you are.

Coyle has a lot of interesting research, but the one thing he can't conquer is the popular impression that some people are born more talented than others. That is because this popular belief is true. The semantic flaw in the popular belief is that we are not born with ready made skills; we have to learn them. Thus is entirely correct to say that all geniuses must perfect their skills through intensive practice. What is missing is the genius had a greater capacity for that talent than you when he started, and if you both went through an identical training regimen, the difference would rapidly become obvious.

The other important thing Coyle has going for him is very few of us are so skilled in anything that we are bumping up against our capacity limits. You can almost always get better at whatever it is you are doing with more effective techniques. The talented people will just learn faster, and learn more than the rest of us. This grates against the American national character, however, so Coyle shouldn't have any trouble finding a willing audience.

I was intrigued by the title, but disappointed that, after reading the book, it still made no sense. On the other hand, the subtitle is right on: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills.

The majority of these tips are, unfortunately, quite familiar, but I blame that on the fact that I'm a senior citizen. Few offered anything new for me, but they are good enough to bear repeating. I've highlighted sentences on many pages, just to use as a refresher -- sort of a kickstart when practice has turned into a bore.

And while I ordered it to help me practice my violin and piano more efficiently, almost all of the tips can be used by the amateur athlete as well.

In sum, it's short, to the point, and well worth the few minutes it takes to read.

Great ideas and this book will make the world a better place. I don't see this book getting less than 5 stars because 52 tips are amazing. Even if you take 30 that's still enough to make great improvements.

This book builds on and further refines the ideas and principles from Daniel Coyle's first book, The Talent Code, into little digestible tips that can easily be implemented and put into practice. This is a quick read that still has plenty of depth to it in terms of tips for developing talent.

The Little Book of Talent is a very short read with 52 tips for improving skills. These included observing people, finding a mentor who scares one a bit rather than being a cheerleader, aiming for working outside one's comfort zone, etc. As someone who has been out of graduate school and in their profession for over twenty years, I found these tips really didn't apply much to me and were a bit simplistic. However, for someone new to the working world, or of to college, they could be very helpful without being intimidating.

The author of The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle, is a man driven to find out how people train for excellence. The Little Book of Talent is Coyle's attempt to distill this wisdom into one volume, arming you with the 52 tips that will help you improve your skills. Although I really wanted to like this book, I really felt that it fell short. The book gives a laundry list of great techniques to foster genius, but is too general to be successful.

That said, I have not read Coyle's Talent Code. It may well be that in conjunction with The Talent Code book, the Little Book of Talent is more helpful.

I doubt it though.

[Note (10/16/2012): since writing this review, I have read Coyle's The Talent Code and have now posted my reveiw. I do not feel that the information within The Talent Code added anything that would change this review, so I have let this review stand as is. After reading The Talent Code and researching the evidence for myself, I admit that I had severely underestimated the role of deliberate practice when it comes to developing talent. Even so, there is enough evidence for me to believe that there is still a significant component to talent and expertise that goes beyond deliberate practice. My opinion would be that this is an innate component, but this is only my opinion. See my review of The Talent Code for further details.]

Part of the problem lies in Coyle's method of discovering his tips to success. He does research, he speaks to educational scientists, and--most importantly--visits actual training grounds for successful musicians and athletes. He makes observations and takes meticulous notes. He then distills it all down and provides us with the tips--the very tools--for success.

Although the observations ring true, the problem is that the method is inherently flawed. We are left with an assortment of tools that might help us succeed; the problem is that knowing the tips isn't the tricky part. The secret to success is the way you put them together. You could put me in Leonardo's studio, hand over the master's actual paints and paint brushes, and put me in front of a canvas, but this won't mean that I can paint the Mona Lisa. You could give me every musical note used in a Beethoven symphony but I still couldn't replicate the works of the master...

The components of successful coaching and mentoring are not elusive or magic. In many ways they are well known and axiomatic. Knowing the tips may be a prerequisite for starting out, but the magic happens in the way master puts these components together and becomes successful.

This is why we can get opposing notions like 'slow it down' (tip #26) and 'speed it up' (tip #49) or that we should fix mistakes using the 'Sandwich Technique' (tip #34) but that it is important that we 'don't waste time trying to break bad habits--instead, build new ones' (tip #46).

The above pairs may seem paradoxical, but that does not mean that one tip of each pair is right and the other is wrong. There are some tips that directly contradict each other and other tips that merely clash. Nevertheless, each tip has its merit. You may need to apply different techniques in different situations or at different points in training. The laundry list of techniques is useful in terms of opening your mind to different approaches that might help you acquire and improve your performance, but the list doesn't tell you which technique to use for a particular situation or when it is best to use that technique. This is often where a coach or teacher comes in.

Additionally, it is important to realize that drawing concrete conclusions from the great incubators for talent that Coyle visits can be misleading. For example in tip #6 we are told to 'choose spartan over luxurious.' Coyle sites The North Baltimore Aquatic Club, which produced Michael Phelps and four other Olympic medalists and the "world's highest performing schools in Finland and South Korea" which are apparently dark and dreary places.

The problem is threefold: 1) There are plenty of world-class musicians, for example, that have emerged from pretty plush quarters, say the Julliard School of Music; 2) No matter where you go, there are far fewer break-out success stories from ANY school than there are mediocre students; 3) Success often breeds success, once one graduate of a school is successful, talented students will come in droves to that school to get a piece of the magic.

We may find it remarkable that a place with seemingly few resources can boast that they trained great people. Realize, however, that the surroundings--plush or spartan--are less important than simply having the appropriate tools at hand to train people. You might site the math genius who developed his technique in a spartan surrounding in Communist Russia. But that doesn't belie the fact that there plenty of math geniuses have trained in the ivy covered halls of Harvard. We love a surprise success story, but that's not how all success stories happen. The bare-bones training centers are more remarkable to us. They evoke Hollywood images of a Rocky, emerging from a small inner city gym, and so they are more momentous. It's not so romantic, but plenty of people at the top of their game get there through more conventional ways.

Moreover, all schools that train highly successful individuals can be thought of as pyramid programs. Many students will 'try out', few will pass to intermediate levels, and even fewer will make the final cut of greatness.

Spartan or plush, schools that graduate highly successful students actually select students before they enroll. The deck is stacked with raw talent during the admission process. They then whittle down the number of students until the most successful students reach the highest levels. Finally, once they have achieved a pattern of success, they actually attract more talented students to their ranks. And, don't forget, having the right coaches/teachers is important too.

If the book has an overarching theme it would be that raw talent is somehow overrated. I think that this sentiment is very encouraging to many of us average Joes out there but it is slightly off the mark. I am not a researcher in the field and I don't have the depth of experience that Coyle has, but I think that the overarching theme should really be that "practice and experience are usually underrated."

Here's what I mean. Michael Phelps didn't win 22 Olympic medals by sitting around. He put years upon years and hours upon hours of training. That said, Phelps may not have been a celebrated athlete had he chosen to become a power lifter or a gymnast. He may have been able to excel in any number of sports, but ended up picking one that worked well with his genetics.

Part of Phelps' greatness is no doubt the superhuman effort that he put into his sport, his laser-like focus of his practice habits, his work ethic, his dedication, and expert coaching . But because Lochte didn't win as many medals as Phelps, does that mean that Lochte didn't practice enough or wasn't focused enough? How about the guy that is still consistently one of the top 10 swimmers in the world, puts his heart and soul on the line for his sport every day of his life, but never even gets a medal? Please don't tell me that Lochte or that our top-ten-never-medaled athlete just didn't work hard enough or smart enough. They worked plenty hard and worked plenty smart.

Success in any field is both nature and nurture. You can almost certainly exceed all expectations if you dig in 100%, put your heart and soul on the line every day, and work smart every day. But there are still people out there who may exceed your abilities (and sometimes with far less effort than you put in) because they have a natural aptitude for something. That's sometimes hard to swallow but it is almost certainly true.

I don't know if Phelps has enough aptitude for math to become a mathematical genius. I don't know if he has enough latent musical ability that he could become a proficient violinist. And even if he took all the practice and dedication that he put into swimming into math or the violin there is no guarantee that he would be a top performer in either area. We like to trivialize the importance of our inherent, natural abilities because they aren't modifiable. We'd rather believe that success is simply due to working smart and working hard, but even perfect work habits do not ensure success.

That said, Coyle's tips when used correctly might help you maximize your natural abilities, but you will still be limited by your innate talent. So it is vitally important to carefully choose the skills that you want to improve upon if you really want to be 'the best' in a given field.

Then there is luck. Coyle doesn't directly address this. I suppose that this is one of those things that is mostly non-modifiable, but there are ways of persisting and making sure that you are frequently in the most favorable situations that can at least improve your chances to succeed in certain fields.

That said, there is a lot of sound advice in Coyle's book. The tips are generally well spelled out and reasonable. However, because there is no real advice as to how to put it all together, the tips often degrade into aphorisms. The book is at times compelling and interesting, but is really too general to be all that helpful. It does, however, review options of how one might approach practice or study and gives the reader some food for thought.