The Talent Code
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Chapter 5
Primal Cues
Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is a triumph of some enthusiasm.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
“IF SHE CAN DO IT, WHY CAN’T I?”
Growing skill, as we’ve seen, requires deep practice. But deep practice isn’t a piece of cake: it requires energy, passion, and commitment. In a word, it requires motivational fuel, the second element of the talent code. In this section we’ll see how motivation is created and sustained through a process I call ignition. Ignition and deep practice work together to produce skill in exactly the same way that a gas tank combines with an engine to produce velocity in an automobile.
Ignition supplies the energy, while deep practice translates that energy over time into forward progress, a.k.a. wraps of myelin. When I visited the talent hotbeds, I saw a lot of passion. It showed in the way people carried their violins, cradled their soccer balls, and sharpened their pencils. It showed in the way
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they treated bare-bones practice areas as if they were cathedrals; in the alert, respectful gazes that followed a coach. The feeling wasn’t always shiny and happy—sometimes it was dark and obsessive, and sometimes it was like the quiet, abiding love you see in old married couples. But the passion was always there, providing the emotional rocket fuel that kept them firing their circuits, honing skills, getting better.
When I asked people in the hotbeds about the source of their passion for violin/singing/soccer/math, the question struck most of them as faintly ridiculous, as if I were inquiring when they first learned to enjoy oxygen. The universal response was to shrug and say something like “I dunno, I’ve just always felt this way.”
Faced with these responses, it’s tempting to return the shrug, to chalk up their burning
2/11/09
9:28 AM
Page 97
Chapter 5
Primal Cues
Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is a triumph of some enthusiasm.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
“IF SHE CAN DO IT, WHY CAN’T I?”
Growing skill, as we’ve seen, requires deep practice. But deep practice isn’t a piece of cake: it requires energy, passion, and commitment. In a word, it requires motivational fuel, the second element of the talent code. In this section we’ll see how motivation is created and sustained through a process I call ignition. Ignition and deep practice work together to produce skill in exactly the same way that a gas tank combines with an engine to produce velocity in an automobile.
Ignition supplies the energy, while deep practice translates that energy over time into forward progress, a.k.a. wraps of myelin. When I visited the talent hotbeds, I saw a lot of passion. It showed in the way people carried their violins, cradled their soccer balls, and sharpened their pencils. It showed in the way
Coyl_9780553806847_3p_all_r1.qxp
98
2/11/09
9:28 AM
Page 98
The Talent Code
they treated bare-bones practice areas as if they were cathedrals; in the alert, respectful gazes that followed a coach. The feeling wasn’t always shiny and happy—sometimes it was dark and obsessive, and sometimes it was like the quiet, abiding love you see in old married couples. But the passion was always there, providing the emotional rocket fuel that kept them firing their circuits, honing skills, getting better.
When I asked people in the hotbeds about the source of their passion for violin/singing/soccer/math, the question struck most of them as faintly ridiculous, as if I were inquiring when they first learned to enjoy oxygen. The universal response was to shrug and say something like “I dunno, I’ve just always felt this way.”
Faced with these responses, it’s tempting to return the shrug, to chalk up their burning