The Talent Code

Journalist Daniel Coyle spent years investigating where skill comes from, combining neurology with firsthand reporting from nine talent hotbeds, among them a classical-music academy in upstate New York and the baseball fields of the Caribbean. He identifies three elements that develop ability in sports, music, art, math and other fields. Deep practice is a specific kind of practice he says can build skill up to ten times faster than the usual kind. Ignition is a higher level of commitment, or passion, set off by primal cues. Master coaching rests on four virtues shared by the most effective teachers and coaches. Together, Coyle argues, these build myelin, a microscopic neural substance he treats as central to skill.

Rupert Murdoch called it great reading and summed up its message as greatness being grown the hard way rather than inherited. Peter Attia named it among the books he has read the most.