The Talent Code: Unlocking the Secret of Skill in Sports, Art, Music, Math, and Just About Everything Else

by Daniel Coyle

myelin

So there's the picture in a nutshell: each time we deeply practice a nine-iron swing or a guitar chord or a chess opening, we are slowly installing broadband in our circuitry.

They became great writers not in spite of the fact that they started out immature and imitative but because they were willing to spend vast amounts of time and energy being immature and imitative, building myelin in the confined, safe space of their little books.

“It's not how fast you can do it. It's how slow you can do it correctly.”

There is, biologically speaking, no substitute for attentive repetition. Nothing you can do—talking, thinking, reading, imagining—is more effective in building skill than executing the action, firing the impulse down the nerve fiber, fixing errors, honing the circuit.