The Talent Code and its Implications for Triathlon

I'm reading the The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle.  Its premise really isn't novel.  The gist is that when we focus deeply on something, when we repeatedly work at it, when we throw our passion into it, we can excel in our chosen domain at an accelerated pace.

Of course.

Still, the book has me thinking. It's causing me to acknowledge and question my deeply-rooted beliefs about talent, intelligence and skill.

• On a conscious level I know that any skill can be honed by working at it. 
• On an unconscious level I believe that some people pick up skills more quickly than others, and this is a pre-determined, genetic thing.
• On a conscious level I know that intelligence is worked at; that those people who read, study, and practice are the ones who gain knowledge most quickly and thoroughly, and are the ones who excel at taking standardized tests and landing A's in school.
  
• On an unconscious level I believe that intelligence is inherited. Some people are smart; some people aren't, and there isn't much you can do to change that.
• On a conscious level I believe that I can train my body to excel at whatever I decide is worthy of such a pursuit.
• On an unconscious level I believe there are born athletes and born troopers, and that I am a trooper, devoid of inherited athletic prowess.

This book has made me really question my unconscious beliefs about talent.

For example, I consider my husband very intelligent. I believe he is superior to me in this intelligence, and that I could never match his perfect GREs, his undergraduate degrees in physics and religion (the two of which combined illustrate the range of his interests/ability), his doctorate from Harvard, his thorough knowledge of pretty much everything from A-Z.
In short, he is smart.
He is smarter than me.

Or take Ange. Ange is a killer athlete, and she always has been. When we were tykes she dominated the swimming pool. Dominated. In high school she did cross-country and track, and though they weren't her focus, she dominated there as well. When in college she swam Division I, and domintated there, and when she graduated she ran her first marathon with limited training and she qualified for Boston on this first time out.
She is a natural. gifted.
She is more gifted than me.

BUT.
What if Andy is intelligent and Ange is a killer athlete because from day one they have viewed themselves as intelligent and an athlete respectively, and therefore put in the time--the focused practice--to achieve this?

According to this book what happens is this:

• You have a vision of yourself inspired by something--like watching Tiger Woods on TV, or seeing someone perform Fur Elise on the piano who is your same age, or whatever--and you decide: I want that for me. 
• You go into deep practice. You don't just practice; you get into this meditative state where you slow things down and divide the skill into its various parts, memorize each part through constant repetition, and then emerge, skill born. Your learning is accelerated exponentially when you achieve this focused state.
• You develop passion. You want this thing for yourself and you continually go into deep practice to achieve it. You have a vision of yourself that is long term. You are a STUDENT. You are a SWIMMER. You are a PIANIST.  This vision sustains you and you aren't deterred from your mission.
• As you enter this state, the focused learning state, the myelin in your brain wraps tightly around the ignited nerve fibers, insulating them and allowing electric impulses to travel more speedily and smoothly. The more the skill is practiced, the more myelin wraps around the nerve fiber, and the more rote the skill becomes. So it's all about myelin. Apparently when they dissected Einstein's brain there was a shitload of myelin in there. At the time they didn't know why. Now they do. He myelinated--like incessantly.

So, perhaps, Andy believed he was an intelligent from an early age, and he learned how to go into "deep practice" to realize this truth. What I have noticed over the years is that when Andy doesn't know something, he will slow things down and focus--sometimes for days--until he gets it. Do this for forty years straight, and well, no wonder he is Wonder Boy. He has myelinated the shit out of his brain. It's not that he is more innately talented than others; it's that he has entered this state repeatedly since he was a wee one.

I didn't do that.

Or with Ange. She got the signal she was an athlete early on. She worked at it. and worked at it. and worked at it. She myleinated when doing the fly, when running on the track. Ange is really strong, and when you look at her you think, Wow, she inherited a seriously athletic build. But then  you look at her parents. They are small. PETITE. Ange's mom is smaller than me, and that's saying something. Her genes didn't make her strong--I don't think, anyway. It was the signal she gave to her body from a young age. Develop here. Move here. Myelinate now. Her body and mind adapted to her vision of herself, to her constant deep practice.

It's interesting to watch my kids in this light. Jordan loves to draw. And she's good. I always thought this was a gift. She inherited the "art" gene, I'd say. Now I see that she is good because she spends so much time in deep practice. She can spend hours drawing a flower. She draws it again and again until she gets it right. She's making myelin, and it's wrapping around nerve fibers so that each time she draws that flower, she does it with greater ease, accuracy and skill. Conversely, Jordan is not creating much myelin around playing soccer. On the soccer field she is somewhere else. She chats with her friends; she looks at her feet. She follows the ball but doesn't get into the action. This isn't because she isn't an athlete. If it were up to genes, she certainly would be a soccer player. Her father and uncle are awesome at the game. But she hasn't gone into deep practice around soccer. She likes soccer. But she doesn't love it. Until she develops passion for it, until she goes outside each morning to work on it, until she gets some myelin wrapping going on in soccer land, she won't achieve it.

What does this all mean?
The cool thing about myelin is that it can grow throughout your lifetime. It grows with greater speed and efficiency when you are younger, but it grows as an adult nevertheless.

What this says to me is that I need to stop believing there is a ceiling for my achievement. The thing is, I have to WANT that achievement, so much so that I meditatively hone its various parts, so much so that I practice deeply at it for years. I could learn physics. Do I want to? Well, yes. But not so much that I am willing to focus on it the way I have, say, focused on triathlon. 

We can't change our genes.
But that doesn't matter. We have more power over our abilities than we have been led to believe.