The Talent Code

Fundamentally, this blog is about self-improvement. I'm not a philosopher, I'm only somewhat interested in debating the finer points of various philosophical theories, but I'm primarily interested in Stoicism from a practical standpoint. I want to be a better person.

In furtherance of that goal, last Friday I picked up The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. I came across Coyle's blog a few months ago and found it especially engrossing. The book didn't disappoint.

While this book mentions Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Stoicism near the end, it is not the focus of this book.  Coyle is writing fundamentally all about practice. Practice is one of those prosaic acts that gets more amazing the more you look at it. We get better at something merely by doing it. Yes, you have to put in effort to perform something many times, but the improvement just happens, as if by magic.

There's a few really great insights I got out of this book. One is that effective practice has to be at the boundaries of our talent, where we are straining and making mistakes. If we aren't spending time at that uncomfortable zone, then we aren't improving as fast as we otherwise could. So, stop reading self-improvement books, leave your distractions behind, and to improve yourself, put yourself in uncomfortable situations.  Start making mistakes, and then correct them.

I'm still thinking about whether there is anything particularly relevant to Stoicism.  They seemed to be big fans of self-improvement, though, and correcting our faults.  Doing the "deep practice" that Coyle writes about seems like the most efficient way to achieve those goals.