Life Lessons Edition 02 (February 2018) : The Talent Code

“Is it possible to look at two seedlings and tell which will grow taller? The only answer is It’s early and they are both growing.”

For the past few weeks, I’ve been struggling quite a lot with my younger son, Prama’s studies at school.

Unlike his brother, Raka, who was quick to learn and who has no meaningful difficulties so far in academics, Prama has been a bit slower to pick up on things. While his brother already read quite fluently at 4, Prama has only recently been able to read on his own. With Raka, I was never worried about schoolwork and never really had to sit down and teach him again what he learned at school to make sure he could catch up.

They say that you should never compare your children for they all have their own pace and time and talent. And although I do believe in this wholeheartedly, I couldn’t help to worry about my boy falling behind his friends. Though one could argue that my definition of “falling behind” might still be categorized as “good” in other terms but moms are moms :)

In any case, this motivated me to research and understand more on what learning is and how we build skills and talent over time in the most effective ways.

This search led me to a book called The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. In this book, the writer visits talent hotbeds (areas that produce multiple exceptional talent such as South Korea’s 45 women golfers or Russia’s notoriety for giving birth to top twenty women players) to understand the secret of cultivating talent.

The basic premise of the book is that talent, unlike what most people are led to believe, is not a birthright nor is it purely a result of your environment (nature & nurture). Rather, it is a result of what is called deep practice and ignition. It puts the concept of “growth mindset” ie the belief that we are all work in progress and therefore can and should make mistakes and continue learning, into practice.

This belief is based on a single neurological mechanism in which certain patterns of targeted practice build skill. The code is built on scientific discoveries involving a neural insulator called myelin. Every human skill is created by chains of nerve fibers carrying tiny electrical impulse like travelling through a circuit. Myelin’s role is to wrap those nerve fibers the same way that rubber insulation wraps a copper wire, making the signal stronger and faster by preventing the impulses from leaking out.

What is called deep practice is essentially the act of getting myelin to wrap layers of insulation around the neural circuit repeatedly until it is thicker and therefore our movements or thoughts become faster and more accurate. What this means is 2 things: 1)breaking practice down into chunks to slow it down and 2)finding errors and repeating that part until it is corrected. Deep practice takes events we normally strive to avoid - namely mistakes- and turns them into skills. The best way to build a good circuit is to fire it, attend to mistakes, then fire it again, over and over. Struggle is not an option, its a biological requirement.

Because this act requires immense energy and time, if you don’t love it, you’ll never work hard enough to be great. This is where the role of ignition comes in. Ignition relates to the process of building passion, purpose and the motivation to keep on going at it. These could be anything from future belonging (desire to connecting ourselves to high achieveing groups) to lack of safety or scarcity. It not only relates to the visual things we are exposed to but also the words we hear. Not just words of affirmation/motivation saying "you're great" but praise of effort. The truth is skill circuits are not easy to build, we learn in staggering baby steps. Effort based praise works because it speaks directly to the core of the learning experience.

What am I taking away personally from this?

Well first off, I’ve found a way to get my son to practice every single day. Whether it’s math problems or reading, the harder it is for him, the more he needs to work on it. This is extra hard as a working mom since I’m not there during weekdays to sit with him and help him work through the problems. But I try my best to reach home before bed time to read a book together and to work through the math problems over the weekends.

Second, I’ve changed my compliments to praise them for their effort (for studying hard every day) vs just saying “you’re so smart”. I’ve seen Prama respond to this really well. He’s much more willingly and dilligently putting in the time to study every day and it’s reflecting on his abilities as well.

He might or might not become a math whiz or be as great in linguistics as his brother but I hope he is learning a very important lesson on how hard work (and deep continued practice) can enable him to accomplish anything he puts his mind into.

What can we implement at work?

My key takeaway for the team is that we should learn to celebrate mistakes. No one on the team should be so afraid to make mistakes and failure that all we do is gloss over every project as if all of them are done perfectly and without flaw. In fact, I want to challenge each and everyone of you to always look for the error, own up to it and identify a way to work on that error and improve it the next time, and the next time, and the next time.  Only by doing this will we get better and better as individuals and as a team.

Thanks for reading through till the end! Till next time!