The Role
of Practice - Moving from Potential to Greatness
A Critical
Review of Daniel Coyle’s “The Sweet Spot”
In
the “The Sweet Spot”, the first chapter of the book “The Talent Code” by Daniel
Coyle, the writer searches for the secret behind great talent. He discovers and
presents the idea of “deep practice”
(p26) and how it nurtures and produces great talent.
Coyle
argues that one can become an expert in his field by indulging in “deep practice”. He explains it as a
dedicated effort in a person’s chosen field where he pushes himself to an edge
where failure is very likely. These failures are the catalyst for a person to
accelerate his learning curve, enhance his skills and eventually excel in his
chosen field. The main evidence which author draws upon is his research
in the nine nurseries of talent (or hotbeds as Coyle calls them) which he visited
to look for answers. Coyle found that besides the great potential and talent
that existed in these places there was also the desire and inclination of
individuals to push themselves beyond their limits and use failure as stepping
stones to ultimate success. At the tennis academy in Moscow, soccer field in
Sao Paolo, Brazil and a music academy in New York, the writer saw how the
students pushed themselves to try a difficult move and find “the sweet spot” (p19), the point where
there learning would accelerate. As Robert Bjork, the chair of psychology at
UCLA quotes in the text, “There’s an
optimal gap between what you know and what you’re trying to do. When you find
that sweet spot, learning takes off.” (p19)
Coyle
supports his idea by describing Brunio (p 11) an eleven year old boy perfecting
the “elastico” move by repeatedly
trying and failing and finally succeeding. He then talks about Jennie, a twenty
four year old musician (p 11) who sings a song again and again while going for
the “big finish” i.e the perfect way
to do it. From Bruno and Jennie‘s examples he questions whether repeated
failure is a way improving the skill of these people. The reader is then drawn
into fascinating world of Brazilian soccer where he traces its growth and looks
for factors responsible for their success. The author claims that the real
change in their history occurred when the Brazilians changed the way they
trained.
Coyle’s visual exercise of asking
the reader to go through two lists of words, one correct and another one with
few letters missing is a nice example of different way our minds react and
learn. When one is forced to break one’s thought, the memory of that word
lingers. This he argues is akin to “deep
practice” wherein you focused more on the list with broken words. He supports
this by quoting Bjork(p18) who says “One real encounter …. is far more
useful than several hundred observations”. Edwin Link’s (p 20) story of
how he built an aircraft trainer for aircraft pilots to practice their skills
on ground and reduce aircraft crashes further aids Coyle’s claim. His final
story which appears most convincing is that of soccer coach Sam Clifford (p 24)
who learnt the Brazilian mini soccer game “Futsal” and introduced it in United
Kingdom. He focused on ball handling skills at the junior level and
successfully reared an entire crop of talented players who learnt soccer by
deep practice using the “futsal” method.
To
support his claim Coyle effectively uses questions and key phrases at various
stages to gain the users attention. He call the nine centers’ “the chicken wire
Harvards”(p11) which generate “Everest size amounts of talent” signifying that
they were modeled in a crude way on a world class institution and produce
highly talented individuals . These phrases help attract attention and generate
user’s interest in the text. He calls his research a “Treasure Hunt” (p12) and
compares it to Darwin's voyage to pique the user’s interest in outcome of his
expedition. His examples are exotic ranging from “elastico” move in Brazil to visual examples which involve the
reader is an activity to reinforce his point of view. His description of Edward
Link’s dramatic entry in a plane during a thunderstorm dramatizes the story and
reinforces the area of Links Aviation Trainer as a tool of deep practice for
acquiring a talent.
I
personally find Coyle’s chapter to be very interesting reading. I found
his style of writing very conversational and his examples very inspirational. His
ability to draw from various field and diverse geographical regions as well as
over varying age groups lends credence to his claim. Coyle’s claim of “deep practice” being an effective way of
gaining expertise in a particular field is well supported by various examples.
However there are certain grey areas
in his claim. There is no justification as to how he selected the nine centers
and which ones he rejected. There is also surprisingly no contrarian view and
no effort to discuss factors which may go against his claim. For example how
would Coyle counter the predominance of African American athletes in world of
athletics and basketball where their physical abilities make them surpass other
athletes? Their physical characteristics will work over less endowed athletes
in the same field. Another limitation is
that is that he has used lot of examples and no evidence. A statistical
analysis, sourced from a large pool of athletes, may have made the claim sounder
and more believable. Another flaw in his writing is the reference to Clarissa
video (12, 14, 15, and 28) which first time readers cannot relate to.
Coyle
presents a very convincing argument which is presented with well written prose,
pertinent questions and stimulating stories. What he lacks is a sound academic
rigour to support his claims. This could be supplemented by previous research
in this field and numeric data in favour of his argument. Though the text
lacks the rigour of an academic paper for his claim, I feel that any data or
graphs would have made the text insipid and boring to read. In the chapter
Coyle leads his readers to an expedition in search of secret code to talent
which they feel they would discover when they read his book.
References
Coyle, D. (2009). The
Talent code. New York: Random House Publishing Group (Extract from Chapter 1:
The Sweet Spot (Pg 11 - 28) )
