10 Tips for Building Talent
If you are obsessed with peak performance, achievement and psychology, you will eventually find yourself thinking about talent
Talent, in its essence, is the performance of skill with natural ease and a sense of invincibility.
It’s like watching a professional play against amateurs and or watching a normal human being perform feats that appear to be superhuman. Talent is the ability to execute a skill in a way that makes you an expert. After reading and writing about The Talent Code, I decided to read its companion book, The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Skills. I felt like the companion book was much more precise and to the point, explaining bits of information about the research behind building talent.
Essentially, the meat and potatoes of how to become better.
All the tips listed in the book made sense to me, but trying to incorporate 52 different things into a daily practice seemed a bit off-putting.
So, I decided to filter it down to a “top 10” list of what I felt to be the most actionable ideas. A list of 10 tips is much more manageable and something I can easily fit into my development plan.
The vision of a champion is someone who is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion, when no one else is watching. — Anson Dorrance, North Carolina women’s soccer coach
1. Stare at who you want to become.
Intently and keenly observe the person you want to become by watching everything they do. The 5th Special Forces Group once sent Soldiers to follow executives at GE around with no other responsibilities except to observe. Use pictures to visualize the person you want to become. Keep YouTube videos bookmarked and re-watch them before practice or before going to bed.
Imagine yourself as that person, then do the work to make it happen.
2. Spend fifteen minutes engraving the skill on your brain.
Watch a skill being performed intently before trying it out. The key is to create an intense connection so that you can imagine performing the skill (visualization). The goal here is to build the skill in your mind.
For mental skills, simulate the skill by re-creating the expert’s decision patterns. Try giving a great speech or replaying an excellent chess game. It takes time to build talent, and there is a process where you have to construct that talent physically. For physical skills, project yourself inside the performer’s body. Try to feel and mimic each movement and action.
The Talent Code talks more about building myelin, essentially the physical accumulation of talent receptors.
3. Be willing to look stupid.
To build talent, you must operate at the edges of your capabilities. This means you have to work on weaknesses, and you have to do them slowly and deliberately. An outsider watching this unfold may think that you look stupid, but that is okay because that is part of the process of building world-class talent. Top-tier companies often encourage their employees to take chances and not fear failure.
Failure is where new connections are made and where we learn to navigate towards the correct outcomes.
4. Choose spartan over luxurious.
Luxury stagnates motivation. It signals to our subconscious that we made it, that we can relax. Simple spaces provide the requisite environment for deep practice, one that doesn’t signal our minds to be comfortable and one that doesn’t promote unnecessary distractions.
5. Before you start, figure out whether it is a soft or hard skill.
Hard skills require high precision that should be repeated over and over again, like a golf swing or tennis serve, a child performing basic math, an athlete shooting a free throw, or a worker on an assembly line. Hard skills require neurons in the brain to fire repeatedly and consistently. It helps to be careful and attuned to errors, like a careful carpenter. Some things require a unique combination of both hard and soft skills. Think of a quarterback making a throw (hard skill) after reading a defense (soft skill). Learn to respect the hard skills and prioritize them because they are more valuable to overall talent in the long run. They also take more time to build and depend on deep practice.
Hard skills require ABCs: Always Be Consistent.
Soft skills require high flexibility that is broader and less specialized, like a stock trader spotting a hidden opportunity, a soccer player sensing an opening in the defense, a CEO reading a room during a negotiation, or a novelist sculpting a dramatic plot.
Soft skills like creativity require the most prolonged periods of clumsiness. They need you to play and explore complex and ever-changing environments. It helps to be aggressive and experimental, always looking for new ways to challenge yourself.
Soft skills are all about being able to quickly recognize a pattern or possibility using the Three Rs: Reading, Recognizing and Reacting.
6. Don’t fall for the prodigy myth.
Many people believe talent is innate and that natural ability is a signal for continued success. This assumption is false, and early success is a weak indicator of long-term success. Prodigies, or those with early success, often try to protect their reputation by avoiding failure, including more complex tasks they are not good at.
Their growth becomes stifled since they avoid pushing past their comfort zone and operating at the edge of their abilities.
7. Find the sweet spot.
The space just beyond your ability, the sweet spot, is where you must spend most of your time. The sweet spot consists of certain sensations: difficulty, frustration, and full engagement. However, it’s not supposed to be too easy or difficult, with about 50–80% of all attempts being successful. When looking for the sweet spot, don’t keep track of time. Measure your progress by reaches and reps. Ignore the clock and focus on practice attempts.
How to find the sweet spot:
- Every skill is built out of smaller “chunks,” so try and break every move down.
- Then ask yourself, “What is the smallest single element of this skill that I can master? What other chunks link to that chunk?” Practice one chunk until you master it, and then link all of the chunks together.
- See the whole thing. Break it down into its simplest elements. Put it back together. Repeat.
- Create a vivid image for a chunk of information you want to learn. Think of “ let the soccer ball kiss your foot” versus “stop the soccer ball with your foot.” Our brain is programmed to process information in the form of images.
- Pay attention after you make a mistake. People who pay attention to errors learn more from their mistakes. Do this right away. Don’t shy away from your mistakes; face them head-on.
- Each day, try to build one perfect chunk. Set a daily SAP: Smallest Achievable Perfection and work to complete it.
Remember, talent is built rep by rep, and connection by connection.
8. Embrace struggle.
Struggle feels like a failure, and it is uncomfortable. As a result, it is often avoided. The struggle must be embraced to build talent, as it represents the building of skill. When you take a step back, effort looks like someone working at the edges of their capabilities. Doing something every day is hard, and it is much easier to give yourself a day off every once in a while, but that kind of mindset is a detriment to building talent.
Adopt this idea: five minutes a day over an hour a week. The act of practice can be thought of as a skill itself. Choose consistent practice daily to build a habit as it is more effective than long bouts of overtime work.
It is important to be consistent. Embrace the process.
9. Practice alone (some of the time).
Practicing alone works for two reasons. First, it helps you find that sweet spot at the edge of your abilities. Second, it helps to develop discipline because it is up to you to find the desire to practice, and it is up to you to determine the efficacy of that practice.
There is also the fact that building skills takes a lot of practice, most of which must be done alone simply due to logistics.
10. Visualize the wires of your brain, making new connections.
Visualizing the physical process of building new brain connections (aka myelin) helps embrace and accept mistakes. When you strive to operate at the edge of your abilities, you will form and strengthen new connections in your brain.
When you are in deep practice, your brain wires get faster. It is helpful to visualize the process happening. The faster your wires become, the more talent you build.
It is practical and motivating to think about this process unfolding in real time.
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This story was based on The Talent Code and The Little Book of Talent.