Lately I’ve been looking for
ways to make my practice time more effective.
This led me to The Little Book of Talent by Daniel Coyle.
When you want to work
hard at a task sometimes little bits of advice from a coach or mentor can nudge you slightly one
way or another and end up having a dramatic impact on your abilities. The Little Book of Talent contains many such
tips - simple, concise notions that can change your way of thinking for the
better. Like cliff notes for developing
talent, each tip is limited to a couple pages so you don’t have to cut through
a bunch of fat to get to the meat. The
point is right there. You can immediately
reconcile it to your needs and put it into action.
Coyle has a way of explaining things
in a straight-forward manner which allows you to visualize the directive, making
it easier to understand and remember. Nothing
he mentions is very complex or hard to grasp, but it’s often explained in a way
you may not have thought of on your own. His concepts are designed to be general so
they can be applied to persons of all ages, skill levels, and areas of study (sports,
business, the arts, et cetera). I view the tips from the perspective of a novice/intermediate musician. A golfer could read the same instructions and
take something else away. So could a
salesman, doctor, and so on.
After years of looking for shortcuts to
learning music, I’ve realized that there are no shortcuts. (In fact, time spent looking for shortcuts
can actually take you away from your ultimate goal, which is progress). That still applies here. The ideas in The Little Book of Talent are
not meant to be shortcuts to success, but simple tools that can shift your
perception ever so slightly to put you on the path toward success, if you are
willing to work for it! Get this book if
you want to get better.
The Little Book of Talent is available on Amazon.
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