"1. Every human movement, thought, or feeling is a precisely timed electrical signal traveling through a chain of neurons - a circuit of nerve fibers
2. Myelin is the insulation that wraps these nerve fibers and increase signal strength, speed and accuracy.
3. The more we fire a particular circuit, the more myelin optimizes that circuit, and the stronger, faster, and more fluent our movements and thoughts become.
... Everything neurons do they do pretty quickly. It happens with the flick of a switch, ... But flicking switches is not how we learn a lot of things. Getting good... Takes a lot of time, and that's what myelin is good at.
What do good athletes do when they train?... They send precise impulses along wires that give the signal to myelinate that wire. They end up, after all the training, with a super-duper wire--lots of bandwidth, a high-speed T-3 line. That's what makes them different from the rest of us.
Q: why is targeted, mistake-focused practice so effective?
A: because 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: it's a biological requirement.
Q: why are passion and persistence key ingredients of talent?
A: because wrapping myelin around a big circuit requires immense energy and time. If you don't love it, you'll never work hard enough to be great.
Q: What's the best way to get to Carnegie Hall?
A: Go straight down Myelin Street."
- The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle
