Maribelle--Coyle--Intro, ch. 1-2

I found what I originally wrote. So yay!

These chapters talk about the idea and question of "talent hotspots," such as soccer players in Brazil, and what sets them apart from others in their field. They discuss musicians, athletes, pilots, and other such people and how they changed or improved their focus. When first reading about Clarissa, I was thinking about how to incorporate this into my own practice. At first I thought that I could just focus on one page of a song each day, and add pages each time. However, upon further reading I realized that wasn't the point. Clarissa played until she failed. Then she reviewed where she made the mistake, and began again, repeating this until reaching a level of mastery. This particular form of practice increased the myelin firing in her neurons. The repeated actions with a specific focus and goal on the "failures" encouraged the neurons to keep firing, causing the myelin to increase as it made each correction. Later in the chapters it talks about how Shaw is terrible at free throws, so he should practice shooting from 14 feet and 16 feet instead of just practicing throwing from the free throw line. This creates more variation in the practice and therefore expands the ability.