The Talent Code: Chapter 2 Summary
Luke Shepherd

Chapter Summary
Skill can be defined in terms of what exactly is happening in your brain that makes you more skillful at something. Every movement we make involves a precisely timed electrical signal along the nerve fibers in our brain, and as we fire those signals along the nerve fibers we are also insulating that circuit with myelin. In this light, skill is seen as a series of circuits in our brains that have been fired over and over again due to our mistake-focused/deep practice method so as to make certain movements or abilities 'automatic'.  This is because the more we fire a particular circuit or series of circuits (singing a certain bar of music, practicing your tennis backhand) the more we insulate those pathways with myelin, the stuff that skill is made of. Myelin insulates the circuit so that the next time you use it it is faster, more efficient and fluent, and more readily available for future access. Heavily myelinated circuits is what leads to mastery. This is why deep practice works so well. By focusing on mistakes and stopping to fix them you are firing and refiring the same circuits over and over again, thus insulating those circuits with more and more myelin. 

Key Concept
Skill is a series of neural circuits that are heavily insulated with myelin due to precise electrical signals in our brain. Myelin is skill. Myelin comes from deep practice. "Deep practice X 10,000 hours = World class skill."

Key Terms
Myelin
Automaticity
Skill

Making Connections
It turns out that all my frustration and struggle with learning to sing can be an advantage for me-I need to learn to harness that energy in practice in a the kind of 'desperation' or 'hunger' that leads to myelin making. I need to not reinforce bad habits in poor or unhealthy vocal production I've developed by 'singing through' a song. Rather, I need to focus especially on those areas so as to create new myelinated pathways for my brain to use, because those bad habits won't 'undo' themselves (aka, those neural pathways won't 'unmyelinate')