The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle

“Struggle is not optional, it’s neurologically required. In order to get your skill circuit to fire optimally, you must by definition fire the circuit sub optimally. You must make mistakes, and pay attention to those mistakes… you must slowly teach your circuit.”

“Nerve firings grow myelin, myelin controls impulse speed and impulse speed is skill.”

“…it’s slow. Each one of these [myelin] wraps can go around the nerve fiber forty or fifty times, and that can take days or weeks. Imagine doing that to an entire neuron… then an entire circuit with thousands of nerves.”

“You must also keep firing that circuit, i.e. practicing, in order to keep myelin functioning properly, after all, myelin is living tissue.”