Geoff Colvin

Everyone who has achieved exceptional performance has encountered terrible difficulties along the way. There are no exceptions.

The New Yorker’s music critic, Alex Ross, sums up much of the recent scholarship on the Miracle of Salzburg: 'Ambitious parents who are currently playing the ‘Baby Mozart’ video for their toddlers may be disappointed to learn that Mozart became Mozart by working furiously hard.'

The work is so great that it seems no one can sustain it for very long. A finding that is remarkably consistent across disciplines is that four or five hours a day seems to be the upper limit of deliberate practice, and this is frequently accomplished in sessions lasting no more than an hour to ninety minutes.

No matter who they were, or what explanation of their performance was being advanced, it always took them many years to become excellent, and if a person achieves elite status only after many years of toil, assigning the principal role in that success to innate gifts becomes problematic, to say the least.

They all knew it, but they didn’t all do it.

The most eminent creators are consistently those who have immersed themselves utterly in their chosen field, have devoted their lives to it, amassed tremendous knowledge of it, and continually pushed themselves to the front of it.

Their framework isn’t based on a simplistic 'practice makes perfect' observation. Rather, it is based on their highly specific concept of 'deliberate practice.'

... the innovator seems driven to learn as much as possible about the domain, to improve, to drive himself or herself beyond personal limits and eventually beyond the limits of the field.

One factor, and only one factor, predicted how musically accomplished the students were, and that was how much they practiced.

I don’t urge anyone to follow my particular routine, but I urge everyone to find a routine they love.