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I didn't know anything about Wayne Gretzy so I looked him up.. Started at 2, trained with siblings by father on home hockey rink.. But sure, not everybody can

I didn't know anything about Wayne Gretzy so I looked him up.. Started at 2, trained with siblings by father on home hockey rink.. But sure, not everybody can be No. 1, it would be silly to expect millions of 'talents comparable to Mozart', there can't be countless people in the NHL etc. So... you sound disappointed, maybe. Did you put in '10,000 hours' and it didn't work out? I don't know much about the '10,000 hours' theory, less about how you think it's overhyped. People often have an idea that it's an unpleasant ordeal, all that practice, but if it's what you love, it's a pleasure. (I enjoyed every minute) Sure, I believe people have different levels of..how far they can go, but its importance is vastly overrated. Like much more important to me seems how much you enjoy practising, whether art, music, sport, anything, whether you love doing it more than anything, and do it for decades. I've often thought that if I'd grown up living in a town, a popular kid etc I would have turned out 'untalented' in anything, except chatting and being popular; but I grew up fairly isolated on a farm, pre-internet, and so played piano a lot, read a lot etc. And I wasn't so happy, so playing piano was a great joy. Maybe if I'd been happy already, I wouldn't have 'needed' to play piano so much. I had very low self-esteem...thanks to bullying at home and at school, so...it was wonderful to escape to the beautiful world of music. I think factors like that, that influence how much you practice, how many hours you put in (though I never thought of it like that), how much you love doing it, are much more important than differences of natural ability.

emodendroket 8y ago
I'm not disappointed; I'm just tired of reading overly-reductive accounts that talk about how all that matters is practice and anybody can be God's gift to music if only they'd work hard enough at it. Ten thousand hours is a concept popularized by Malcolm Gladwell and he has a whole spiel about how anybody who was as excited about hockey as Wayne Gretzky could have been just as good. My hobby these days is playing Tekken, which I guess is similar enough to piano in that you can practice forever and you've never totally mastered it.
- yesenadam 8y ago
  I'm just tired of reading overly-reductive accounts that talk about how all that matters is practice and anybody can be God's gift to music if only they'd work hard enough at it. Did you mean to say my 'account' is one of those? Well, I didn't say either of those two things. (I think your account was overly reductive.) :-) Good luck!
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    Your account is fine. But others, most prominently Gladwell, are specifically pushing a narrative that innate skill is irrelevant in the face of practice.
saiya-jin 8y ago
It's a self-enhancing loop - you enjoy something because it comes naturally, be it sport or mental activity, so you keep doing it, find joy at improving yourself, competing with others etc. Now imagine the opposite, the results are exactly... opposite. We all have high potential, most of us never come closer to reaching it 100%, but to think we are all equal in our skills from birth is a bit naive and definitely not true, as experienced by probably everybody during their lifetime. Life ain't fair since the start, we can work hard at overcoming our limits, and that's all great. But so far if 2 people put in same amount of effort, the ones with better genes always wins.
- emodendroket 8y ago
  Right... are there other people who could have run as fast as Usain Bolt if they'd devoted themselves to it? Certainly. Could anyone have done so if they'd copied his routine? No.

emodendroket 8y ago

I'm not disappointed; I'm just tired of reading overly-reductive accounts that talk about how all that matters is practice and anybody can be God's gift to music if only they'd work hard enough at it. Ten thousand hours is a concept popularized by Malcolm Gladwell and he has a whole spiel about how anybody who was as excited about hockey as Wayne Gretzky could have been just as good. My hobby these days is playing Tekken, which I guess is similar enough to piano in that you can practice forever and you've never totally mastered it.

yesenadam 8y ago
I'm just tired of reading overly-reductive accounts that talk about how all that matters is practice and anybody can be God's gift to music if only they'd work hard enough at it. Did you mean to say my 'account' is one of those? Well, I didn't say either of those two things. (I think your account was overly reductive.) :-) Good luck!
- emodendroket 8y ago
  Your account is fine. But others, most prominently Gladwell, are specifically pushing a narrative that innate skill is irrelevant in the face of practice.

saiya-jin 8y ago

It's a self-enhancing loop - you enjoy something because it comes naturally, be it sport or mental activity, so you keep doing it, find joy at improving yourself, competing with others etc. Now imagine the opposite, the results are exactly... opposite. We all have high potential, most of us never come closer to reaching it 100%, but to think we are all equal in our skills from birth is a bit naive and definitely not true, as experienced by probably everybody during their lifetime. Life ain't fair since the start, we can work hard at overcoming our limits, and that's all great. But so far if 2 people put in same amount of effort, the ones with better genes always wins.

emodendroket 8y ago
Right... are there other people who could have run as fast as Usain Bolt if they'd devoted themselves to it? Certainly. Could anyone have done so if they'd copied his routine? No.