> Practice still mattered: It accounted for 26 percent of the difference between good violinists and the less accomplished students. But the original study clai

> Practice still mattered: It accounted for 26 percent of the difference between good violinists and the less accomplished students. But the original study claimed that practice accounted for 48 percent of the difference. This is very different from "10k-hour rule confirmed". The study concludes that practice is positive, but it is a small part of being the best, practicing a lot won't make much of a difference to achieving elite status, although it is probably a requirement for it. The study also points out that the top players actually had practiced less than the average of good players. And this is for violin playing (plus another meta-analysis on sports). While the 10k-hour rule is most often associated to Bill Gates, and technical, academic or business success (at least in HN circles). Very different domains where physical dexterity matters little and learning processes have nothing to do with internalizing complex movement. The numbers discussed in the study are roughly around the 10k-hour ballpark (practice before the age of 18). But again, there's nothing indicating that this generalizes to anything other than violin playing. I think it is fairly obvious that different disciplines take different time to master, although I haven't looked into the studies about it.