I've had mixed feelings on this. On one hand, I believe that "practice" in this sense is greatly misunderstood. This word normally implies a kind of deliberate

I've had mixed feelings on this. On one hand, I believe that "practice" in this sense is greatly misunderstood. This word normally implies a kind of deliberate action, that you intend to practice for an hour or so. In reality, most of our productive practice comes from the times that you probably don't know you're practicing. For example, when you sing in the shower, you are exercising your vocal chords and making them stronger. That's practice. When you drum the beat of the song on your desk, or even write a new one, and comprehend the rhythms...that's practice. Simply hearing a song could be considered "practice" for a composer. When I was in school, and later in conservatory, the teachers always gave us hard minimums for practice: 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour...every day. This seemed like peanuts to me, because how could anyone really not practice for that short of a time and still feel as though they are interested in music? On the other hand, I do believe in what these people say. Talent is an illusion. It's a way other people describe the long and arduous work you've done to get to this point. In many ways, when people say I am "talented" at something, I find it slightly demoralizing...because it rejects all of the intense hard work and thousands of hours that I put into my craft in order to get to this point (and I don't even believe I'm really a good enough programmer OR musician to be talking from any kind of pulpit). But I don't get too bent out of shape, because I know that deep down, they do understand what "talent" really means.