What is the difference between an average pianist and a successful pianist?
Answer: Ten thousand hours of practice!
Most people would say that there are simply people more gifted than others.
However, recent studies have revealed an amazing fact: It was determined that there is a common factor in all people who excel in an area: More than their innate talent, it is the opportunity and hard work that leads to success.
Anders Ericcson of Florida State University studied thousands of students at an elite music academy in Berlin. He found that those violinists who had the potential to achieve worldwide fame as soloists had practiced around 10,000 hours before reaching their twenties, while the rest of the students had trained only a couple thousand hours in their lifetime.
The same pattern became apparent when comparing the hours of training of an amateur pianist with a professional pianist. The amateurs had not trained more than 3 hours a week during their childhood and reached 20 years of age with a total of two thousand hours of practice. Professional violinists, on the other hand, increased their training pace each year until they completed 10,000 hours of practice at the age of twenty, just like violinists. (The Making of an Expert - Ericsson Et.Al. - HBR)
Apparently, the number of hours of training were more decisive in the success of the musicians than the talent alone.
Ericsson corroborated his findings with the astonishing fact that he did not find a single talented student who rose to stardom practicing only a fraction of the time of his peers. Nor did he find the opposite case: that diligent and hard-working student, less gifted, who achieved success only by practicing hard.
These findings suggest that, once a student enters a good school, the only thing that will distinguish him from his peers is the time and effort he invests in his studies.
Nothing else. They are not distinguished by working more, but by working much, much more.
Other researchers have reached similar conclusions. By studying the lives of composers, athletes, authors, chess players, even expert criminals, etc., it has been determined that it takes approximately 10,000 hours of practice to become a world-class expert. It seems that the human brain requires that many hours to achieve complete mastery of any discipline.
The 10 year rule
There is also the 10-year rule. Studies conducted by Benjamin Bloom at the University of Chicago have shown that it takes at least a decade of focused effort before achieving world renown in any specialty area. Bloom studied the lives of a group of 120 experts in areas as diverse as athletics, artists, biochemists, artists, and mathematicians and saw that each of them took a decade of hard work and consistent effort before becoming an expert in their field. area.
Outstanding Olympic swimmers train for 15 years on average before they can join the Olympic team. In the same way, the best professional pianists spend 15 years of practice before achieving world fame.
Geniuses are made, they are not born
In a collection of expert reviews from the University of Cambridge (Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, Cambridge University Press, 2006) it is concluded that what is commonly referred to as "genius" is the product of a natural ability that is not necessarily extraordinary mentor, quality instruction, and considerable investment of work and effort.
Ericsson, Professor of Psychology at the University of Florida, comments: “It is difficult to explain how a genius is born and why its manifestation is so rare, but it is not magic, and it is not innate talent. It manifests itself when critical factors are brought together that allow an intelligent person to invest sustained and focused effort to achieve mastery in an area of expertise. "
The teacher continues: “These people do not necessarily have outstanding IQ, but they almost always operate in a supportive environment and are guided by excellent mentors. What everyone always presents is an extraordinary investment of effort and tenacity. "
The professor's conclusion is that, on the one hand, this encourages us, since it shows that any "ordinary" person has the ability to achieve great achievements in his life. On the other hand, the amount of effort that needs to be invested to achieve excellence is overwhelming. They generally invest 5 times more time and effort than an amateur person who achieves a certain level of competence. (Gladwell, Malcolm: "Outliers: The Store of Success." Little, Brown and Company, USA, 2008.)
And not every person would be willing to make a sacrifice of this magnitude to become successful in life.
