"Deliberate Practice" is More Than Just Practice

The idea of "deliberate practice" has been around for years, but it's become something of a buzzword lately. You've heard the drill: you need to put in 10,000 hours of work, or about 10 years of focussed practice, to achieve expertise in anything -- from writing poetry to throwing darts. Which is why your writing mentors are forever telling you to write, write, write. Because the more you write, the sooner you'll become a master of your craft, write? I mean, right?

Well, not exactly.
I've just finished an astonishing, hopeful book called The Genius in All of Us, by David Shenk. Shenk argues that we all have far more capacity than we give ourselves credit for; that through focussed application we can all become very, very good at what we dream of doing -- not only that, but we can, like the London cabbies he writes about -- actually grow our brains. The whole idea of "talent" is a red herring. People are not born with talent -- not Mozart and not Ted Williams. They became legends because they practiced really, really, really hard. But here's the real kicker:

Shenk says these arrows should actually
be pointing in the same direction