Are you talented? Or could it be that you're just hard working?

The talent myth is built on the idea that innate ability, rather than practice, is what ultimately determines whether we have it within us to achieve excellence. This is a corrosive idea, robbing individuals of the incentive to transform themselves through effort.

In 1991 Anders Ericsson, a psychologist at Florida State University conducted the most extensive investigation ever undertaken into the cause of outstanding performance. He was looking for "talent". The funny this is, he couldn't find any.

His subjects - violinists at the renowned Music Academy of West Berlin in Germany - were divided into three groups. There was one difference between the groups that was both dramatic and unexpected. The number of hours devoted to serious practice. By the age of twenty, the best violinists had practiced and average of ten thousand hours - over two thousand hours more than the good violinists and over six thousand hours more than the violinists hoping to become music teachers.

Ericsson also found that there were no exceptions to this pattern: there was nobody who had reached the elite group without copious practice, and nobody who had worked their socks off has failed to excel. Purposeful practice was the only factor distinguishing the best from the rest.

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