Stars are made, not born

Dubner and Leavitt, the Freakonomics guys, have a great article in the New York Times Magazine about Anders Ericsson and the Expert Performance Movement:

Their
work, compiled in the "Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert
Performance," a 900-page academic book that will be published next
month, makes a rather startling assertion: the trait we commonly call
talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers —
whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming — are
nearly always made, not born. And yes, practice does make perfect.
These may be the sort of clichés that parents are fond of whispering to
their children. But these particular clichés just happen to be true.

Ericsson’s
research suggests a third cliché as well: when it comes to choosing a
life path, you should do what you love — because if you don’t love it,
you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very good. Most people
naturally don’t like to do things they aren’t "good" at. So they often
give up, telling themselves they simply don’t possess the talent for
math or skiing or the violin. But what they really lack is the desire
to be good and to undertake the deliberate practice that would make
them better.

"I think the most general claim here," Ericsson says
of his work, "is that a lot of people believe there are some inherent
limits they were born with. But there is surprisingly little hard
evidence that anyone could attain any kind of exceptional performance
without spending a lot of time perfecting it.

Ericsson’s
conclusions, if accurate, would seem to have broad applications.
Students should be taught to follow their interests earlier in their
schooling, the better to build up their skills and acquire meaningful
feedback

Tip from Freakonomics.