“You may have heard about a team of psychologists in Berlin, Germany, who in the early 1990s studied violin students. Specifically, they studied their practice habits in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. All the violinists had begun playing at roughly five years of age with similar practice times. However, at age eight, practice times began to diverge. By age twenty, the elite performers averaged more than 10,000 hours of practice each, while the less able performers had only 4,000 hours of practice. Interestingly, no “naturally gifted” performers emerged. If natural talent had played a role, we would expect some of the “naturals” to float to the top of the elite level with fewer practice hours than everyone else. But the data showed otherwise. The psychologists found a direct statistical relationship between hours of practice and achievement. No shortcuts. No naturals. The elite had more than double the practice hours of the less capable performers. “ -Mark Minervini