A Star Is Made - New York Times

A pretty exciting article in the New York Times about what is “talent”. The short story is that you should practice hard while ensuring you have immediate feedback and have clearly defined goals.

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. (…) what they really lack is the desire to be good and to undertake the deliberate practice that would make them better.

(..) there is surprisingly little hard evidence that anyone could attain any kind of exceptional performance without spending a lot of time perfecting it.

(…) Students should be taught to follow their interests earlier in their schooling, the better to build up their skills and acquire meaningful feedback. (…)

(…) two key elements of deliberate practice: immediate feedback and specific goal-setting.

(Got it from Unreasonable.)