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In short, practice is necessary but not sufficient for awesomeness.

In particular, this implies: "If you have not practiced, then you are not awesome."

So to be awesome at X, you need:

1) some natural talent for X, varies based on the field

2) a love for X that will allow you to practice for 10,000 hours




3) the discipline to make 10,000 hours of your practice deliberate


I was struck a few years ago by an interview with an olympic athlete. She was asked how she found the discipline to keep a grueling practice schedule. She answered that what many see as discipline is actually passion.

If you're having trouble finding discipline, the answer may lie in finding a way to love what you're doing more.


This is very important. Having the iron discipline to work very hard for a long time at something you don't really like, in order to achieve some unrelated goal (for example getting rich) is also known as obsessive-compulsive disorder. The worst thing is that this approach sometimes works - I have met guitar virtuouses who definitely have this disorder. But if it's at the expense of your well-being, it is probably not worth it.

There is a lot of this in the startup community. I'm pretty sure the early life of Cisco is a pretty good example, but unsuccessful instances are all around you.


"1) some natural talent for X, varies based on the field"

No. The trend in the research is that "natural talent" is a MYTH. It does not exist.

Agree or disagree, I don't care, but as a summary of my post, your comment is inaccurate.




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