Practice makes perfect, so the saying goes. Which may be the best argument for just keeping going on and on with the Brexit negotiations. In a highly influential book, Malcolm Gladwell argued 10 years ago that the key to perfection, be it at sport or a musical instrument, was putting in 10,000 hours of practice.
“In cognitively demanding fields,” he argued, “there are no naturals.” This argument rested on a 1990s study that focused on the differences between simply good and the very best violinists, which argued that the gaps could be explained by sheer volume of practice. The conclusion? Talent per se is overrated and a Protestant work ethic would pay off.
This was always slightly worrying for me – having put in a moderate amount of violin practice as a youth but been consistently catastrophic – but gave meaning to the lives of sports and music teachers everywhere.
But 25 years on, new research replicates that study with improved techniques. It still finds that practice makes you a better violinist, in particular helping explain gaps between less accomplished and good performers – but it certainly cannot explain all the difference between the simply good and the very best.
Personally, this is very reassuring – parental genes can take at least some of the blame for musical failure. More generally, we can conclude that yes, practice matters, but maybe not quite as much when you’re at the top of your game. There, some actual talent comes in handy.
• Read more from Torsten Bell’s Top of the Charts at resolutionfoundation.org
