What difference is there between a successful pianist and an average pianist? Answer: ten thousand hours of practice! The majority of people would say that there are simply more endowed than other people. However, recent studies have revealed an astonishing fact: it was determined that there is a common factor in all the people who stand out in an area: more than her innate talent, is the opportunity and hard work that leads to success. Anders Ericcson of the University of the State of Florida studied thousands of students of an elite of Berlin Music Academy. He discovered that those violinists who had the potential to achieve worldwide fame as soloists had practiced around 10,000 hours before reaching age twenty, while the rest of the students had been trained only a couple of thousands of hours in his life. The same pattern is evident when comparing an amateur pianist with a professional pianist training hours. The amateurs had not trained more than 3 hours a week during his childhood and reached 20 years of age with a total of two thousand hours of practice. Professional violinists on the other hand, increased his pace of training each year to complete 10,000 hours of practice at age twenty, as well as violinists. (Harvard Business Review, pdf.
) Apparently, the number of training hours were more decisive in the success of the musicians that the talent itself only. Ericsson corroborated their findings with the amazing fact that didn’t find a single talented student who came to stardom practicing only a fraction of the time of their peers. Also found the opposite case: one student diligent and hard-working, less endowed with talents, who reached success only by practicing hard. These findings suggest that, once a student manages to enter a school of good level, the only thing that will distinguish it from its peers is the time and effort invested in their studies.