Banging on the Keys

After a concert, a woman gushed to Beethoven about how enthralled she was by his music.

"Oh, sir, I wish I could play like you! It's genius the music you create!"

Beethoven: "Well maam. If you want to practice 8 hours a day for 30 years, you could most certainly play that way also."

She didn't expect that.

To Beethoven, his performance was not a one-off coincidence where talent met opportunity. To him, it was the culmination of effort and sweat put into his practice daily. The woman, only aware of the performance, didn't give the process the respect it deserved. Honoring the process matters. It's the thing that matters.

Good bloggers are good because they practice. They refine their skill and tone and do it everyday. They battle perfectionism and procrastination and just sit down and do the work. Artists and real writers do it everyday even if it's just one line or one a stroke of the brush.

Don't fret if you're not where you want to be with your skills yet. That's not the hard part.
Fret when you don't want to practice those skills everyday. Fret when you invent stories to escape practicing.

Comments

[Tim]

Inspiring anecdote except you should have used Mozart, Beethoven was deaf ;)

[Cris Cohen]

I like this story, but I agree with bitterbetterideaguy. I think that putting in the time will produce better results than not putting in the time. But achieving the level of someone like Beethoven also involves some factors beyond a person's control.

[bitterbetterideaguy]

I disagree somewhat with the anecdote above. While it's true that, as noted in Outliers, it typically takes about 10,000 hours of practice to become exceptional, the woman in the story is not very likely to be as capable as Beethoven at the mastery of the piano. There is undoubtedly something called "Natural Ability" which plays a part too. If you don't have an ear for pitch and tone, you will not likely be a good musician, regardless of how much time you put in. I do agree that for the most part, you get out what you put in, but we need to acknowledge that some people will always be naturally better than others at certain skills.

[fiy]

best book about this: george leonard - mastery.

[Tom Roth]

'We all would like to be more empowered. But few of us, when shown what is really involved in becoming empowered, want to pay the price. Ultimately, each of us has exactly as much power as we really want.'
-An excerpt from the book Deep Change

[rikin]

Great note and I agree with Steve I'm surprised at the lack of an "outliers" reference.

[Steve Kinney]

That's a great little anecdote and is very reminiscent of the 10,000 rule Malcolm Gladwell talks about in Outliers. There are a lot of examples of this in a number of different areas. Michael Jordan getting turned down for his high school basketball team and opting to practice every single day until he made the team. Jimi Hendrix staying at home drinking orange juice and practicing guitar every single day while his bandmates in the Isley Brothers went to the movies. Bob Dylan being so folk music-obsessed that he sought out his hero, Woody Gutherie, and visited him in the hospital regularly.

Most of the people we assume were born talented, practiced to an almost obsessive level. If any part talent is a result of nature, then it is only the ability to subject yourself to intense amounts of practice.