of It”
What conditions inspire teens
to practice toward perfection?
adults, rich and poor, professional,
artist, and tradesperson—and its answer
could transform schools and communities. To learn more, I brought together
the perspectives of young people and
cognitive researchers in the Practice
Project, a yearlong inquiry sponsored by
the nonprofit What Kids Can Do.
Exciting evidence has emerged in
recent decades showing that opportu-
nity and practice have far more influ-
ence on performance than does innate
talent. The people we call experts
have typically spent 10,000 hours in
deliberate practice getting to that
point—the equivalent of 10 years of
practicing three hours a day, six days
a week (Eriksson, 1996).
To my surprise, every one of these
youth could name something they were
already good at. Many of them—not
just the unusually talented—were even
growing expert at it. The examples kept
coming: music, dance, drawing, drama,
chess, video games, soccer, building
robots, writing poems, skateboarding,
cooking. So much sustained work in the
pursuit of mastery—and so much of it
happening outside school!
In days of discussion, we picked apart
how the teenagers got started at these
activities, why they kept going, and
what setbacks and satisfactions they
experienced as they put in the necessary
