Page 147 - Hard Goals

138 HARD Goals

of early musical ability was found to correlate with top musical
performance. Big fi nding number two was that the top students
practiced for two hours a day, versus the 15 minutes a day that
the lowest-performing students were giving over to practice.
Colvin notes that, by age 18, top violin students have accu-
mulated thousands of hours of practice. The best have more
than 7,000 practice hours, average players have around 5,000,
and third-level musicians have only about 3,400 hours. Listen,
I know how appealing it is to just say, “But those other people
are just naturally talented. That’s why they can do those really
diffi cult things.” Sorry, but the facts just don’t back up that line
of thinking. In an overwhelming majority of cases, the highest
achievers are more motivated, harder working, and focused on
tackling more diffi cult challenges.
Neither Tiger Woods nor Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart arrived
into this world magically gifted. In fact, both had fathers that
were ferociously driven pedagogues who invested innumerable
hours training their sons, instilling within them similarly fero-
cious work ethics. No matter where you look, attitude begets
aptitude. And, as demonstrated by those really smart but low-
performing pains-in-the-posterior with whom we sometimes
work, virtually no amount of aptitude can offset a really lousy
attitude.

So what’s the point of all this? Difficult goals are well within
your reach as long as you’ve got the right attitude to carry them
through. You already have whatever innate talent is necessary.
You may not yet have learned all the skills you need, but we’ll
tackle that issue in just a few paragraphs. And after you’ve got-
ten through this book, you’ll have the tools you need to fi nd the
drive, motivation, passion, or whatever you want to call it to
pursue that HARD Goal with all your heart.