Lessons from a 45-year Study of Super-Smart Children
> Such results contradict long-established ideas suggesting that expert performance is built mainly through practice—that anyone can get to the top with enough focused effort of the right kind.Actually the claim is the other way around - that the people at the top got there through focused effort of the right kind.Finding "gifted" children does not contradict this. Nobody pops out of the womb a math genius.Gifted children are "gifted" with a laser focus on the unusual things that they find fun - math, music, what-have-you. They spend countless hours playing with numbers or with music, while little Johnny is playing with a ball.I was one of these kids, I played with geometric objects, with music, etc. Sure I  was weird sometimes. I didn't have anybody to share my interests with.Anyway, point is, when people point to "gifted" talent, this is just another cop-out. They don't have an explanation. They are appealing to everybody's shared sense of magical outcomes.But it boils down to the hours that kids put into their interests.