This shows that by using cherry-picked examples, you can prove anything.
Elite musicians are all super relaxed and chill? Some are, some aren't. For every story of a relaxed musician, I can find you a super successful one that would literally run from gig to gig on weekends. If you're willing to ignore all evidence to the contrary and willing to use a single study to confirm what you already believe, I guess life becomes a lot simpler. Probably helps sell more of them books, too.
Working on your weaknesses can be good if that's something you've avoided doing and doing so would help you advance your skills. What a weird, confrontational way Cal Newport has of getting a reasonable idea across.
It's one of the infinite number of things that are neither necessary nor sufficient to create "success" or be "elite", because those are largely in your own mind and based on how you feel about what's happened rather than what has happened.
> This shows that with using unrepresentative, hand-picked examples, you can prove anything.
True, but the pianist in the article still makes good points.
> "The mistake most weak pianists make is playing, not practicing." as I understand it, means that the pianist found repeated confrontation with difficult parts was beneficial versus sessions repeating the music in full from beginning to end.
What he says is about seeking mastery first. To be a great musician, first you need to have taste, that cannot be downplayed. If you have the right taste and an idea of what the music should sound like, then there are mostly technical traps you need to tackle to achieve a great performance. The pianist doesn't mean to say that once you have done the hard parts you shouldn't enjoy playing the music in full—that's would be stupid. No great performer ever stops in the mid of a piece and get along with it being great.
But it is much easier to find "flow" or whatever you call it, once you have mastery. And one is not exclusive of the other, that's maybe Cal Newport's interpretation or simplification to match the goal of his article.
> "Weak pianists make music a reactive task, not a creative task."
and
> "In performance, weak pianists try to reactively move away from mistakes, while strong pianists move towards a perfect mental image."
Elite musicians are all super relaxed and chill? Some are, some aren't. For every story of a relaxed musician, I can find you a super successful one that would literally run from gig to gig on weekends. If you're willing to ignore all evidence to the contrary and willing to use a single study to confirm what you already believe, I guess life becomes a lot simpler. Probably helps sell more of them books, too.
Working on your weaknesses can be good if that's something you've avoided doing and doing so would help you advance your skills. What a weird, confrontational way Cal Newport has of getting a reasonable idea across.
It's one of the infinite number of things that are neither necessary nor sufficient to create "success" or be "elite", because those are largely in your own mind and based on how you feel about what's happened rather than what has happened.