Mathew Syed

"Practice makes you perfect at whatever you practice. So if you practice the wrong thing, if you practice bad habits, you will become perfect at consistently repeating those flawed skills."

"What is required is ten thousand hours of purposeful practice. And for practice to be truly purposeful, concentration and dedication, although important, are not sufficient. You also need to have access to the right training system, and that sometimes means living in the right town or having the right coach."

"Practice enables people to perceive more, to know more, and to remember more than most people."

"Eventually the effects go beyond even that. Many years of intensive deliberate practice actually change the body and the brain."

"To become a world class performer you must practice the right skills executed in the right way."

"The rule of thumb is that it takes at least 10,000 hours of purposeful practice over a ten year period to get to the top, but success isn't assured by 10,000 hours of any old practice."