As to talent being a chicken-and-egg thing with immersion, I sometimes think of all the innately talented tennis-players and fractal-crystography experts who roamed the earth in the middle-ages; talent just does so much.

1. Innate ability leads to immersion. If you have innate ability, of course you are going to immerse yourself in practice. Because the practice is rewarding. It brings pleasure and affirmation and confidence. Yes, it is hard work, but it’s not ditch-digging. One’s ability increases the odds of practicing more obsessively. There was a meme a while back about “flow.” If you’re in the flow, those 10K hours fly by.

2. Immersion creates the special opportunities Gladwell mentions. If you make hockey or computers or music your life, you will recognize and take advantage of unique opportunities to feed your obsession, opportunities that others (such as casual, non-obsessive practitioners of whatever you’re into) will miss.

But I’m not so sure about your first point about desire. Desire can be wonderful and sustaining, but it can also be crippling and blinding.

More on this in another post.

In fiction, it’s the 1,000,000 words theory: that you must write 1,000,000 words to become competent–though I tend to call it “earning sustainable competence.”

That is where that 10K hours or 1 Mil words come in. Some bands are pretty good. The Great Ones have sustainable competence.