You can practice something for 10,000 hours and still be a bit crap at it

Presumably the whole thing was based on a fallacy to start with - if you’re looking at people who have spent 10,000 hours on something they will be people who likely had a little bit of interest and skill at least to start with. Unlikely someone who hated the violin with a passion then carried on for 10,000 hours. We tend to like the things we are good at, and this invest more time in them. I think this holds somewhat true even for the children chess prodigies with scary tiger fathers - the father chose chess probably because he liked it, thus the children were genetically more likely to like it and be good at it.

I have often felt that in primary children are built up to be told ‘you can do or be anything’ (I started teaching before growth mindset but not that long ago) and then in secondary we trample over all their dreams by putting them in for foundation exams or steering them away from Maths A Level if they are a B or C grade. Yes, if you work hard maybe you could overcome it but no one has 10,000 hours to spare for each A Level over two years anyway. I don’t see any harm in suggesting to pupils from the start that we all have different strengths and weaknesses, sometimes have to fight on through the hard bits to get to a level of mastery (e.g. GCSE pass in Maths), and there’s nothing wrong with not wanting to spend loads of time and energy on something that doesn’t interest you/you aren’t great at.

Yes - I’ve had more than enough of growth mindset. No point me practising theoretical physics for 10,000 hours if I’m hopeless this start with. On the other hand there are things I’m reasonably good at to begin with which I get better at with practice (as we all knew before growth mindset) and are a better and more rewarding use of my time.

I gave up the flute as a teenager realising I’d rather spend my time listening to people playing it well at concerts or on CDs than keep listening to myself playing it with very mediocre skill. Not a decision I’ve regretted.

I've always understood the 10,000 hrs thing as being like polishing something. If you want it really shiny, you need to polish it for ages. But the thing that you're polishing still has its own nature. (ie - no matter how much time I spend on trying to play football, I'll still be worse at it than almost anybody else. But a LOT better than I would have been if I hadn't worked on it!)