It’s also easy to be diverted by the things we are bad at. Maybe someone writes short stories almost effortlessly but for some reason they feel obligated to write an awful novel which takes them away from their real talent. On the other hand, I think it was Joyce Carol Oates who trained herself to write by sitting down and banging out a dozen novels that she threw away.
Strangely, in the US, math teachers often seem quite disdainful of the idea of practice.
