What I find remarkable is that when he did decide to study music, he went nonstop. So he put in his 10,000 hours all at once. Not all 19 year olds have that luxury.
Mmm, 10,000 hours is considerably more than there *are* in a year, even allowing no time for sleep... and he (supposedly) heard his first classical music ever at 18, and at 19 was studying at a conservatory! (I mean, clearly he made extraordinary progress in a short space of time if there is any shred of truth in the story, and 10,000 hours is a phrase not reality... but however much he practised in that year between deciding he wanted to do music as a career and starting to do it, he can't have put in the number of hours that is typical for people going off to study music full time by the time he did so, unless the story is very misleading.)
