As should be clear from the context, I used "focused" in the sense of having fewer interests, not in the sense of being better able to concentrate. And in my messages I have said that being more focused may increase the chance of becoming a prodigy but also has downsides. Bobby Fischer was a focused chess prodigy who never finished high school but achieved his chess aim. Looking at his whole life, including some of the terrible things he said, perhaps atributable to insufficient education and knowledge about the world, he was not an advertisement for extreme focus.
Agreed. I'd argue that many composers probably fell into the same kind of qualitative category.
Nurturing a prodigy seems to be a lot like forcing a bonsai.
It's a pretty ugly process that (sometimes) results in something astonishing, but the saying about breaking eggs to make omelettes also seems pretty insightful here.
