Practice makes a man Great

Practice makes man perfect.  Quite true. But does practice makes a man successful. Or to that matter, does practice makes someone “Great”. I ran into this article on Fortune. According to the article, researches have shown that natural gifts or natural talents are irrelevant to great success. What is important is the intense and deliberate practice of ones job. As it mentions:
“The evidence, scientific as well as anecdotal, seems overwhelmingly in favor of deliberate practice as the source of great performance.”

The arguments in the article are quite true. In retrospect, if I look back to the days in school, university and last few years as Software professional, I have developed certain strong skills in programming and software development. And all the credit goes to diligent practice, lateral thinking, open to different ideas and ability to relate various topics to core fundamentals.

As article mentions “The good news is that your lack of a natural gift is irrelevant - talent has little or nothing to do with greatness.” I do quite agree with it. There are some things which one person does better than other. And if he goes on improvising them, he achieves emphatic success in that field. Elements like passion and strong interest are vital for any successful individual or business. However just having strong passion and lack of practice does not lead you to anywhere and everyone knows that. All in all the article gives insight on what is the simple formula of being successful.