because it's a given that without the effort of practice you will not come to understand the unknown thing to you as you will not seek to understand it, effort must be put first then the understanding comes after one two three many repetitions, this article is just explaining a more finite path of reaching that knowledge by turning off outside distractions and deep concentration, by concentration i mean centering the attention to the subject in question. If you are a fighting a battle with a katana, the first time you hold it would probably be just like any stick in your hand, then with practice you would come to understand many subtleties that improve on perfecting it, like that you hold it with two smallest fingers on hand, how to put your torso, how to set your eyes, and other things i don't remember from the Book of Rings by Mysashi Miyamoto. When it comes to intellect, mathematics or so, you still just keep at it and it comes. But as someone here explained that frustrating helped him to understand the formula he tried to understand, it helped him focus, because of him now I understand a quote by i think Al-ghazali "there is no gaining knowledge without discomfort" , and the article helped also, meaning mindless efortless comfortable repetitive tasks just keep you at the same level. So pretty much this article is like a teacher, and the guy who wrote it is also like a teacher and it helps, but you must not instinctively just argue the opposites but rather try to understand it. Now how do human beings come to understanding of new things, meaning how do we gain knowledge, of course you will not find this in this article as this is beyond our limits of intellect, but you may seek to try to understand, for instance how is it that humans recognize the letter A, and i don't mean the shape, i mean the contrast between the brightness, and the limit of the edges where the day and night meet, black and white in this case, and this edge goes around the letter and the shape of it and we understand it as a letter A. All I know that knowledge comes from Allah, One source, He teaches humans the language, the writing, now as for how that happens I don't think we're capable of knowing as we don't even know how is it we learn to recognize symbols, I mean the workings of the mind, sure we can take a brain scan and learn about neurons and as the article mentions repetitive tasks become almost imprinted and easy to do, like driving, but we don't get better at driving we just drive the rest of our lives the way we drive, most of the times, because we don't focus on learning to drive, we just focus on driving to work and smoking a cigarette or eating a burger. Now driving a car would be like learning a mathematical formula and knowing to implement it without actually understanding what it does, while you still can pass the test and not understand the workings of it, so yes surely practicing singing and sword fighting is different as practicing something intellectual which you have to understand, but even with many intellectual things we just have to learn how to implement it and not actually what it does, we know a high level process and not the processes below it. .... so like what article was talking about is that there is no natural talent, and word naturae meaning in-born, or by-birth, aka genetic, while there are those that are born with say eye sight and others are blind, but regardless, if you're born with a slightly better working brain you still have to put the effort, that deep concentration to understand the new thing and if that new thing is say part of a bigger thing, learning a new formula you become better at math, learning a new stance you get better at holding a sword.... so it is the same thing, to be good at something and to learn a new thing, because you had to learn it first to become good at it, and possibly udnerstand it also, only now we take it for granted as we are at this level, that's why the article doesn't differentiate that, learning two different things is still learning and learning to understand two totally different concepts, in the end it's one same process in our mind, learning a new thing regardless if one is playing soccer and the other physics. So being good at something is actually knowing understanding and learning more and new things about it, only linguistically your mind might play a trick and make you believe this is somehow different. Now if you want to pursuit and seek knowledge of how humans acquire knowledge, how do they learn, and how do we learn how to walk,and how is it possible for us to retain information, hacker news will not teach you these things you must seek this elswhere, key word being seek, just like in the article is 'work' or they call it deep work, both the key word is action. You know that sensation when learning something new and it finally just comes in your head and you now understand it, it's nice isn't it, well learning it might be more important that knowing how it actually happened, although it wouldn't be bad to know how, only today you might do a google search 'how humans recognize symbols' or something, and you will see that we know as much about the subject as we know about how monkeys do the same thing.