In this interview, Don Knuth gives the strong impression that he works more than 4 hours a day not necessarily doing deliberate practice but definitely hard cognitive work (writing a book that most people consider quite challenging to read). That said, Knuth is kind of a monster in general in terms of combining really high technical ability and really high conscientiousness, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s similar to the other outliers you mentioned and is not representative.
A few examples to back up my conscientiousness point:
The following story about doing all the problems in the textbook (from that interview):
But Thomas’s Calculus would have the text, then would have problems, and our teacher would assign, say, the even numbered problems, or something like that. I would also do the odd numbered problems. In the back of Thomas’s book he had supplementary problems, the teacher didn’t assign the supplementary problems; I worked the supplementary problems. I was, you know, I was scared I wouldn’t learn calculus, so I worked hard on it, and it turned out that of course it took me longer to solve all these problems than the kids who were only working on what was assigned, at first.
Writing an entire compiler on his own over a summer.
Finishing his PhD in three years while also consulting with Burroughs.
In this interview, Don Knuth gives the strong impression that he works more than 4 hours a day not necessarily doing deliberate practice but definitely hard cognitive work (writing a book that most people consider quite challenging to read). That said, Knuth is kind of a monster in general in terms of combining really high technical ability and really high conscientiousness, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s similar to the other outliers you mentioned and is not representative.
A few examples to back up my conscientiousness point:
The following story about doing all the problems in the textbook (from that interview):
Writing an entire compiler on his own over a summer.
Finishing his PhD in three years while also consulting with Burroughs.