14 ms·

The 10,000-hour rule is wrong and perpetuates a cruel myth

217 points by dannylandau 10y ago

mjevans 10y ago
Site requires scripts to read any content on. I don't like running code from random websites, so I don't. Can't comment on the article. I will guess that the 'cruel myth' is that anyone can spent the requisite time and do anything. (Some people just don't get / can't get X, even if they want to and try really hard.)
- Bioeye 10y ago
  The Business Insider article links this[0] one as the original article in the footnote. It's very similar and also worth a read (and I think it shouldn't require running code to be read) [0]: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/09/malcolm_gladwell_s_10_000_hour_rule_for_deliberate_practice_is_wrong_genes.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...
- corecoder 10y ago
  Site requires scripts to remove a display: none from a div. I didn't enable the scripts, I removed the display: none myself.
sitkack 10y ago
I aim to be "ok" in about 20 hrs of deliberate practice. Hell the FAA says you can fly plane in 40.
- danblick 10y ago
  In this context "deliberate practice" means more than just "practicing on purpose". The description here looks okay: http://expertenough.com/1423/deliberate-practice http://expertenough.com/1423/deliberate-practice However in Ericsson's book he puts more emphasis on guidance by an expert teacher (who can help identify specific challenges appropriate to the learner).
  - sitkack 10y ago
    > Analyzing a set of studies can reveal an average correlation between two variables that is statistically more precise than the result of any individual study. I don't know what talent is. And just being good at something isn't it. If you have the opportunity to sit and watch a lot of different folks "get something", absolutely do it. Then talk to them about what just occurred. I have this hunch that talent is having the mental model and the physical world be sync such that any error in the mental model is instantly repaired. That the person undergoing talent, is literally doing multiple experiments in the moment with result times on the order of subsecond to minutes. They aren't pushing skills in as much as playing. Skills build on skills, dancers, athletes, musicians. We have all seen someone good in one thing instantly pickup another and decry, "oh they are so talented!" They applied 100% of what they already knew and added 1%. What they needed was already in their skill-dna.
- codingdave 10y ago
  Fly, sure... but you can't land at night on an aircraft carrier in 40.
deepnotderp 10y ago
I have a chronic quarrel with psychologists who talk about advancements in science, technology and math from an ivory tower of the social sciences and not from the trenches. Far too many discoveries happen as a result of serendipity and/or hard work. As Terence Tao said, you might not be as smart as grothendieck,but you can still make your own advancements in your corner of math.
chillacy 10y ago
Deliberate practice won't make you top 1% material in most things, since at higher levels everyone's working hard and genetically gifted. But it'll get you pretty far assuming you don't have any physical disadvantages (like being quadriplegic and wanting to be a kickboxer).
- SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
  I would guess that you can be top 1% of the general population in most things (and probably even like 5% of the field) just by trying really hard. I mean, you're likely in top 6-7% of football players just by being on your high school's team. (1mil football players in HS, 15mil students; random Google numbers) I would guess with effort, and I mean a lot of effort, pretty much anyone could make top 20% of a high school team. That puts you in 1% land. The NFL has an average career length between 3 and 6 years, and has under 2000 players. So it's only 0.2% of high school players, or 0.01% of the population. (I just pretended average career length was 4 years, so it lines up with a translated HS cohort.) This sort of makes sense: you can make 5% relatively easily, and 1% with serious effort. But top of the top professionals are 1 in 10,000, and to be that good you have to make it your life's work (plus it helps to be genetically predisposed). Ed: Just wanted to add, to be top 1% of the NFL means, literally, you're one-in-a-million.
  - vanderZwan 10y ago
    > I mean, you're likely in top 6-7% of football players just by being on your high school's team. Not being from the US, I thought you were talking about soccer for a second, and your number did not make any sense at all. But that only confirms your point, in a way: if everyone does something, being part of the top would be much more difficult.
    - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
      From the rough numbers I could find in a FIFA document, if you even play soccer by their definition, you're in only 4% of global population. That includes schools, street football, and occasional players. If you drop the occasional part? About 2% of global population. That's still including schools and street games, corporate teams, etc. So, just playing with any seriousness puts you in the top 2% of global population for soccer. If you're a registered player, it cuts the number down to 1 in 4. So about 0.5% of global population. Im not sure registered players are, as a rule, better, but someone who is a serious player and registered stands a good chance of being top 1% globally -- something I think anyone with effort could do. Being a professional soccer player puts you at about 1 in 100,000 globally, and 1 in 1,000 of people who play more than occasionally. (And 1 in 2,000 of people who play at all.) I suspect that this is because I only looked at the NFL, which would be more like only top-tier teams, not all professionals. The point being: the numbers actually are pretty darn close, and soccer seems to confirm my point about top 5% being relatively doable and top 1% being just effort.
yborg 10y ago
2014 article, and the pushback on Gladwell's book began almost as soon as it came out. I think there is a certain level of misunderstanding the argument he makes, in that it is assumed that the person engaging in the practice meets the minimum requirements for the activity. If you can't amass enough muscle mass, no amount of practice will make you into an NFL lineman. The problem is that in more complex activities or in areas of aesthetics like the arts, what the required level of talent to attain a high level is hard to quantify or recognize.
- venomsnake 10y ago
  10 000 hours of serious lifting will make you like a brick wall.
- Marazan 10y ago
  Matthew Seyd (the Author of Bounce: The Myth of Talent) absolutely makes the argument that there is not minimum requirements for an activity by denying any form of genetic predisposition (or 'talent') for any activity. He puts skill at any activity, from 100m sprinting to fine arts, down purely to practice and does some amazing logical fallacies to get there.
  - ktRolster 10y ago
    He puts skill at any activity, from 100m sprinting to fine arts, down purely to practice and does some amazing logical fallacies to get there. How does he deal with the fact that certain body types are more conducive to sprinting? Or does he just ignore that altogether?
    - goatlover 10y ago
      Yeah, because there's literally nothing 99.99% of people on Earth can do to get them close to Usain Bolt's physical advantages as a sprinter. Sure, he had to work hard to maximize his ability, but that work plus his freakish body means smashing 100 and 200 meter records.
morgante 10y ago
Gladwell never claimed that we're all given equal potential though. Most of the book is focused on the gains from deliberate practice amongst those who already are genetically set up to succeed. In fact, a central point is about how practice helps to amplify those initial advantages not diminish them.
- venomsnake 10y ago
  The concept that some people are innately smarter, prettier, healthier and more talented is extremely controversial in certain social sciences circles.
- goatlover 10y ago
  Seems like at first he was saying talent was mostly a myth, and then backed off a little when challenged and said that talent matters some, as a prerequisite or what have you. But I've heard him on the radio talking about how Wayne Gretzky was the best ever at his sport not because of talent, but because of love of the game. Apparently, Gretzky just loved hockey more than anyone else. I guess there are no Rudy's in hockey.
dibstern 10y ago
This article doesn't clarify that the exceptional students who had completed approx. 10,000 hours of deliberate practice were only 20 years old. It was said that violinists had only truly mastered the instrument by 30-40, by which time they had far more than 10,000 hours of practice. Gladwell misquoted Ericsson. Read Ericsson's book, Peak. Get your facts right.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- igouy 10y ago
  Let's read the Ericsson's short correction: https://www.salon.com/2016/04/10/malcolm_gladwell_got_us_wrong_our_research_was_key_to_the_10000_hour_rule_but_heres_what_got_oversimplified/ https://www.salon.com/2016/04/10/malcolm_gladwell_got_us_wro...
ktRolster 10y ago
I think this paper should be linked to on every story like this: http://cogprints.org/656/1/innate.htm http://cogprints.org/656/1/innate.htm The worst is when people give themselves excuses and say, "I don't have natural talent, I can't learn math." Well sure, if you don't have natural talent you might not be Paul Erdős, but you can still get through calculus.
- ralux 10y ago
  Something that strikes out in the BI article is the separation of children on schools given their profile. Major advancements happened at the crossing of domains. Interesting perspectives were brought to a domain by people from other fields, thinking differently. User interfaces for instance, use cases for technology.
twblalock 10y ago
Malcolm Gladwell should not be taken seriously.
- avinassh 10y ago
  why is that?
  - twblalock 10y ago
    He makes broad, oversimplified generalizations that are not supported by the research he cites. This is a problem with science writing in general, but Gladwell is especially pernicious because he has a good writing style and good marketing.
- idiot_stick 10y ago
  Thanks for looking out for us, random guy on the internet.
paulsutter 10y ago
"There are certain things that writers and critics prize, and readers don’t. So we’re obsessed with things like coherence, consistency, neatness of argument. Readers are indifferent to those things" - Malcolm Gladwell
chpmrc 10y ago
This assumption that you either excel at something or you should just do something else is as dumb as saying that you either become a billionaire or you might as well live on the streets. Just because marketing the top 1% is easier doesn't mean the rest is crap. Just because you won't be the next Bill Gates doesn't mean you shouldn't start (and enjoy building) your own software company. Even the 10k hours theory doesn't explain why some people can practice for so long but others can't. So, clearly, we all start at different positions in life.
- wvh 10y ago
  I agree, and I'd like to add that what one does with/after those 10000 hours matters too, i.e. the individual factor. There's not just a large range between all-or-nothing, but there are many different "alls" too. As an example: I am a good guitar player. I've put in probably close to 10000 hours. But lots of guitar players can play and come up with things I never could. And lots of guitar players can't play or come up with some of the things I can. There simply isn't one sort of top guitar player, or composer, or inventor. There are lots of ideas, shades and colours, different solutions to all sorts of problems. It helps to know your area of expertise, but a truckload of Bill Gates / Bach / Rembrandt clones wouldn't be able to come up with all the novel ideas and creative solutions a more diverse set of people with their own individual quirks could. Individuals bring things to the table that can't be put that easily into a quantifiable number; most real life problems are more complex in nature than an Olympic race where there's a clear winner and way to win. I think it's at least as important in life to find out in which ways you are unique and can make (some modicum of) a difference.
  - saalweachter 10y ago
    Feynman told a story about his "one extra trick". He ascribed a certain amount of his mathematical prowess to simply knowing an uncommon integration trick that most of his colleagues did not. So when they failed to solve an integral, they would bring it to him, and some of the time, using his one extra trick, he would solve it, dazzling everyone. Which is not to say that his one extra trick was particularly powerful, or widely applicable, but it was unusual, and it produced a difference in ability. Maybe Feynman couldn't solve more integrals than his colleagues, but he could integrate different ones, which made him useful and "smart". Which in turn brings up the nature/nurture question of genius: to what extent is genius a matter of "innate" skill (in this case, that arises either from the circumstances of your birth or life) and how much of it is a quirk of your education, the one extra trick you learned (or didn't) that make you approach problems in a way different than your peers?
cyberferret 10y ago
I am always intrigued by the 10KH argument. Here's my story - I just turned 50 last year. Been programming for nearly 35 years of that time. Not just 10,000 hours here - I think we are talking well over 1,000 individual applications and utilities over that time. Do I consider myself one of the best at my profession?? Not even close. Probably wouldn't even rate myself in the top 1/3rd of the worlds programmers. I've met guys who have been alive less time than I have been programming who can run rings around me, code wise. I also play guitar, been doing so for longer than I have been programming, but I am a very stop/start type of player. Sometimes I will play guitar for 1 to 2 hours per day for a month or two straight, then I will put the instrument away for a year or more and not touch it because of things like a new baby arriving in our family, or work commitments etc. When I don't touch the guitar for a while and come back to it after a long break, I am like a beginner again. I cannot remember any of the melodies that I had studied so hard even a few months before, and I feel like I am a newbie learning again. After a long spell of consistent, deliberate practice (as Gladwell expounds), I feel as if I am playing at a normal level again. [0] Is that really what the 10K hours are about? Simply keeping the muscle and neural memory current, flexible and able to translate intentions quicker? It makes sense that constant practice keeps the fingers deft, and ensures your brain synapses are focused on the task of playing, rather than getting distracted with a million other things. [0] - https://soundcloud.com/cyberferret https://soundcloud.com/cyberferret
- TwoBit 10y ago
  The majority of your programming is not with the intent to deliberately improve. Thus it doesn't count towards that 10,000 hours. That's the biggest misconception of the 10,000 hour metric.
  - cyberferret 10y ago
    Granted, but while things like data structures and relationships come naturally to my mind, I am frustrated by the fact that I have to keep looking up syntax for particular loops or method calls. A large factor in this situation is that I regularly jump between several different languages, but nevertheless, it is frustrating to have to pause my flow and look up things so regularly. Perhaps it is a patience thing with my older age, but I find nowadays the biggest thing putting me off starting new projects is just all the sheer mundaneness of setting up repositories and working folders, getting third party assets together, configuring project management tools etc. You would think that familiarity and practice would make these sorts of things automatic and fluid over time, but the opposite seems to be true.
bjterry 10y ago
Perhaps society pays undue attention to things that can be improved with 10,000 hours of practice. There are many skills that could possibly be learned only after more than 10,000 hours. Probably so few people have the dedication that they remain niche pursuits or novelties. And things that require a lot less than 10,000 hours aren't very impressive (driving, for example) because lots of people learn to do them. Things that require about 10,000 is the sweet spot for competition. Note that the examples are almost always competitive situations or positional goods type situations.
- taxicabjesus 10y ago
  > And things that require a lot less than 10,000 hours aren't very impressive (driving, for example) because lots of people learn to do them. I just guesstimated that I spent maybe 7,500 hours (over 3.5 years) driving around in a taxi. Towards the end of that period I started to notice things that the other cars on the road would likely do, and point this out to my passengers. "See that car? it's going to change lanes and that other guy is going to have to slam on his brakes..." Just the other day I was driving with my mother. Our light turned green, but I saw that the car in the cross traffic couldn't see that his light had turned red (on account of the sunset). I waited, and watched as he slammed on his brakes. (Not especially impressive, just recent.) There's something to putting in time on any activity. With regards to this article postulating that "10,000 hours rule" doesn't matter... I think the relevant saying is not "practice makes perfect", but "perfect practice makes perfect". If you spend 10,000 practicing something wrong it won't be as helpful as 1,000 hours practicing it right. Bruce Lee said, "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."
paulpauper 10y ago
Gladwell did a bait and switch, in his book first ignoring the role of talent, and then when pressed for more details, clarifying that the 10,000 hour rule applies to those who already have talent but then practiced 10,00 hours to hone such talent. http://greyenlightenment.com/malcolm-gladwell-bait-and-switch/ http://greyenlightenment.com/malcolm-gladwell-bait-and-switc... I think the amended version of '10,000 hours' is closer to being correct, and probably not the one the public wants to hear. Ericsson's research isn't much better either though. His sample size was very small and his research was never replicated. As the 'how I taught myself physics in one year' thread showed, it's pretty obvious innate talent exists and can allow people to attain mastery of very complicated concepts in far less than 10,000 hours. Not sure it is a cruel myth...more like wishful thinking that can have unintended consequences by mismanaging resources (such as having low-IQ kids in prestigious schools, in the hope that environment will overcome a cognitive deficit)...if it were so cruel, it would not have taken the world by storm...'10,000 hours' succeeds as a meme because it tells people what they want to believe, that with enough practice, anyone can covet the skills of genius. It's not so much that people want to become world-class musicians or top physicists, but rather that they have the potential to become those things if they want to, by practicing enough.
- rapsey 10y ago
  As with anything in the real world there is always a "yes but" and "it depends". 10k hours succeeded because it is generally the right idea. It's not a mathematical rule. Some common sense is still required. You can't stop people interpreting it to hear only what they want to hear.
  - mtrimpe 10y ago
    If people would actual read the book Peak they'd understand that it isn't even about those 10k hours. What Ericsson says is that what creates peak performance is studying just beyond the edge of your comfort zone with (as much) personal feedback (as possible) from an experienced mentor; so not just playing around a bit by yourself. For quite a few fields 'expert' levels happen to come down to about 10k hours of such practice, which is where the number comes from, but he also warns that you will need increasingly more than that to rise to the top as more people put in more hours.
guest234 10y ago
Reality is cruel too I'm afraid :(. The article is probably right about the importance of genes but I'm not sure I agree with anything else it says about politics, social engineering, etc.
anothercomment 10y ago
"For a pair of identical twins, the twin who practiced music more did not do better on the tests than the twin who practiced less" So this doesn't make sense - otherwise, why practice at all? And indeed the article goes on to explain that the "music ability test" only tested some things, like ability to read notes. Maybe the scientists need to work on improving their measurement devices first, before making sweeping claims about talent and practice...
- rejschaap 10y ago
  Sounds like the law of diminishing returns to me. Practicing matters, but there is some point where more practice will not yield a lot of result.
guest234 10y ago
Reality is cruel too :(. While I am persuaded by the idea that nature may be as important or more so than nurture I don't agree with much of what this article says about politics, social engineering, etc. It says the 10k hour myth is cruel, but bucketing people into categories and then postulating on their potential contribution on the basis of science as dubious as the 10k hour rule is more so.
Ellahn 10y ago
Assumes Correlation and Causation, ignores Social and Economic situations of the twins groups, doesn't account for the fact that identical twins tend to share (being geared towards) more experiences due to being perceived almost as a single "being", ignores cultural differences in upbringing of different-gender twins, doesn't account for indirect training (i.e. strategy, memorization, sequential steps etc. are parts of a Chess game), doesn't account for perception of time (Time passes slowly when we don't like what we're doing) and completely ignores training "quality" (Playing chess against newbies is useless as practice, playing against masters is enlightening). It's ALSO not your "fault" that you do not excel at something. Your experiences ever since you were a baby shaped you, your tastes and pretty much determined your whole life. Still, there is no talent, ask any great programmer, musician, illustrator or whatever, every single one of them will say he/she was shitty, but loved it, so kept doing it. This doesn't completely discards the possibility of genetic disposition to liking something, but undeniably everyone starts on even ground. Obviously, being complex areas they are affected by many indirect skills, and the more something is loved, the safer it is to assume the indirect skills involved are also loved or at least liked, indirect skills matter. Clearly fiddling with computers and watching movies that involve technology is not programming, but will make you better at it. In the end, the best explanation so far is that your tastes are the defining factor. And yes, it can be argued that tastes are genetic, but currently there's not nearly enough data to debunk the standing theory, we need more studies and we need better studies, taking all variables into account and actually monitoring the subjects throughout their lives. Maybe in 50 years we'll find out where our tastes come from. Not that it actually matters since it's out of our control anyways.
- JackMorgan 10y ago
  I've got over a decade of deliberate and intense study and practice in programming. I love it and I love learning new things about it. I've worked in half a dozen professional languages and over a dozen for fun. I give conference talks and have two books out. And yet several people I work with can absolutely run circles around me due to much better long and short term memory. For every hour I put in, they can get farther with ten minutes. I only hold my own in the same league as them with 5x more effort. It's absolutely possible that there is a "wet-ware" component to mastery.
paulpauper 10y ago
The second reason we should not pretend we are endowed with the same abilities is that doing so perpetuates the myth that is at the root of much inaction in society — the myth that people can help themselves to the same degree if they just try hard enough. You're not a heart surgeon? That's your fault for not working hard enough in school! You didn't make it as a concert pianist? You must not have wanted it that badly. But the problem is, telling someone who aspires to be doctor or some other high-IQ profession that they shouldn't try, because they aren't smart enough, may also seem cruel, so we settle on what we perceive to be lesser of two cruelties.
josephagoss 10y ago
What does it mean to practice programming vs just programming?
- unit91 10y ago
  Probably doing things for which you have little experience, or are bad at, instead of just doing the day job. For example, I can write templates without much thought, keep my functions small and well-named, etc. Extra practice isn't going to get me very far in that regime. Reading about and designing scaleable systems, or implementing efficient data structures, or practicing problem solving in a recursive way will be much more fruitful for me personally.
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hardwaresofton 10y ago
Could people stop just reading one thing and then living their lives by it? Whether it's Myer's Briggs, or 10,000 hour rule, or some other self-help book with a reasonable premise -- I feel like most of the time it's just some reasonable premise taken to an extreme. Yes, if you want to be good at something, you'll have to practice a lot. Yes, practicing mindfully is better than just putting in hours. Yes, there are different kinds of people and you can (sometimes) broadly characterize them. I find it hard to respect people that read points like those, take them to the extreme, and then it becomes their sole mindset for 6/12 months until the next thing comes along.
- Clubber 10y ago
  The quickest path to success is having rich relatives and friends. Everyone should just pursue that. All joking aside, even if they are placebos (and Myer's Briggs certainly is), whatever it takes to motivate people towards excellence to me would be a positive.
  - LanceH 10y ago
    Ten thousand hours of deliberate practice is hardly a placebo.
    - Clubber 10y ago
      It is if it doesn't actually solve the problem it is being sold to solve.
- dayvough 10y ago
  "Sometimes it's better to have no map versus having a wrong map." (Paraphrased)
skywhopper 10y ago
I haven't read Outliers, but I've always understood the "10,000 hour rule" as a means of expressing the fact that all meaningful skills take years practice to truly become an expert. It's _necessary_, but not necessarily sufficient. Did Gladwell actually assert that 10,000 hours is sufficient for anyone to become an expert at any skill in Outliers? Or is that just a convenient way to misinterpret the book and the rule to be able to write snarky articles like this one?
- ctdonath 10y ago
  Having read Outliers, I understood the "10,000 hour rule" as a rule of thumb for what it takes to go from zero to meaningfully better than most people on pretty much any given subject (aka: an expert). Subsequent to reading the book, I do notice that the rule is also widely used as a convenient way to deliberately misinterpret the book & rule and write snarky articles. Somehow people think it's clever & fair to take a single phrase out of a multi-hundred-page context and ridicule it for not inherently being encyclopedic in depth and peer-reviewed. Undiscussed is that the "outliers" the book investigates are people who started with "10,000 hours", having achieved that level of practice when most competitors (themselves forming a tiny segment of the general population) are just beginning their 10KH. Also, they tend to do so when the rest of the field is just beginning to form. Bill Gates had his 10,000 hours in before starting college - and did so just as the "personal computer" was starting to emerge. The Beatles had their 10,000 hours in before leaving high school - and were ready when mass-distribution music + rock & roll were emerging as the norm. To wit: it takes 10,000 hours practice (that's working on the hard stuff, not the familiar/easy) to become an expert; it takes having done that before that expert's peers to become an outlier.
ZoomZoomZoom 10y ago
If the rule is wrong then it's really good news! At least for my mental state, as I've spent countless hours practicing music in a span of 15 years and still play worse than some of the self-taught beginners with 3-4 years of experience. It's depressing and is already becoming an obstacle in motivating to practice further. If the rule stands, it means it's my fault: I'm not motivated enough, not passionate enough, not smart enough to organize my practice routine. It's what I'm thinking today and what hurts my self-esteem. If the rule's wrong that would be a relief, as it means it's not completely my fault.
tim333 10y ago
The article and Gladwell rather skip over that a lot of success is down to being better than the competition so the hours required should depend on how good the competition is. So to be expert at the violin may take 10,000 hours but being say a blockchain expert may take less as your competition haven't been studying it since childhood. "The amazing thing is we did so well while being so stupid. That’s why you’re all here: you think that there’s hope for you. Go where there’s dumb competition" - Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's business partner.
CoVar 10y ago
I think there is some nuance that is missed when performing studies that compares hours practiced to mastery. I'm currently reading a book called A Mind for Numbers (the companion book for the popular MOOC on Coursera called Learning How to Learn) and what I am realizing is that not everyone practices or studies the most optimal way. "For example, the number of hours of deliberate practice to first reach "master" status (a very high level of skill) ranged from 728 hours to 16,120 hours. This means that one player needed 22 times more deliberate practice than another player to become a master." Maybe those 728 hours were more efficient and effective deliberate practice than the 16,120 hours. Edit: the book is called "A Mind for Numbers", not "A Mind for Math"
- spdionis 10y ago
  So we can accept this as probably true but we are not willing to accept that 10x programmers exist?
  - Eridrus 10y ago
    Even if someone is 10X better in the abstract, real world problems may not show much of a difference. It doesn't matter who is 10X better if you're playing football against toddlers. And most programming falls into this category. It sort of shows through all the complaints about interviews, most programming work is just not difficult enough to separate people, so anything that does needs to be scorned.
n3on_net 10y ago
Still, the concept of hard work beating talent without hard work is a very powerful one. You won't be the best but after such dedication and hard work, you will always achieve above average results in your area. So, keep on hustlin!
veritas3241 10y ago
I'm pretty sure that Malcolm Gladwell clarified his position on the 10,000 hour rule during Tim Ferris' podcast [0]. He was saying that the 10,000 hour rule was meant to clearly indicate that becoming successful requires a large support system. Which seems to make it easier to understand why kids who start really early can become successful: they don't have to worry about all the things adults have to. Conversely, it explains a little bit why being an adult makes it harder to become world-class at something. [0] http://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/ http://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/
sorenjan 10y ago
Freakonomics did an episode about this where he interviewed both Malcolm Gladwell and Anders Ericsson. I recommend listening to it to get their sides of the story. http://freakonomics.com/podcast/peak/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/peak/
6stringmerc 10y ago
My tongue-in-cheek response to the headline, in the context of guitar, make me chuckle quite a bit: "Exactly! 10,000 hours is far too few! More like 30,000 if you really want to start covering all the different styles and techniques with competence!" It's not always "What" a person practices, but also "How" a person does so. Attention to detail, trying new things, learning from mistakes, reflection when away from the hobby/interest. Far too many variables for any one-size-fits-all perspective on Talent and Achievement, but in looking for correlatives and "causation approximate" techniques, Practice certainly shows up time and again.
justforFranz 10y ago
This either/or between effort and genes is ridiculous. Isn't it possible that something interesting is happening between those 10,000 hours? Isn't is possible that successful families not only instill success in their offspring through special training, but also suppress success in other people's children? Nobody here is talking about the role of tripping your opponent as he approaches the finishing line, or of the first born queen bee murdering her rivals before they're born. We're far too focused on positive attributes of competition.
zeveb 10y ago
> But this information could just as easily be used to identify children with the least genetic potential for academic success and channel them into the best schools. This would probably create a more equal society than the one we have, and it would do so by identifying those who are likely to face learning challenges and provide them with the support they might need. Sounds like Harrison Bergeron to me: why not invest those resources into the best minds, who can increase the standard of living for all mankind, rather than investing them only to raise folks to average? Of course, in reality one would invest a little here and a little there, but it is a zero-sum game: every resource used to help the unintelligent succeed is a resource not expended to help the intelligent exceed.
mcguire 10y ago
"For example, yet another recent twin study (and the Karolinska Institute study) found that there was a genetic influence on practicing music. Pushing someone into a career for which he or she is genetically unsuited will likely not work." Out of curiosity, has anyone replicated this kind of genetic study for professional musicians? It would be interesting to know how many just really don't have the talent.
abemishler 10y ago
This TEDxCSU talk [0] is a couple years old but directly addresses the 10,000 hour claim. [0] https://youtu.be/5MgBikgcWnY https://youtu.be/5MgBikgcWnY
MrFantastic 10y ago
As an adult, i've found 100hrs of deliberate practice makes you fairly competent in most hobbies.

217 points by dannylandau 10y ago

Site requires scripts to read any content on. I don't like running code from random websites, so I don't. Can't comment on the article. I will guess that the 'cruel myth' is that anyone can spent the requisite time and do anything. (Some people just don't get / can't get X, even if they want to and try really hard.)

Bioeye 10y ago
The Business Insider article links this[0] one as the original article in the footnote. It's very similar and also worth a read (and I think it shouldn't require running code to be read) [0]: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/09/malcolm_gladwell_s_10_000_hour_rule_for_deliberate_practice_is_wrong_genes.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...
corecoder 10y ago
Site requires scripts to remove a display: none from a div. I didn't enable the scripts, I removed the display: none myself.

sitkack 10y ago

I aim to be "ok" in about 20 hrs of deliberate practice. Hell the FAA says you can fly plane in 40.

danblick 10y ago
In this context "deliberate practice" means more than just "practicing on purpose". The description here looks okay: http://expertenough.com/1423/deliberate-practice http://expertenough.com/1423/deliberate-practice However in Ericsson's book he puts more emphasis on guidance by an expert teacher (who can help identify specific challenges appropriate to the learner).
- sitkack 10y ago
  > Analyzing a set of studies can reveal an average correlation between two variables that is statistically more precise than the result of any individual study. I don't know what talent is. And just being good at something isn't it. If you have the opportunity to sit and watch a lot of different folks "get something", absolutely do it. Then talk to them about what just occurred. I have this hunch that talent is having the mental model and the physical world be sync such that any error in the mental model is instantly repaired. That the person undergoing talent, is literally doing multiple experiments in the moment with result times on the order of subsecond to minutes. They aren't pushing skills in as much as playing. Skills build on skills, dancers, athletes, musicians. We have all seen someone good in one thing instantly pickup another and decry, "oh they are so talented!" They applied 100% of what they already knew and added 1%. What they needed was already in their skill-dna.
codingdave 10y ago
Fly, sure... but you can't land at night on an aircraft carrier in 40.

deepnotderp 10y ago

I have a chronic quarrel with psychologists who talk about advancements in science, technology and math from an ivory tower of the social sciences and not from the trenches. Far too many discoveries happen as a result of serendipity and/or hard work. As Terence Tao said, you might not be as smart as grothendieck,but you can still make your own advancements in your corner of math.

chillacy 10y ago

Deliberate practice won't make you top 1% material in most things, since at higher levels everyone's working hard and genetically gifted. But it'll get you pretty far assuming you don't have any physical disadvantages (like being quadriplegic and wanting to be a kickboxer).

SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
I would guess that you can be top 1% of the general population in most things (and probably even like 5% of the field) just by trying really hard. I mean, you're likely in top 6-7% of football players just by being on your high school's team. (1mil football players in HS, 15mil students; random Google numbers) I would guess with effort, and I mean a lot of effort, pretty much anyone could make top 20% of a high school team. That puts you in 1% land. The NFL has an average career length between 3 and 6 years, and has under 2000 players. So it's only 0.2% of high school players, or 0.01% of the population. (I just pretended average career length was 4 years, so it lines up with a translated HS cohort.) This sort of makes sense: you can make 5% relatively easily, and 1% with serious effort. But top of the top professionals are 1 in 10,000, and to be that good you have to make it your life's work (plus it helps to be genetically predisposed). Ed: Just wanted to add, to be top 1% of the NFL means, literally, you're one-in-a-million.
- vanderZwan 10y ago
  > I mean, you're likely in top 6-7% of football players just by being on your high school's team. Not being from the US, I thought you were talking about soccer for a second, and your number did not make any sense at all. But that only confirms your point, in a way: if everyone does something, being part of the top would be much more difficult.
  - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
    From the rough numbers I could find in a FIFA document, if you even play soccer by their definition, you're in only 4% of global population. That includes schools, street football, and occasional players. If you drop the occasional part? About 2% of global population. That's still including schools and street games, corporate teams, etc. So, just playing with any seriousness puts you in the top 2% of global population for soccer. If you're a registered player, it cuts the number down to 1 in 4. So about 0.5% of global population. Im not sure registered players are, as a rule, better, but someone who is a serious player and registered stands a good chance of being top 1% globally -- something I think anyone with effort could do. Being a professional soccer player puts you at about 1 in 100,000 globally, and 1 in 1,000 of people who play more than occasionally. (And 1 in 2,000 of people who play at all.) I suspect that this is because I only looked at the NFL, which would be more like only top-tier teams, not all professionals. The point being: the numbers actually are pretty darn close, and soccer seems to confirm my point about top 5% being relatively doable and top 1% being just effort.

yborg 10y ago

2014 article, and the pushback on Gladwell's book began almost as soon as it came out. I think there is a certain level of misunderstanding the argument he makes, in that it is assumed that the person engaging in the practice meets the minimum requirements for the activity. If you can't amass enough muscle mass, no amount of practice will make you into an NFL lineman. The problem is that in more complex activities or in areas of aesthetics like the arts, what the required level of talent to attain a high level is hard to quantify or recognize.

venomsnake 10y ago
10 000 hours of serious lifting will make you like a brick wall.
Marazan 10y ago
Matthew Seyd (the Author of Bounce: The Myth of Talent) absolutely makes the argument that there is not minimum requirements for an activity by denying any form of genetic predisposition (or 'talent') for any activity. He puts skill at any activity, from 100m sprinting to fine arts, down purely to practice and does some amazing logical fallacies to get there.
- ktRolster 10y ago
  He puts skill at any activity, from 100m sprinting to fine arts, down purely to practice and does some amazing logical fallacies to get there. How does he deal with the fact that certain body types are more conducive to sprinting? Or does he just ignore that altogether?
  - goatlover 10y ago
    Yeah, because there's literally nothing 99.99% of people on Earth can do to get them close to Usain Bolt's physical advantages as a sprinter. Sure, he had to work hard to maximize his ability, but that work plus his freakish body means smashing 100 and 200 meter records.

morgante 10y ago

Gladwell never claimed that we're all given equal potential though. Most of the book is focused on the gains from deliberate practice amongst those who already are genetically set up to succeed. In fact, a central point is about how practice helps to amplify those initial advantages not diminish them.

venomsnake 10y ago
The concept that some people are innately smarter, prettier, healthier and more talented is extremely controversial in certain social sciences circles.
goatlover 10y ago
Seems like at first he was saying talent was mostly a myth, and then backed off a little when challenged and said that talent matters some, as a prerequisite or what have you. But I've heard him on the radio talking about how Wayne Gretzky was the best ever at his sport not because of talent, but because of love of the game. Apparently, Gretzky just loved hockey more than anyone else. I guess there are no Rudy's in hockey.

dibstern 10y ago

This article doesn't clarify that the exceptional students who had completed approx. 10,000 hours of deliberate practice were only 20 years old. It was said that violinists had only truly mastered the instrument by 30-40, by which time they had far more than 10,000 hours of practice. Gladwell misquoted Ericsson. Read Ericsson's book, Peak. Get your facts right.

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igouy 10y ago
Let's read the Ericsson's short correction: https://www.salon.com/2016/04/10/malcolm_gladwell_got_us_wrong_our_research_was_key_to_the_10000_hour_rule_but_heres_what_got_oversimplified/ https://www.salon.com/2016/04/10/malcolm_gladwell_got_us_wro...

ktRolster 10y ago

I think this paper should be linked to on every story like this: http://cogprints.org/656/1/innate.htm http://cogprints.org/656/1/innate.htm The worst is when people give themselves excuses and say, "I don't have natural talent, I can't learn math." Well sure, if you don't have natural talent you might not be Paul Erdős, but you can still get through calculus.

ralux 10y ago
Something that strikes out in the BI article is the separation of children on schools given their profile. Major advancements happened at the crossing of domains. Interesting perspectives were brought to a domain by people from other fields, thinking differently. User interfaces for instance, use cases for technology.

twblalock 10y ago

Malcolm Gladwell should not be taken seriously.

avinassh 10y ago
why is that?
- twblalock 10y ago
  He makes broad, oversimplified generalizations that are not supported by the research he cites. This is a problem with science writing in general, but Gladwell is especially pernicious because he has a good writing style and good marketing.
idiot_stick 10y ago
Thanks for looking out for us, random guy on the internet.

paulsutter 10y ago

"There are certain things that writers and critics prize, and readers don’t. So we’re obsessed with things like coherence, consistency, neatness of argument. Readers are indifferent to those things" - Malcolm Gladwell

chpmrc 10y ago

This assumption that you either excel at something or you should just do something else is as dumb as saying that you either become a billionaire or you might as well live on the streets. Just because marketing the top 1% is easier doesn't mean the rest is crap. Just because you won't be the next Bill Gates doesn't mean you shouldn't start (and enjoy building) your own software company. Even the 10k hours theory doesn't explain why some people can practice for so long but others can't. So, clearly, we all start at different positions in life.

wvh 10y ago
I agree, and I'd like to add that what one does with/after those 10000 hours matters too, i.e. the individual factor. There's not just a large range between all-or-nothing, but there are many different "alls" too. As an example: I am a good guitar player. I've put in probably close to 10000 hours. But lots of guitar players can play and come up with things I never could. And lots of guitar players can't play or come up with some of the things I can. There simply isn't one sort of top guitar player, or composer, or inventor. There are lots of ideas, shades and colours, different solutions to all sorts of problems. It helps to know your area of expertise, but a truckload of Bill Gates / Bach / Rembrandt clones wouldn't be able to come up with all the novel ideas and creative solutions a more diverse set of people with their own individual quirks could. Individuals bring things to the table that can't be put that easily into a quantifiable number; most real life problems are more complex in nature than an Olympic race where there's a clear winner and way to win. I think it's at least as important in life to find out in which ways you are unique and can make (some modicum of) a difference.
- saalweachter 10y ago
  Feynman told a story about his "one extra trick". He ascribed a certain amount of his mathematical prowess to simply knowing an uncommon integration trick that most of his colleagues did not. So when they failed to solve an integral, they would bring it to him, and some of the time, using his one extra trick, he would solve it, dazzling everyone. Which is not to say that his one extra trick was particularly powerful, or widely applicable, but it was unusual, and it produced a difference in ability. Maybe Feynman couldn't solve more integrals than his colleagues, but he could integrate different ones, which made him useful and "smart". Which in turn brings up the nature/nurture question of genius: to what extent is genius a matter of "innate" skill (in this case, that arises either from the circumstances of your birth or life) and how much of it is a quirk of your education, the one extra trick you learned (or didn't) that make you approach problems in a way different than your peers?

cyberferret 10y ago

I am always intrigued by the 10KH argument. Here's my story - I just turned 50 last year. Been programming for nearly 35 years of that time. Not just 10,000 hours here - I think we are talking well over 1,000 individual applications and utilities over that time. Do I consider myself one of the best at my profession?? Not even close. Probably wouldn't even rate myself in the top 1/3rd of the worlds programmers. I've met guys who have been alive less time than I have been programming who can run rings around me, code wise. I also play guitar, been doing so for longer than I have been programming, but I am a very stop/start type of player. Sometimes I will play guitar for 1 to 2 hours per day for a month or two straight, then I will put the instrument away for a year or more and not touch it because of things like a new baby arriving in our family, or work commitments etc. When I don't touch the guitar for a while and come back to it after a long break, I am like a beginner again. I cannot remember any of the melodies that I had studied so hard even a few months before, and I feel like I am a newbie learning again. After a long spell of consistent, deliberate practice (as Gladwell expounds), I feel as if I am playing at a normal level again. [0] Is that really what the 10K hours are about? Simply keeping the muscle and neural memory current, flexible and able to translate intentions quicker? It makes sense that constant practice keeps the fingers deft, and ensures your brain synapses are focused on the task of playing, rather than getting distracted with a million other things. [0] - https://soundcloud.com/cyberferret https://soundcloud.com/cyberferret

TwoBit 10y ago
The majority of your programming is not with the intent to deliberately improve. Thus it doesn't count towards that 10,000 hours. That's the biggest misconception of the 10,000 hour metric.
- cyberferret 10y ago
  Granted, but while things like data structures and relationships come naturally to my mind, I am frustrated by the fact that I have to keep looking up syntax for particular loops or method calls. A large factor in this situation is that I regularly jump between several different languages, but nevertheless, it is frustrating to have to pause my flow and look up things so regularly. Perhaps it is a patience thing with my older age, but I find nowadays the biggest thing putting me off starting new projects is just all the sheer mundaneness of setting up repositories and working folders, getting third party assets together, configuring project management tools etc. You would think that familiarity and practice would make these sorts of things automatic and fluid over time, but the opposite seems to be true.

bjterry 10y ago

Perhaps society pays undue attention to things that can be improved with 10,000 hours of practice. There are many skills that could possibly be learned only after more than 10,000 hours. Probably so few people have the dedication that they remain niche pursuits or novelties. And things that require a lot less than 10,000 hours aren't very impressive (driving, for example) because lots of people learn to do them. Things that require about 10,000 is the sweet spot for competition. Note that the examples are almost always competitive situations or positional goods type situations.

taxicabjesus 10y ago
> And things that require a lot less than 10,000 hours aren't very impressive (driving, for example) because lots of people learn to do them. I just guesstimated that I spent maybe 7,500 hours (over 3.5 years) driving around in a taxi. Towards the end of that period I started to notice things that the other cars on the road would likely do, and point this out to my passengers. "See that car? it's going to change lanes and that other guy is going to have to slam on his brakes..." Just the other day I was driving with my mother. Our light turned green, but I saw that the car in the cross traffic couldn't see that his light had turned red (on account of the sunset). I waited, and watched as he slammed on his brakes. (Not especially impressive, just recent.) There's something to putting in time on any activity. With regards to this article postulating that "10,000 hours rule" doesn't matter... I think the relevant saying is not "practice makes perfect", but "perfect practice makes perfect". If you spend 10,000 practicing something wrong it won't be as helpful as 1,000 hours practicing it right. Bruce Lee said, "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."

paulpauper 10y ago

Gladwell did a bait and switch, in his book first ignoring the role of talent, and then when pressed for more details, clarifying that the 10,000 hour rule applies to those who already have talent but then practiced 10,00 hours to hone such talent. http://greyenlightenment.com/malcolm-gladwell-bait-and-switch/ http://greyenlightenment.com/malcolm-gladwell-bait-and-switc... I think the amended version of '10,000 hours' is closer to being correct, and probably not the one the public wants to hear. Ericsson's research isn't much better either though. His sample size was very small and his research was never replicated. As the 'how I taught myself physics in one year' thread showed, it's pretty obvious innate talent exists and can allow people to attain mastery of very complicated concepts in far less than 10,000 hours. Not sure it is a cruel myth...more like wishful thinking that can have unintended consequences by mismanaging resources (such as having low-IQ kids in prestigious schools, in the hope that environment will overcome a cognitive deficit)...if it were so cruel, it would not have taken the world by storm...'10,000 hours' succeeds as a meme because it tells people what they want to believe, that with enough practice, anyone can covet the skills of genius. It's not so much that people want to become world-class musicians or top physicists, but rather that they have the potential to become those things if they want to, by practicing enough.

rapsey 10y ago
As with anything in the real world there is always a "yes but" and "it depends". 10k hours succeeded because it is generally the right idea. It's not a mathematical rule. Some common sense is still required. You can't stop people interpreting it to hear only what they want to hear.
- mtrimpe 10y ago
  If people would actual read the book Peak they'd understand that it isn't even about those 10k hours. What Ericsson says is that what creates peak performance is studying just beyond the edge of your comfort zone with (as much) personal feedback (as possible) from an experienced mentor; so not just playing around a bit by yourself. For quite a few fields 'expert' levels happen to come down to about 10k hours of such practice, which is where the number comes from, but he also warns that you will need increasingly more than that to rise to the top as more people put in more hours.

guest234 10y ago

Reality is cruel too I'm afraid :(. The article is probably right about the importance of genes but I'm not sure I agree with anything else it says about politics, social engineering, etc.

anothercomment 10y ago

"For a pair of identical twins, the twin who practiced music more did not do better on the tests than the twin who practiced less" So this doesn't make sense - otherwise, why practice at all? And indeed the article goes on to explain that the "music ability test" only tested some things, like ability to read notes. Maybe the scientists need to work on improving their measurement devices first, before making sweeping claims about talent and practice...

rejschaap 10y ago
Sounds like the law of diminishing returns to me. Practicing matters, but there is some point where more practice will not yield a lot of result.

guest234 10y ago

Reality is cruel too :(. While I am persuaded by the idea that nature may be as important or more so than nurture I don't agree with much of what this article says about politics, social engineering, etc. It says the 10k hour myth is cruel, but bucketing people into categories and then postulating on their potential contribution on the basis of science as dubious as the 10k hour rule is more so.

Ellahn 10y ago

Assumes Correlation and Causation, ignores Social and Economic situations of the twins groups, doesn't account for the fact that identical twins tend to share (being geared towards) more experiences due to being perceived almost as a single "being", ignores cultural differences in upbringing of different-gender twins, doesn't account for indirect training (i.e. strategy, memorization, sequential steps etc. are parts of a Chess game), doesn't account for perception of time (Time passes slowly when we don't like what we're doing) and completely ignores training "quality" (Playing chess against newbies is useless as practice, playing against masters is enlightening). It's ALSO not your "fault" that you do not excel at something. Your experiences ever since you were a baby shaped you, your tastes and pretty much determined your whole life. Still, there is no talent, ask any great programmer, musician, illustrator or whatever, every single one of them will say he/she was shitty, but loved it, so kept doing it. This doesn't completely discards the possibility of genetic disposition to liking something, but undeniably everyone starts on even ground. Obviously, being complex areas they are affected by many indirect skills, and the more something is loved, the safer it is to assume the indirect skills involved are also loved or at least liked, indirect skills matter. Clearly fiddling with computers and watching movies that involve technology is not programming, but will make you better at it. In the end, the best explanation so far is that your tastes are the defining factor. And yes, it can be argued that tastes are genetic, but currently there's not nearly enough data to debunk the standing theory, we need more studies and we need better studies, taking all variables into account and actually monitoring the subjects throughout their lives. Maybe in 50 years we'll find out where our tastes come from. Not that it actually matters since it's out of our control anyways.

JackMorgan 10y ago
I've got over a decade of deliberate and intense study and practice in programming. I love it and I love learning new things about it. I've worked in half a dozen professional languages and over a dozen for fun. I give conference talks and have two books out. And yet several people I work with can absolutely run circles around me due to much better long and short term memory. For every hour I put in, they can get farther with ten minutes. I only hold my own in the same league as them with 5x more effort. It's absolutely possible that there is a "wet-ware" component to mastery.

paulpauper 10y ago

The second reason we should not pretend we are endowed with the same abilities is that doing so perpetuates the myth that is at the root of much inaction in society — the myth that people can help themselves to the same degree if they just try hard enough. You're not a heart surgeon? That's your fault for not working hard enough in school! You didn't make it as a concert pianist? You must not have wanted it that badly. But the problem is, telling someone who aspires to be doctor or some other high-IQ profession that they shouldn't try, because they aren't smart enough, may also seem cruel, so we settle on what we perceive to be lesser of two cruelties.

josephagoss 10y ago

What does it mean to practice programming vs just programming?

unit91 10y ago
Probably doing things for which you have little experience, or are bad at, instead of just doing the day job. For example, I can write templates without much thought, keep my functions small and well-named, etc. Extra practice isn't going to get me very far in that regime. Reading about and designing scaleable systems, or implementing efficient data structures, or practicing problem solving in a recursive way will be much more fruitful for me personally.

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hardwaresofton 10y ago

Could people stop just reading one thing and then living their lives by it? Whether it's Myer's Briggs, or 10,000 hour rule, or some other self-help book with a reasonable premise -- I feel like most of the time it's just some reasonable premise taken to an extreme. Yes, if you want to be good at something, you'll have to practice a lot. Yes, practicing mindfully is better than just putting in hours. Yes, there are different kinds of people and you can (sometimes) broadly characterize them. I find it hard to respect people that read points like those, take them to the extreme, and then it becomes their sole mindset for 6/12 months until the next thing comes along.

Clubber 10y ago
The quickest path to success is having rich relatives and friends. Everyone should just pursue that. All joking aside, even if they are placebos (and Myer's Briggs certainly is), whatever it takes to motivate people towards excellence to me would be a positive.
- LanceH 10y ago
  Ten thousand hours of deliberate practice is hardly a placebo.
  - Clubber 10y ago
    It is if it doesn't actually solve the problem it is being sold to solve.
dayvough 10y ago
"Sometimes it's better to have no map versus having a wrong map." (Paraphrased)

skywhopper 10y ago

I haven't read Outliers, but I've always understood the "10,000 hour rule" as a means of expressing the fact that all meaningful skills take years practice to truly become an expert. It's _necessary_, but not necessarily sufficient. Did Gladwell actually assert that 10,000 hours is sufficient for anyone to become an expert at any skill in Outliers? Or is that just a convenient way to misinterpret the book and the rule to be able to write snarky articles like this one?

ctdonath 10y ago
Having read Outliers, I understood the "10,000 hour rule" as a rule of thumb for what it takes to go from zero to meaningfully better than most people on pretty much any given subject (aka: an expert). Subsequent to reading the book, I do notice that the rule is also widely used as a convenient way to deliberately misinterpret the book & rule and write snarky articles. Somehow people think it's clever & fair to take a single phrase out of a multi-hundred-page context and ridicule it for not inherently being encyclopedic in depth and peer-reviewed. Undiscussed is that the "outliers" the book investigates are people who started with "10,000 hours", having achieved that level of practice when most competitors (themselves forming a tiny segment of the general population) are just beginning their 10KH. Also, they tend to do so when the rest of the field is just beginning to form. Bill Gates had his 10,000 hours in before starting college - and did so just as the "personal computer" was starting to emerge. The Beatles had their 10,000 hours in before leaving high school - and were ready when mass-distribution music + rock & roll were emerging as the norm. To wit: it takes 10,000 hours practice (that's working on the hard stuff, not the familiar/easy) to become an expert; it takes having done that before that expert's peers to become an outlier.

ZoomZoomZoom 10y ago

If the rule is wrong then it's really good news! At least for my mental state, as I've spent countless hours practicing music in a span of 15 years and still play worse than some of the self-taught beginners with 3-4 years of experience. It's depressing and is already becoming an obstacle in motivating to practice further. If the rule stands, it means it's my fault: I'm not motivated enough, not passionate enough, not smart enough to organize my practice routine. It's what I'm thinking today and what hurts my self-esteem. If the rule's wrong that would be a relief, as it means it's not completely my fault.

tim333 10y ago

The article and Gladwell rather skip over that a lot of success is down to being better than the competition so the hours required should depend on how good the competition is. So to be expert at the violin may take 10,000 hours but being say a blockchain expert may take less as your competition haven't been studying it since childhood. "The amazing thing is we did so well while being so stupid. That’s why you’re all here: you think that there’s hope for you. Go where there’s dumb competition" - Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's business partner.

CoVar 10y ago

I think there is some nuance that is missed when performing studies that compares hours practiced to mastery. I'm currently reading a book called A Mind for Numbers (the companion book for the popular MOOC on Coursera called Learning How to Learn) and what I am realizing is that not everyone practices or studies the most optimal way. "For example, the number of hours of deliberate practice to first reach "master" status (a very high level of skill) ranged from 728 hours to 16,120 hours. This means that one player needed 22 times more deliberate practice than another player to become a master." Maybe those 728 hours were more efficient and effective deliberate practice than the 16,120 hours. Edit: the book is called "A Mind for Numbers", not "A Mind for Math"

spdionis 10y ago
So we can accept this as probably true but we are not willing to accept that 10x programmers exist?
- Eridrus 10y ago
  Even if someone is 10X better in the abstract, real world problems may not show much of a difference. It doesn't matter who is 10X better if you're playing football against toddlers. And most programming falls into this category. It sort of shows through all the complaints about interviews, most programming work is just not difficult enough to separate people, so anything that does needs to be scorned.

n3on_net 10y ago

Still, the concept of hard work beating talent without hard work is a very powerful one. You won't be the best but after such dedication and hard work, you will always achieve above average results in your area. So, keep on hustlin!

veritas3241 10y ago

I'm pretty sure that Malcolm Gladwell clarified his position on the 10,000 hour rule during Tim Ferris' podcast [0]. He was saying that the 10,000 hour rule was meant to clearly indicate that becoming successful requires a large support system. Which seems to make it easier to understand why kids who start really early can become successful: they don't have to worry about all the things adults have to. Conversely, it explains a little bit why being an adult makes it harder to become world-class at something. [0] http://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/ http://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/

sorenjan 10y ago

Freakonomics did an episode about this where he interviewed both Malcolm Gladwell and Anders Ericsson. I recommend listening to it to get their sides of the story. http://freakonomics.com/podcast/peak/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/peak/

6stringmerc 10y ago

My tongue-in-cheek response to the headline, in the context of guitar, make me chuckle quite a bit: "Exactly! 10,000 hours is far too few! More like 30,000 if you really want to start covering all the different styles and techniques with competence!" It's not always "What" a person practices, but also "How" a person does so. Attention to detail, trying new things, learning from mistakes, reflection when away from the hobby/interest. Far too many variables for any one-size-fits-all perspective on Talent and Achievement, but in looking for correlatives and "causation approximate" techniques, Practice certainly shows up time and again.

justforFranz 10y ago

This either/or between effort and genes is ridiculous. Isn't it possible that something interesting is happening between those 10,000 hours? Isn't is possible that successful families not only instill success in their offspring through special training, but also suppress success in other people's children? Nobody here is talking about the role of tripping your opponent as he approaches the finishing line, or of the first born queen bee murdering her rivals before they're born. We're far too focused on positive attributes of competition.

zeveb 10y ago

> But this information could just as easily be used to identify children with the least genetic potential for academic success and channel them into the best schools. This would probably create a more equal society than the one we have, and it would do so by identifying those who are likely to face learning challenges and provide them with the support they might need. Sounds like Harrison Bergeron to me: why not invest those resources into the best minds, who can increase the standard of living for all mankind, rather than investing them only to raise folks to average? Of course, in reality one would invest a little here and a little there, but it is a zero-sum game: every resource used to help the unintelligent succeed is a resource not expended to help the intelligent exceed.

mcguire 10y ago

"For example, yet another recent twin study (and the Karolinska Institute study) found that there was a genetic influence on practicing music. Pushing someone into a career for which he or she is genetically unsuited will likely not work." Out of curiosity, has anyone replicated this kind of genetic study for professional musicians? It would be interesting to know how many just really don't have the talent.

abemishler 10y ago

This TEDxCSU talk [0] is a couple years old but directly addresses the 10,000 hour claim. [0] https://youtu.be/5MgBikgcWnY https://youtu.be/5MgBikgcWnY

MrFantastic 10y ago

As an adult, i've found 100hrs of deliberate practice makes you fairly competent in most hobbies.