"Disbelievers in genius are hereby invited to prove their point by sitting down and creating an equally great work of art. You have until 2020 to comply. Any ta

"Disbelievers in genius are hereby invited to prove their point by sitting down and creating an equally great work of art. You have until 2020 to comply. Any takers?" This is conflating the claim that expertise can be acquired in 10,000 hours with the claim that genius can. I don't believe anyone is truly claiming the latter is the case. I'll take him up on the challenge the former though. 5 years ago I knew absolutely nothing about programming. I decided I wanted to learn. I started spending few hours a day on learning new things, doing exercises, taking classes and doing projects. I'm far from an expert in the area now, but I'm absolutely blown away with how far I've come in 5 years. If I keep it up I'm pretty confident that in 5 more years I'll be there. The author also seems to miss the real dangers of "the myth of genius", which should more appropriately be called "the myth of innate talent". I can't tell you how many people I've heard say "Oh I could never learn X, I'm just not one of those people who is good at X". One thing I like to point out is that if it takes you 10 years to be an expert, it probably only takes 2-4 years to achieve an intermediate level of skill, which is pretty damn useful.