// The article tries to challenge the 10000 hours rule, but fails to provide details or numbers that suggest what other factors would be more important. As per

// The article tries to challenge the 10000 hours rule, but fails to provide details or numbers that suggest what other factors would be more important. As per the article, one of the author Macnamara claims that a complex combination of environmental factors, genetic factors and their interactions explains the performance differences across people. I couldn't access the original paper, however it would be interesting to see how they establish this claim. Also, based on the guardian article, the refutation seems to be targeted at a strawman since the original 1993 paper never claimed that mere repetition was not sufficient. "Nonetheless, Bryan and Harter (1897, 1899) had clearly shown that with mere repetition, improvement of performance was often arrested at less than maximal levels, and further improvement required effortful reorganization of the skill"[1] Even if the authors had considered only deliberate practice, it would be quite difficult to measure the nature of a practice. 1. http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracticePR93.pdf http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracti...