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10,000 Hours of Practice Won’t Make You an Expert

85 points by AndrewDucker 13y ago

franze 13y ago
i have a 14 year old son. probably due to a) bad teeny-movies b) a demotivating school system he believes that ha has to find his "secret" talent - and after he has found it - life will I) be easy II) suddenly make sense. i try to explain to him that it (life) just does not work like this he should just do what he is interested in - even if it is hard (especially if it is hard). surprise, surprise he does not believe me. for me the concept of "talent" is just thought-cancer, it might be valid in some edge cases but overall it's just harmfull (not only for teens).
- LatvjuAvs 13y ago
  He is interested in searching for concept you do not approve :)
- mion 13y ago
  "Thought cancer", perfect! I always wanted a term like this to describe it. Definitely agree, even if there's such thing as raw natural ability, I dont think the lack of it is among the major reasons people fail. Succes is like a fire, there's no "rule", it can result from several different things and it's very complex. Trying to oversimplify it like the author does can only do harm.
- vpeters25 13y ago
  He is not too far out. Figuring out your "secret" talent(s) does not make life easier, but it definitely makes easier (and fun) doing the thing you are talented at. The key, in my opinion, is to figure out how to make money off your talent(s).
cowls 13y ago
I think there is a difference between being an expert and being "successful" (In the context of that article success = lots of money). I think the idea is that if I spend 10000 hours coding, I would most likely be an expert coder. It does not mean I will be rich like Bill Gates :(
- seestheday 13y ago
  I think it's more that some people just aren't wired up that way. I am great at coding and analytics, but naturally quite bad at music. I tried really hard and put in a tremendous amount of time learning music and I was us mediocre at it, no matter how much I loved it and how hard I tried.
  - mtrimpe 13y ago
    You might be the exception, but I'd wager to bet that over 90% of cases of "I'm bad at X" is caused by self-image, self-sabotage and/or underestimating the amount of time 'naturals' had to put in to get to where they were/are. When you're told as a kid you're bad at X, most of the time it's because you haven't spent much time doing X. When you're told you're good at Y that's usually because you spent more time doing Y.
  - franze 13y ago
    >put in a tremendous amount of time how much hours overall (< 10 000)? would be interesting for this discussion
- spydum 13y ago
  I think this is precisely right. There are many more folks who could be claimed experts, who have not become wealthy like Buffet, or Gates. I treat the 10000-hours/10year milestone as more of an indicator of when you should have sufficiently absorbed a great deal of the subject matter -- indeed it would be hard not to spend so much time and not become intimately familiar with the thing. Of course, those 10000 hours need to be spent practicing and learning, not just screwing around.
forgotAgain 13y ago
Article title doesn't fit. It's contents state that 10,000 hours MAY not make you an expert. Realistically though, no rule of thumb gives 100% coverage. That doesn't invalidate its accuracy for the majority of cases.
gwgarry 13y ago
Take Felix Dennis. Idiot at 25... Multi millionaire at 35... Billionaire now. Can anyone do it? Yes. Just like the lottery, anyone can be an outlier. Average people, can do an average job with 10,000 of practice. For you personally, don't worry about this shit and do whatever you want to do. If you're not good at it, and don't enjoy it you'll know... You will quit on your own and find something else to do.
- pragmatic 13y ago
  Dennis's book is interesting for anyone seeking to make a lot of money. He states that if you want to be really rich you have to sacrifice family and friends because you will have to spend an enormous amount of time focusing on your business. I found that point interesting. Do you know anyone who is (self made) wealthy that _did not_ spend a lot of time working? Felix Dennis "How To Get Rich" http://www.amazon.com/How-to-Get-Rich-ebook/dp/B0017SUYY6 http://www.amazon.com/How-to-Get-Rich-ebook/dp/B0017SUYY6 Derek Sivers review: http://sivers.org/book/HowToGetRich http://sivers.org/book/HowToGetRich
ctdonath 13y ago
Any word on the testing the 10,000 hours theory by learning golf? (Knew & cared nothing for golf, goal is expert player after 10,000 hours practice, last I heard was well on his way.)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- bitonomics 13y ago
  He is about half there in terms of time and is getting pretty good. http://thedanplan.com/ http://thedanplan.com/
ChuckMcM 13y ago
I'm surprised he didn't mention http://thedanplan.com/ http://thedanplan.com/ which is a guy doing the experiment. Its not clear to me that we can ascertain the validity or not of this conjecture with simple experiments though.
- iandanforth 13y ago
  She.
  - asciimo 13y ago
    He and she. Temple Grandin and Richard Panek.
dasil003 13y ago
> And that was it. I could do that much — but that was all. I was hopeless. My brain simply doesn’t work in a way that allows me to write code. Did he really try for 10k hours? I bet he would have gotten a bit further. This article really bothers me in its defeatism. It doesn't do talented people "a disservice" to say that anyone can become an expert with 10k hours of practice. No one will be offended by praising their hard work, and no one is best served by believing that their talent is god-given and they are naturally better than everyone else. Outside of certain high-profile athletics there simply isn't enough competition to declare oneself abnormally talented in any endeavor. The talent component of success can't be scientifically determined anyway. The concept of talent itself is amorphous, there is no falsifiable hypothesis to be formulated. It's not that talent doesn't exist or that hard work is infallible, it's just that a belief in hard work will always result in better outcomes for the believer.
- tptacek 13y ago
  She, right? Isn't that Temple Grandin writing?
  - breadbox 13y ago
    There are two authors listed, one male and one female. Makes for a bit of confusion when the article dips into personal anecdote, doesn't it? (I'd hazard a guess that the anecdote is Grandin's, since she's "the famous one".)
    - tptacek 13y ago
      I believe the "male" writer is actually Grandin's ghostwriter.
- austenallred 13y ago
  This was the part that really turned me off as well. I rember when I started learning to speak Russian, I would think, "Man, my brain just doesn't work like that." And I was right - part of learning a language is requiring your brain to think in a new way. That's the reason it's so hard. But now when I sit down and start reading Tolstoy it makes complete sense. All that changed was me learning something, and thereby my natural proclivity adapted. I'm sensing the same thing as I learn to program. The initial learning curve is very steep. Not to say that some aren't naturally more gifted than others, but you can usually make up for that, at least partially, with some extra effort. I guess it depends in what level you're looking at. Not everyone who plays basketball for 10,000 hours will be Michael Jordan. But they will be a good player.
TimPC 13y ago
The actual rule is badly misinterpreted. It's not 10,000 hours of practice: it's 10,000 hours of practice at the appropriate level of difficulty -> You need to be taking on tasks that are just slightly beyond what you can do now for most of this time to achieve success. I also think genetics are not nearly as big a factor as the author makes out to be: there can be plenty of barriers that make it impossible for you to do something, but most of those barriers make it impossible to put 10,000 hours of practice in as well. There is also a self-fulfilling prophecy in the works here though: 10,000 hours is inevitable if you succeed at something, but most of those who don't succeed will drop the hours (searching for fallback careers, getting jobs, etc..) they dedicate to something along the way and are quite unlikely to reach the number.
- taeric 13y ago
  I think the idea of targeted practice is a tough one for folks.
- ryanmolden 13y ago
  This. It amazes me the number of people that think "I work 8 hours a day (on average), so I should be world class in about 3.4 years". As you said it is concentrated, skill-adjusted practice, NOT just doing something over and over. The biggest problem is that you generally need an expert coach/mentor to put this work together for you, since you likely would not be a good judge of what would appropriately challenge you at your current skill level. Most people swing to the tails of the distribution in their self-made challenges, either too easy or too hard, you want the Goldilocks zone. I unfortunately have no wisdom for or solution to this problem, it is one of scale (i.e. there are more people that want said expert mentorship than there are expert mentors to give it) and time.
iandanforth 13y ago
Not sure why articles never get around to mentioning this but you can find the original study and several other relevant ones collected in "The Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise." From that book I also highly recommend "The Early Progress of Able Young Musicians" which discusses the importance of a progression of increasingly competent teachers in successful musicians lives. There's even a study there that talks directly to her point "Expertise and Mental Disabilities"
sireat 13y ago
I am pretty sure Gladwell actually said the same thing, you need the 10k hours, but you need a definite measure of talent. This I realize when I am teaching chess to younger kids, some kids just get it and some do not(just like Ostap Bender said in his famous lecture) The ones who do not get it, they can probably become expert players if they got the resources provided by Polgars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r), but that would be the upper limit. So I am starting to lean towards the fact that all three Polgar sisters were gifted to some extent. There needs to be a wider experiment to apply the 10k rule, like maybe 50 kids having the ultimate chess (or math or violin or something else) resource and actually putting in 10k hours of deliberate practice (rememember most kids in special schools do not finish the 10k hours as they simply gravitate to other pursuits, and of course that is natural). Let's not get started on the 10k hour myth for older people. I am of firm belief that after age of 25 or so, even a gifted one will not be able to get by with 10k hours. At age 40 it is pretty much hopeless, decent expert is all you can hope for.
- vpeters25 13y ago
  You can clearly see this "upper limit" on sports: talentless people work and train really hard to compete at elite level. You can see them sweating, cringing and showing all kinds of emotion. Fans love these players, they identify them as another hard-working "blue collar" guy like them. Then along comes a guy like Josh Hamilton, a guy so incredibly talented everything looks effortless. He seems to trot when he is running full blast, he seems to flip the bat but hits a homerun, looks like he just lobbed the baseball from the outfield but it's a perfect 90mph strike to a base getting the runner out. A sport particularly brutal in this sense is Tennis: 10k hrs of practice might get you to the top 100, but from there everybody is so incredibly talented it's discouraging. You might spend 10k hours just perfecting your one-hand backhand, then, when you think you got it, along comes Sampras or Federer hitting it 10 times harder without flinching.
haberman 13y ago
I completely agree that natural talent is a huge part of the equation. The best example for me is sight reading on the piano. (For non musicians: "sight reading" is the skill of being able to play from music you've never seen before). I am a musician (singer, mostly) and when it comes to sight reading as a singer I would estimate that I'm in the 95th percentile or so. But I've tinkered with the piano recreationally for basically my whole life, at times more seriously than others, and yet I still cannot sight read on the piano for my life. There's just too much information for my brain to process in real-time. I've played some pretty difficult music on the organ, but I have to basically memorize the piece to get to that level. I strongly believe that no amount of time at the piano will make me a good sight reader. I believe I could get marginally better, but I will never reach the level of even an average pianist. Now one could be tempted to say: "you've spent far more time sight reading as a singer, which explains why you're better at it." And while this is somewhat true, it gets the causation backwards. It was obvious to me from a very early age that I was better at sight reading as a singer, so I spent more time doing it. I sometimes wonder if this is where the 10,000 hour rule comes from: no one could stand spending 10,000 hours doing something they truly suck at. But on the other hand, I know plenty of amateur musicians who love what they do and have spent their entire lives making music, but will never reach a professional level (which is totally fine, but contradicts the 10,000 hour thesis).
- tjr 13y ago
  In music theory class years ago, we asked our professor how he was able to sight-read on the piano so easily. His explanation was that the music consists of lots of reused patterns and ideas, and once he mastered those patterns, he could recognize them in the score and it became much easier to play the piece without rehearsing it first.
  - hkolek 13y ago
    I know nothing about the piano but this sounds exactly the same like reading any language. At first you have to struggle to recognize every single letter, but after enough practice you can identify whole words immediately and later even whole phrases.
LatvjuAvs 13y ago
Do I like this and it is enjoyable = you go long way. I will work my ass off to get my title, my uniform and promotion and or status, shit I do not like this = not so.
darkpicnic 13y ago
Anecdotal drivel.
mojuba 13y ago
I think Temple Grandin's point here is that the 10,000 rule needs an adjustment for those in the autism spectrum. An autistic person is usually good at X at the expense of being bad at Y (or the other way around if you wish). So for an autistic mind X would require 10,000 / k hours while Y would require 10,000 * k hours to become an expert in.
precisioncoder 13y ago
"And that was it. I could do that much — but that was all. I was hopeless. My brain simply doesn’t work in a way that allows me to write code. So saying that if I’d spent ten thousand hours talking to Rax, I would be a successful computer programmer, because anyone can be a successful computer programmer, is crazy." I find that all too often lack of aptitude is used as an excuse. He didn't put the time in, he doesn't know if he could be a successful computer programmer or not. The only way to know is to try. Everyone who starts something is awful in the beginning. Only through concentrated effort and interest does your potential emerge. Your potential cannot be seen in the first hour, or even ten hours you spend doing something.
6cxs2hd6 13y ago
Great article. To the extent this references Malcolm Gladwell, isn't 10,000 hours from "Outliers"? If so, the message was nature + nurture + LUCK. For instance to be a great NHL hockey player, you should have a birthday in Jan or Feb. Because youth hockey leagues group you by age. And when you're the biggest and most coordinated in your group .... Likewise Gates' situation in high school was extraordinary, and exceptional parents. So, (1) yeah the 10,000 hours, and (2) yes the genetics/wiring, and also (3) the luck. At least to be a true "outlier". One can be an "expert", and very successful and fulfilled, without being a Bill Gates or Wayne Gretzky.
tokenadult 13y ago
By putting such an emphasis on practice, practice, practice at the expense of natural gifts, the popular interpretation of the 10,000-hour rule does a tremendous disservice to the naturally gifted. Cry me a river. How are "naturally gifted" persons disserved by thorough research on human performance? This article seems to illustrate the adage that "the adjective is the enemy of the noun," because not once in this excerpt from a longer book is the word "deliberate" used, and yet K. Anders Ericsson (an eminent researcher on the development of expertise) http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson.dp.html http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson.dp.html has long taken care to put the adjective "deliberate" in front of the word "practice" as he writes about how expertise develops. (The article kindly submitted here correctly says, "New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell didn’t invent the rule, but he did popularize it through his best-selling book Outliers.") The 10,000-hour rule, originally formulated as a ten-year rule in studies of musicology a few decades ago, has mostly been researched by Ericsson and other researchers influenced by Ericsson's publications. Ericsson carefully distinguishes "deliberate practice," which ordinarily requires a coach who can monitor the learner's performance, from "playful engagement," which doesn't focus the learner's attention on improved performance in the same way. Many critics of Ericsson's work seem to miss this distinction. I wonder, as an observer of young people learning programming, how much a dumb computer's literal interpretation of programs input into the computer provides relentless deliberate practice in better programming, even for people who are mostly messing around playfully. Perhaps in learning programming, the inanimate computer can serve as a coach for many learners. I would NOT expect someone devoting 10,000 hours to writing essays for fun, if the essays are never read by any critical readers, to improve as much as a writer as someone devoting 10,000 hours to writing programs (if the learner of programmer pays attention to whether the programs compile and run) would improve as a programmer. People who engage in deliberate practice to improve sports performance routinely have coaches, and also participate routinely in competitions that put their assimilation of the sports skills to the test. In general, a lot of people misread the tenor of Ericsson's research, which is the subject of an interesting new book, The Complexity of Greatness, edited by Scott Barry Kaufman. http://www.amazon.com/The-Complexity-Greatness-Beyond-Practice/dp/0199794006/ http://www.amazon.com/The-Complexity-Greatness-Beyond-Practi... Ericsson is sure that raw talent (whatever that is) alone is NOT sufficient to be an "expert," properly so called, but rather has research-based reasons to believe that deliberate practice is strictly necessary for expert performance in all domains. He thinks it is an open question whether or not something like preexisting talent is even necessary for expertise, or whether sustained deliberate practice by itself might be sufficient to make into an expert someone who initially appeared not to have "talent" for a particular domain. That is an ongoing program of research, as Ericsson's publications http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson.dp.html http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson.dp.html make clear. And of course Paul Graham had something to say about this issue in his essay "What You'll Wish You'd Known" (January 2005). http://paulgraham.com/hs.html http://paulgraham.com/hs.html "Don't think that you can't do what other people can. And I agree you shouldn't underestimate your potential. People who've done great things tend to seem as if they were a race apart. And most biographies only exaggerate this illusion, partly due to the worshipful attitude biographers inevitably sink into, and partly because, knowing how the story ends, they can't help streamlining the plot till it seems like the subject's life was a matter of destiny, the mere unfolding of some innate genius. In fact I suspect if you had the sixteen year old Shakespeare or Einstein in school with you, they'd seem impressive, but not totally unlike your other friends. "Which is an uncomfortable thought. If they were just like us, then they had to work very hard to do what they did. And that's one reason we like to believe in genius. It gives us an excuse for being lazy. If these guys were able to do what they did only because of some magic Shakespeareness or Einsteinness, then it's not our fault if we can't do something as good. "I'm not saying there's no such thing as genius. But if you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right."
bitonomics 13y ago
I think there is a part of the book that was missed by the author of the article. Gladwell wasn't trying to say that everyone could become an expect by putting in 10,000 hours, but rather he could explain the "Outliers" in our society because of the intense amount of work (hours) and favorable situations. Bill Gates enjoyed coding yes, but he had an opportunity to code much earlier than others. You look at Gates, Steve Jobs, and Bill Joy, all born in the mid 1950's with the opportunity to capatailze on a new industry. All with their 10,000 hours when they became of age and enough entrepreneurship take advantage of the newly developed market (or in some ways create the market).
MattGrommes 13y ago
I really respect Temple Grandin so I hope that this article's almost nonsensical content is due to it being an excerpt from a book. First, it conflates being successful with being an expert. I can be successful at something without being an expert. I can also be an expert and die penniless and unknown. "My brain simply doesn’t work in a way that allows me to write code." There may be some disability that causes this but to counter an anecdote with another one, I think we all know people on the autism spectrum who are excellent programmers. And the fact that a particular person's disability prevents them from doing something says nothing about the rest of the population. These types of articles really bother me because it's a well-known name, in a big "forward thinking" magazine, basically saying if you believe yourself to be "naturally ungifted" it's okay not to try. You have reasons. As someone constantly on the lookout for new things to learn and a brain on the autism spectrum, I can't abide that.
- joshdance 13y ago
  Using Bill Gates as the definition of expert is crazy. He is the "best". The top. Sample size of 1. That doesn't mean that there are not experts. Maybe not as successful and rich but they are expert. One a similar note, using your own personal experience as an anecdote to represent the entire population is also crazy. Once again sample size of one.
gyardley 13y ago
Ten thousand hours of practice will make you a hell of a lot better at something, no matter what your natural gifts are. I suspect that in most cases, ten thousand hours of practice will make you far better than the group of naturally talented people who haven't put in the work. Given that, I have a real hard time caring about the nature vs. nurture argument - it's only relevant if you're in one of those narrow fields where only the top 0.01% of people can be successful and happy, and that certainly doesn't include programming or entrepreneurship or any of the other stuff we usually talk about around here.
- lutorm 13y ago
  This is exactly how I feel. It is pointless to worry about the relative degree of nature vs nurture when it's beyond doubt that if you work hard at getting better at something, you will become quite proficient. You may not become a world leader, but really, who cares.
buzzcut 13y ago
The 10,000 hours rule isn't someone's fantasy, it's based on an increasingly large body of evidence, but this article just dismisses the evidence with a wave of the hand and some assertions. A good selection of research is in The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance. Other people here have mentioned also that it's a specific kind of practice that's called for, not just mindlessly amassing hours, but rather relentlessly working on your weak spots and on skills that are just a bit outside what you can currently do. The Grandin book looks interesting, but this excerpt just seems lazy. There is also the recent research on grit by Angela Duckworth who is demonstrating that success depends on perseverance. That observation probably seems pretty intuitive, but she's demonstrating it with research. The "I was hopeless" reaction to something hard is just a failure of grit. The author has no idea how they would do if the ground it out through the really tough parts. I also find that when I talk to people about this they are often very resistant to this model of essentially talent-free skill development. It makes a lot people uncomfortable, and just seems wrong to them. I think maybe the notion that it's all innate talent absolves them of the need to work hard to develop advanced skill. Instead nature capriciously doles out talent and that's the story of why I'm not ...
- AlisdairO 13y ago
  I don't think it dismisses the evidence - it agrees with the idea that 10,000 hours might be required. It just states that it takes 10,000 hours for a talented person to become good at a field - that a person untalented in a field won't necessarily become a true expert given enough practise. To me this seems intuitively obvious - people's brains aren't built alike, and if we're willing to accept that brains at the fringes (e.g. aspergers) are more attuned to certain tasks, it's not too out there to suggest variance within the 'normal' parameters too. Of course, proving it would require a complex test - one that (somehow) sorts people into attuned or unattuned on a given subject to begin with, and then makes them work for 10,000 hours on the subject. Realistically, though, I suppose this question just isn't all that interesting. A lot of the time, the important part of the 'nature' component is simply what you're interested in. If you happen to have an interest in a subject, you're vastly more likely to put in the 10,000 hours. I'm a good computer programmer because I enjoyed and was good at it from the beginning, so I spent more time at it. I'm a terrible dancer because I spent maybe a hundred hours on it, sucked, and lost interest. Maybe if I'd spent a hundred times longer doing it I'd be a world beater, maybe not - but it doesn't matter, because my initial experience was enough to put me off. I imagine someone for whom it clicked more naturally would be vastly more likely to stay interested.
deleted 13y ago
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dschiptsov 13y ago
"Scientists" who still thinking in terms of a single cause of it all (especially in social sciences) instead of complex/chaotic multiple causation are doomed to be ridiculed.)
robomartin 13y ago
Practice makes perfect? Nope. Correct practice makes perfect? Close. Supervised correct practice makes perfect? Yup. 10,000 of practice makes expert? Nope. 10,000 hours of supervised correct practice makes expert? Nope. 10,000 hours of progressively more difficult supervised correct practice makes expert? You got it! Supervised doesn't mean having a teacher standing behind you watching your work. I think it does mean having some degree of feedback on what you are doing and how you are doing it. In the case of coding that could mean having your code critiqued in open-source projects (either explicitly or as a side effect of the process). Then there's the question of what "expert" means in a contextual practical sense. To use a personal example, I was not trained as a machinist. I trained in electronics and software. Yet, I had a need to manufacture parts using various CNC machines, so I learned. Am I an expert? No way. I do, however know I can fabricate nearly any part and, more importantly, in the process developed a great understanding of design for manufacturability. In my own context yes, I am an expert. This did not take 10,000 hours. If I had to guess I'd say less than 1,000 spread over a number of years with an intense focus during a period if approximately six months.
Felix21 13y ago
Its relieving to think "oh I cant do this or that because my brain is just not designed for it." It frees you to be able to give up and not feel any guilt... It is more enlightened however to understand that if you have enough desire to be something, you can truly become as great as you want to be at any field in this world... Its wise to be able to admit that you're not great at x, because you don't have enough motivation or desire to put in the work required to master it. In my first year at university, my brain was exactly like yours. My brain simply didn't work in a way that allows me to write code. In December 2012 when I wanted to start a tech company and realised I needed to be able to "build" myself... ... MY BRAIN CHANGED suddenly it became the kind of brain that was able to code and make simple games in ruby and python? Why? because in December, I acquired a DESIRE to learn code so I could build my company...
ChrisAntaki 13y ago
Keeping it enjoyable is important too. Some people attach self criticism to their skill, which makes it painful for them to proceed. Enjoying the skill is really the first step. After that, it's a matter of enjoying to improve. And then doing that every day.
eranki 13y ago
Nobody knows how to identify "talent" other than in retrospect. We say people are talented when they produce results, and then we select little anecdotes about their story to allude that it was destiny. We can't settle this debate because we just don't know enough about how the mind works and how genetics play a role. My question is, what's the actionable piece of advice? If you try programming and don't get it, you'll never be a good programmer? At what point do you give up and say that you just aren't talented enough? It seems to me that the only people asking the nature vs. nurture questions are the ones that want an excuse to give up.
31reasons 13y ago
Wow I can't believe how immature this article is. No one should make such negative generalized statements about people who are not naturally gifted that they can't become experts. It may be true for people with mental disabilities but to make the same statement for healthy people is ridiculous especially when very little is known about the brain.
gboudrias 13y ago
This article has a lot of theory and very little data. I don't think you can correct someone without producing any actual evidence, or at least trying to.
shakeel_mohamed 13y ago
I'm surprised the main point needed elaboration. Of course one needs some basic nature in order to perceive success. I thought the 10k hour rule talked about the hours alone not being enough. It's usually unique opportunity + one grasping it + dedicating x hours = success, in my understanding.
randomsearch 13y ago
At school, people marvelled at how effortlessly I seemed to achieve good grades. Everyone talked about how academic or talented I was in that regard, how lucky I was. In truth, I put in more hours for homework and exam revision than anyone else. By a large margin.
breadbox 13y ago
It's true that people often use the 10k-rule to downplay nature, but I disagree slightly with the article's thesis. When I first discovered what programming was, I was obsessed from that moment on. It was all I wanted to do. Did I have a brain that was naturally talented in the kind of abstract reasoning that makes it easy to program? Probably. Did that make it more natural for me to become an expert? Maybe. But to me, what's more important is that I had a disposition that all but guaranteed that I was going to sink 10,000 hours into the practice of programming in record time. So yes, my nature made it easier, but perhaps not in the way that most people think.
shawkinaw 13y ago
Perhaps the role of "talent" is not so much that it directly contributes to ability, but rather that it makes it that much more likely that you will accumulate 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. After all, if you don't feel like you're good at something, why would you devote so much time to it?
hosh 13y ago
That's weird. The authors are conflating "expert" with "success" and does not adequately distinguish the two terms. Further, it's not merely 10,000 hours of "practice". It is 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. Your mind has to be on the practice as you are practicing. If you're simply going through the motions, and your mind is checked out, you're not actually getting anything out of it. And yes, I know "10,000" is a nice round number. Five to seven years, two to three hours of intense, deliberate practice a day is about right.
danielharan 13y ago
Strawman argument alert: "Talent plus ten years of work equals success? Sure!" Actually, what the data shows is that becoming a world-class expert requires 10k hours of practice. Not that said practice will magically make you world-class. It's a necessary, but not sufficient condition. The 10k hour figure is probably inflated, based on self-reports of total practice time.
bradfordarner 13y ago
Core thesis: 'No...Malcolm Gladwell is wrong. You can't be me. Why? Because I'm cool. Yes, that's right. I'm cool, like Warren Buffet." This article is a phenomenal example of an intelligent and successful person lacking any rational and logical basis for their core thesis. There are countless individuals who have become experts in their respective field, yet lack any formal training in logic, argumentation or critical thinking. They naturally believe that because people listen to them in a particular field, their skills of reasoning and grasp of logic must be superior. Often they tend to equally believe that their 'gifts' are 'in-born' because they don't ever remember feeling any different; they have been intelligent their entire life. There are so many logical fumbles in this short piece, whether it be an excerpt or not, that it could be used as an philosophical exercise in pointing out faulty lines of reasoning. Example => So, how does Warren Buffet disprove the 10,000 hour rule? Author's response: "Because he was involved in business affairs from a young age." I assume that her line of reasoning is as follows: 'Warren was incredibly young when he had successfully started his first business. At that age he could not have possibly invested 10,000 hours in the study of business. Thus, he must have been born with business talent.' Interestingly enough, Warren Buffet's case may be worth looking into in order to better refine the 10,000 hour rule. That being said, the above line of reasoning is hugely problematic. Nowhere is Warren Buffet's 'expertise' at a young age commented upon or evidence given in support of it. The 10,000 hour rule says that you will become an expert with 10,000 hours of deliberate practice/training at ever increasing levels of complexity. The rule does not come to say that you can't be successful without 10,000 hours of practice. (Look at Mark Zuckerber!) The author has both misunderstood and misapplied the correlation between these concepts and what could be meant by the word 'success'. Beyond a couple of other problems, the second major issue is that invalidating one proposition does not inherently validate an opposing proposition. Thus, just because the 10,000 hour rule may be invalidated by Warren Buffet's experience, we cannot make the logical leap to declare that he, therefore, has in-born/genetic attributes that we would consider 'talent'. These are 2 entirely separate arguments that may be related but are not directly tied to one another. I could go on and on with the problems in this article. The short of it: Paul Graham was being overly optimistic in thinking that writing helps everyone form better arguments and think more carefully. Somebody should introduce Temple Grandin to a philosophy class on critical thinking and basic reasoning.
dxbydt 13y ago
Its sorta obvious this article won't go down well with the HN crowd. This is a site where everybody either believes they can code, or learn to code in a week, or teach somebody else to code via codecademy or what-have-you. fwiw, I strongly agree with the article. Natural talent & inclination triumphs practice everytime, and while that doesn't mean you shouldn't practice, it does mean that you'd be better off pursuing avenues more closely aligned to your natural talent. Here's how you can convince yourself of the same - lets say you are the typical HN reader - lots of programming experience in one or more languages. How soon can you become an expert in oh I don't know BRST cohomology ? My advisor has a PhD in that, & he can't program his way out of a paper bag. Its easy for me to laugh at him & say, hey he should just try Ruby or JS for a week, but hey, how do I just try BRST cohomology for a week ? Where do I begin ?
vickytnz 13y ago
My favourite example of what seems like talent actually being a damn lot of work: Derek Silver's 15 years of vocal training that took him from a mediocre singer to a the type of one that people would say 'had a gift' http://sivers.org/15-years http://sivers.org/15-years
Xingtao 13y ago
Once a professional Starcraft player said talent or nature are not mysterious. You got talent in some field means you know how to effectively and efficiently work hard in the field, that is it. So, i think 10000 hours are needed for both the talented and the mediocre. The difference is the talent know how to spent their hours.
kamaal 13y ago
A successful person was found to have to put 10,000 hours of practice != If you do 10,000 hours of deliberate practice you will be successful. First thing is don't take the 10,000 hour practice rule too seriously. At best its a metaphor. In the real world you are likely to see success if you start working of hard problems for 10,000 hours than put 10,000 hours of practice and then start solving problems.
qzxt 13y ago
I think people have invested themselves emotionally to this 10000 hours nonsense, so any mention of natural gifted-ness sets them off in a tirade, not because of any analytical opposition, but because their egos are somewhat threatened by the prospect that someone may be naturally better at something than they are. Unfortunately, 10000 hours yadah yadah is not a "new finding" beyond putting a nice round number on a phenomenon that I'm sure your mommies and daddies told you when you were a kid - PRACTICE. Deliberate practice? Does "try doing the harder stuff" sound familiar? The fact that if you practice areas that you're not very strong at you will get stronger has been known for centuries. "Naturally gifted" people aren't those who are experts, neither are they those who have the best technique. 10000 hours on the piano will not make you Beethoven, neither will 100000 hours. Beethoven was Beethoven for many reasons - well known as a prodigy, highly regarded by the culture of his time, etc - merely playing the piano well didn't make him remarkable. For a less ancient example, take Jimmy Page. Anyone who plays guitar will acknowledge that Page's playing was quite sloppy. It's not technique that I would teach to someone. But he's Jimmy freakin' Page. The genius of Zeppelin was in the innovation. They brought a new sound, at the time - and they were really cool too, but don't tell anyone. So, to wrap up, practice makes perfect, but perfect isn't genius. Which isn't to disparage anyone, but to see such pettiness automatically raise its head whenever someone brings up this 10000 hours crap as if it's something new - one guy goes boo-hoo people won't think I'm a genius anymore, the other guy goes, yeah I could be a genius too if only I practiced it - is just sad. No one cares about what you could be. I could be a freakin' Navy Seal if I just enlisted and worked hard and blah blah blah; I'm not a Navy Seal, so all that's irrelevant. All that matters is what you are, so if we're reveling in the fact that we could be better at something if we practiced, rather than actually practicing, well that says more about the human ego rather than human talent.

85 points by AndrewDucker 13y ago

i have a 14 year old son. probably due to a) bad teeny-movies b) a demotivating school system he believes that ha has to find his "secret" talent - and after he has found it - life will I) be easy II) suddenly make sense. i try to explain to him that it (life) just does not work like this he should just do what he is interested in - even if it is hard (especially if it is hard). surprise, surprise he does not believe me. for me the concept of "talent" is just thought-cancer, it might be valid in some edge cases but overall it's just harmfull (not only for teens).

LatvjuAvs 13y ago
He is interested in searching for concept you do not approve :)
mion 13y ago
"Thought cancer", perfect! I always wanted a term like this to describe it. Definitely agree, even if there's such thing as raw natural ability, I dont think the lack of it is among the major reasons people fail. Succes is like a fire, there's no "rule", it can result from several different things and it's very complex. Trying to oversimplify it like the author does can only do harm.
vpeters25 13y ago
He is not too far out. Figuring out your "secret" talent(s) does not make life easier, but it definitely makes easier (and fun) doing the thing you are talented at. The key, in my opinion, is to figure out how to make money off your talent(s).

cowls 13y ago

I think there is a difference between being an expert and being "successful" (In the context of that article success = lots of money). I think the idea is that if I spend 10000 hours coding, I would most likely be an expert coder. It does not mean I will be rich like Bill Gates :(

seestheday 13y ago
I think it's more that some people just aren't wired up that way. I am great at coding and analytics, but naturally quite bad at music. I tried really hard and put in a tremendous amount of time learning music and I was us mediocre at it, no matter how much I loved it and how hard I tried.
- mtrimpe 13y ago
  You might be the exception, but I'd wager to bet that over 90% of cases of "I'm bad at X" is caused by self-image, self-sabotage and/or underestimating the amount of time 'naturals' had to put in to get to where they were/are. When you're told as a kid you're bad at X, most of the time it's because you haven't spent much time doing X. When you're told you're good at Y that's usually because you spent more time doing Y.
- franze 13y ago
  >put in a tremendous amount of time how much hours overall (< 10 000)? would be interesting for this discussion
spydum 13y ago
I think this is precisely right. There are many more folks who could be claimed experts, who have not become wealthy like Buffet, or Gates. I treat the 10000-hours/10year milestone as more of an indicator of when you should have sufficiently absorbed a great deal of the subject matter -- indeed it would be hard not to spend so much time and not become intimately familiar with the thing. Of course, those 10000 hours need to be spent practicing and learning, not just screwing around.

forgotAgain 13y ago

Article title doesn't fit. It's contents state that 10,000 hours MAY not make you an expert. Realistically though, no rule of thumb gives 100% coverage. That doesn't invalidate its accuracy for the majority of cases.

gwgarry 13y ago

Take Felix Dennis. Idiot at 25... Multi millionaire at 35... Billionaire now. Can anyone do it? Yes. Just like the lottery, anyone can be an outlier. Average people, can do an average job with 10,000 of practice. For you personally, don't worry about this shit and do whatever you want to do. If you're not good at it, and don't enjoy it you'll know... You will quit on your own and find something else to do.

pragmatic 13y ago
Dennis's book is interesting for anyone seeking to make a lot of money. He states that if you want to be really rich you have to sacrifice family and friends because you will have to spend an enormous amount of time focusing on your business. I found that point interesting. Do you know anyone who is (self made) wealthy that _did not_ spend a lot of time working? Felix Dennis "How To Get Rich" http://www.amazon.com/How-to-Get-Rich-ebook/dp/B0017SUYY6 http://www.amazon.com/How-to-Get-Rich-ebook/dp/B0017SUYY6 Derek Sivers review: http://sivers.org/book/HowToGetRich http://sivers.org/book/HowToGetRich

ctdonath 13y ago

Any word on the testing the 10,000 hours theory by learning golf? (Knew & cared nothing for golf, goal is expert player after 10,000 hours practice, last I heard was well on his way.)

deleted 13y ago
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bitonomics 13y ago
He is about half there in terms of time and is getting pretty good. http://thedanplan.com/ http://thedanplan.com/

ChuckMcM 13y ago

I'm surprised he didn't mention http://thedanplan.com/ http://thedanplan.com/ which is a guy doing the experiment. Its not clear to me that we can ascertain the validity or not of this conjecture with simple experiments though.

iandanforth 13y ago
She.
- asciimo 13y ago
  He and she. Temple Grandin and Richard Panek.

dasil003 13y ago

> And that was it. I could do that much — but that was all. I was hopeless. My brain simply doesn’t work in a way that allows me to write code. Did he really try for 10k hours? I bet he would have gotten a bit further. This article really bothers me in its defeatism. It doesn't do talented people "a disservice" to say that anyone can become an expert with 10k hours of practice. No one will be offended by praising their hard work, and no one is best served by believing that their talent is god-given and they are naturally better than everyone else. Outside of certain high-profile athletics there simply isn't enough competition to declare oneself abnormally talented in any endeavor. The talent component of success can't be scientifically determined anyway. The concept of talent itself is amorphous, there is no falsifiable hypothesis to be formulated. It's not that talent doesn't exist or that hard work is infallible, it's just that a belief in hard work will always result in better outcomes for the believer.

tptacek 13y ago
She, right? Isn't that Temple Grandin writing?
- breadbox 13y ago
  There are two authors listed, one male and one female. Makes for a bit of confusion when the article dips into personal anecdote, doesn't it? (I'd hazard a guess that the anecdote is Grandin's, since she's "the famous one".)
  - tptacek 13y ago
    I believe the "male" writer is actually Grandin's ghostwriter.
austenallred 13y ago
This was the part that really turned me off as well. I rember when I started learning to speak Russian, I would think, "Man, my brain just doesn't work like that." And I was right - part of learning a language is requiring your brain to think in a new way. That's the reason it's so hard. But now when I sit down and start reading Tolstoy it makes complete sense. All that changed was me learning something, and thereby my natural proclivity adapted. I'm sensing the same thing as I learn to program. The initial learning curve is very steep. Not to say that some aren't naturally more gifted than others, but you can usually make up for that, at least partially, with some extra effort. I guess it depends in what level you're looking at. Not everyone who plays basketball for 10,000 hours will be Michael Jordan. But they will be a good player.

TimPC 13y ago

The actual rule is badly misinterpreted. It's not 10,000 hours of practice: it's 10,000 hours of practice at the appropriate level of difficulty -> You need to be taking on tasks that are just slightly beyond what you can do now for most of this time to achieve success. I also think genetics are not nearly as big a factor as the author makes out to be: there can be plenty of barriers that make it impossible for you to do something, but most of those barriers make it impossible to put 10,000 hours of practice in as well. There is also a self-fulfilling prophecy in the works here though: 10,000 hours is inevitable if you succeed at something, but most of those who don't succeed will drop the hours (searching for fallback careers, getting jobs, etc..) they dedicate to something along the way and are quite unlikely to reach the number.

taeric 13y ago
I think the idea of targeted practice is a tough one for folks.
ryanmolden 13y ago
This. It amazes me the number of people that think "I work 8 hours a day (on average), so I should be world class in about 3.4 years". As you said it is concentrated, skill-adjusted practice, NOT just doing something over and over. The biggest problem is that you generally need an expert coach/mentor to put this work together for you, since you likely would not be a good judge of what would appropriately challenge you at your current skill level. Most people swing to the tails of the distribution in their self-made challenges, either too easy or too hard, you want the Goldilocks zone. I unfortunately have no wisdom for or solution to this problem, it is one of scale (i.e. there are more people that want said expert mentorship than there are expert mentors to give it) and time.

iandanforth 13y ago

Not sure why articles never get around to mentioning this but you can find the original study and several other relevant ones collected in "The Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise." From that book I also highly recommend "The Early Progress of Able Young Musicians" which discusses the importance of a progression of increasingly competent teachers in successful musicians lives. There's even a study there that talks directly to her point "Expertise and Mental Disabilities"

sireat 13y ago

I am pretty sure Gladwell actually said the same thing, you need the 10k hours, but you need a definite measure of talent. This I realize when I am teaching chess to younger kids, some kids just get it and some do not(just like Ostap Bender said in his famous lecture) The ones who do not get it, they can probably become expert players if they got the resources provided by Polgars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r), but that would be the upper limit. So I am starting to lean towards the fact that all three Polgar sisters were gifted to some extent. There needs to be a wider experiment to apply the 10k rule, like maybe 50 kids having the ultimate chess (or math or violin or something else) resource and actually putting in 10k hours of deliberate practice (rememember most kids in special schools do not finish the 10k hours as they simply gravitate to other pursuits, and of course that is natural). Let's not get started on the 10k hour myth for older people. I am of firm belief that after age of 25 or so, even a gifted one will not be able to get by with 10k hours. At age 40 it is pretty much hopeless, decent expert is all you can hope for.

vpeters25 13y ago
You can clearly see this "upper limit" on sports: talentless people work and train really hard to compete at elite level. You can see them sweating, cringing and showing all kinds of emotion. Fans love these players, they identify them as another hard-working "blue collar" guy like them. Then along comes a guy like Josh Hamilton, a guy so incredibly talented everything looks effortless. He seems to trot when he is running full blast, he seems to flip the bat but hits a homerun, looks like he just lobbed the baseball from the outfield but it's a perfect 90mph strike to a base getting the runner out. A sport particularly brutal in this sense is Tennis: 10k hrs of practice might get you to the top 100, but from there everybody is so incredibly talented it's discouraging. You might spend 10k hours just perfecting your one-hand backhand, then, when you think you got it, along comes Sampras or Federer hitting it 10 times harder without flinching.

haberman 13y ago

I completely agree that natural talent is a huge part of the equation. The best example for me is sight reading on the piano. (For non musicians: "sight reading" is the skill of being able to play from music you've never seen before). I am a musician (singer, mostly) and when it comes to sight reading as a singer I would estimate that I'm in the 95th percentile or so. But I've tinkered with the piano recreationally for basically my whole life, at times more seriously than others, and yet I still cannot sight read on the piano for my life. There's just too much information for my brain to process in real-time. I've played some pretty difficult music on the organ, but I have to basically memorize the piece to get to that level. I strongly believe that no amount of time at the piano will make me a good sight reader. I believe I could get marginally better, but I will never reach the level of even an average pianist. Now one could be tempted to say: "you've spent far more time sight reading as a singer, which explains why you're better at it." And while this is somewhat true, it gets the causation backwards. It was obvious to me from a very early age that I was better at sight reading as a singer, so I spent more time doing it. I sometimes wonder if this is where the 10,000 hour rule comes from: no one could stand spending 10,000 hours doing something they truly suck at. But on the other hand, I know plenty of amateur musicians who love what they do and have spent their entire lives making music, but will never reach a professional level (which is totally fine, but contradicts the 10,000 hour thesis).

tjr 13y ago
In music theory class years ago, we asked our professor how he was able to sight-read on the piano so easily. His explanation was that the music consists of lots of reused patterns and ideas, and once he mastered those patterns, he could recognize them in the score and it became much easier to play the piece without rehearsing it first.
- hkolek 13y ago
  I know nothing about the piano but this sounds exactly the same like reading any language. At first you have to struggle to recognize every single letter, but after enough practice you can identify whole words immediately and later even whole phrases.

LatvjuAvs 13y ago

Do I like this and it is enjoyable = you go long way. I will work my ass off to get my title, my uniform and promotion and or status, shit I do not like this = not so.

darkpicnic 13y ago

Anecdotal drivel.

mojuba 13y ago

I think Temple Grandin's point here is that the 10,000 rule needs an adjustment for those in the autism spectrum. An autistic person is usually good at X at the expense of being bad at Y (or the other way around if you wish). So for an autistic mind X would require 10,000 / k hours while Y would require 10,000 * k hours to become an expert in.

precisioncoder 13y ago

"And that was it. I could do that much — but that was all. I was hopeless. My brain simply doesn’t work in a way that allows me to write code. So saying that if I’d spent ten thousand hours talking to Rax, I would be a successful computer programmer, because anyone can be a successful computer programmer, is crazy." I find that all too often lack of aptitude is used as an excuse. He didn't put the time in, he doesn't know if he could be a successful computer programmer or not. The only way to know is to try. Everyone who starts something is awful in the beginning. Only through concentrated effort and interest does your potential emerge. Your potential cannot be seen in the first hour, or even ten hours you spend doing something.

6cxs2hd6 13y ago

Great article. To the extent this references Malcolm Gladwell, isn't 10,000 hours from "Outliers"? If so, the message was nature + nurture + LUCK. For instance to be a great NHL hockey player, you should have a birthday in Jan or Feb. Because youth hockey leagues group you by age. And when you're the biggest and most coordinated in your group .... Likewise Gates' situation in high school was extraordinary, and exceptional parents. So, (1) yeah the 10,000 hours, and (2) yes the genetics/wiring, and also (3) the luck. At least to be a true "outlier". One can be an "expert", and very successful and fulfilled, without being a Bill Gates or Wayne Gretzky.

tokenadult 13y ago

By putting such an emphasis on practice, practice, practice at the expense of natural gifts, the popular interpretation of the 10,000-hour rule does a tremendous disservice to the naturally gifted. Cry me a river. How are "naturally gifted" persons disserved by thorough research on human performance? This article seems to illustrate the adage that "the adjective is the enemy of the noun," because not once in this excerpt from a longer book is the word "deliberate" used, and yet K. Anders Ericsson (an eminent researcher on the development of expertise) http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson.dp.html http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson.dp.html has long taken care to put the adjective "deliberate" in front of the word "practice" as he writes about how expertise develops. (The article kindly submitted here correctly says, "New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell didn’t invent the rule, but he did popularize it through his best-selling book Outliers.") The 10,000-hour rule, originally formulated as a ten-year rule in studies of musicology a few decades ago, has mostly been researched by Ericsson and other researchers influenced by Ericsson's publications. Ericsson carefully distinguishes "deliberate practice," which ordinarily requires a coach who can monitor the learner's performance, from "playful engagement," which doesn't focus the learner's attention on improved performance in the same way. Many critics of Ericsson's work seem to miss this distinction. I wonder, as an observer of young people learning programming, how much a dumb computer's literal interpretation of programs input into the computer provides relentless deliberate practice in better programming, even for people who are mostly messing around playfully. Perhaps in learning programming, the inanimate computer can serve as a coach for many learners. I would NOT expect someone devoting 10,000 hours to writing essays for fun, if the essays are never read by any critical readers, to improve as much as a writer as someone devoting 10,000 hours to writing programs (if the learner of programmer pays attention to whether the programs compile and run) would improve as a programmer. People who engage in deliberate practice to improve sports performance routinely have coaches, and also participate routinely in competitions that put their assimilation of the sports skills to the test. In general, a lot of people misread the tenor of Ericsson's research, which is the subject of an interesting new book, The Complexity of Greatness, edited by Scott Barry Kaufman. http://www.amazon.com/The-Complexity-Greatness-Beyond-Practice/dp/0199794006/ http://www.amazon.com/The-Complexity-Greatness-Beyond-Practi... Ericsson is sure that raw talent (whatever that is) alone is NOT sufficient to be an "expert," properly so called, but rather has research-based reasons to believe that deliberate practice is strictly necessary for expert performance in all domains. He thinks it is an open question whether or not something like preexisting talent is even necessary for expertise, or whether sustained deliberate practice by itself might be sufficient to make into an expert someone who initially appeared not to have "talent" for a particular domain. That is an ongoing program of research, as Ericsson's publications http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson.dp.html http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson.dp.html make clear. And of course Paul Graham had something to say about this issue in his essay "What You'll Wish You'd Known" (January 2005). http://paulgraham.com/hs.html http://paulgraham.com/hs.html "Don't think that you can't do what other people can. And I agree you shouldn't underestimate your potential. People who've done great things tend to seem as if they were a race apart. And most biographies only exaggerate this illusion, partly due to the worshipful attitude biographers inevitably sink into, and partly because, knowing how the story ends, they can't help streamlining the plot till it seems like the subject's life was a matter of destiny, the mere unfolding of some innate genius. In fact I suspect if you had the sixteen year old Shakespeare or Einstein in school with you, they'd seem impressive, but not totally unlike your other friends. "Which is an uncomfortable thought. If they were just like us, then they had to work very hard to do what they did. And that's one reason we like to believe in genius. It gives us an excuse for being lazy. If these guys were able to do what they did only because of some magic Shakespeareness or Einsteinness, then it's not our fault if we can't do something as good. "I'm not saying there's no such thing as genius. But if you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right."

bitonomics 13y ago

I think there is a part of the book that was missed by the author of the article. Gladwell wasn't trying to say that everyone could become an expect by putting in 10,000 hours, but rather he could explain the "Outliers" in our society because of the intense amount of work (hours) and favorable situations. Bill Gates enjoyed coding yes, but he had an opportunity to code much earlier than others. You look at Gates, Steve Jobs, and Bill Joy, all born in the mid 1950's with the opportunity to capatailze on a new industry. All with their 10,000 hours when they became of age and enough entrepreneurship take advantage of the newly developed market (or in some ways create the market).

MattGrommes 13y ago

I really respect Temple Grandin so I hope that this article's almost nonsensical content is due to it being an excerpt from a book. First, it conflates being successful with being an expert. I can be successful at something without being an expert. I can also be an expert and die penniless and unknown. "My brain simply doesn’t work in a way that allows me to write code." There may be some disability that causes this but to counter an anecdote with another one, I think we all know people on the autism spectrum who are excellent programmers. And the fact that a particular person's disability prevents them from doing something says nothing about the rest of the population. These types of articles really bother me because it's a well-known name, in a big "forward thinking" magazine, basically saying if you believe yourself to be "naturally ungifted" it's okay not to try. You have reasons. As someone constantly on the lookout for new things to learn and a brain on the autism spectrum, I can't abide that.

joshdance 13y ago
Using Bill Gates as the definition of expert is crazy. He is the "best". The top. Sample size of 1. That doesn't mean that there are not experts. Maybe not as successful and rich but they are expert. One a similar note, using your own personal experience as an anecdote to represent the entire population is also crazy. Once again sample size of one.

gyardley 13y ago

Ten thousand hours of practice will make you a hell of a lot better at something, no matter what your natural gifts are. I suspect that in most cases, ten thousand hours of practice will make you far better than the group of naturally talented people who haven't put in the work. Given that, I have a real hard time caring about the nature vs. nurture argument - it's only relevant if you're in one of those narrow fields where only the top 0.01% of people can be successful and happy, and that certainly doesn't include programming or entrepreneurship or any of the other stuff we usually talk about around here.

lutorm 13y ago
This is exactly how I feel. It is pointless to worry about the relative degree of nature vs nurture when it's beyond doubt that if you work hard at getting better at something, you will become quite proficient. You may not become a world leader, but really, who cares.

buzzcut 13y ago

The 10,000 hours rule isn't someone's fantasy, it's based on an increasingly large body of evidence, but this article just dismisses the evidence with a wave of the hand and some assertions. A good selection of research is in The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance. Other people here have mentioned also that it's a specific kind of practice that's called for, not just mindlessly amassing hours, but rather relentlessly working on your weak spots and on skills that are just a bit outside what you can currently do. The Grandin book looks interesting, but this excerpt just seems lazy. There is also the recent research on grit by Angela Duckworth who is demonstrating that success depends on perseverance. That observation probably seems pretty intuitive, but she's demonstrating it with research. The "I was hopeless" reaction to something hard is just a failure of grit. The author has no idea how they would do if the ground it out through the really tough parts. I also find that when I talk to people about this they are often very resistant to this model of essentially talent-free skill development. It makes a lot people uncomfortable, and just seems wrong to them. I think maybe the notion that it's all innate talent absolves them of the need to work hard to develop advanced skill. Instead nature capriciously doles out talent and that's the story of why I'm not ...

AlisdairO 13y ago
I don't think it dismisses the evidence - it agrees with the idea that 10,000 hours might be required. It just states that it takes 10,000 hours for a talented person to become good at a field - that a person untalented in a field won't necessarily become a true expert given enough practise. To me this seems intuitively obvious - people's brains aren't built alike, and if we're willing to accept that brains at the fringes (e.g. aspergers) are more attuned to certain tasks, it's not too out there to suggest variance within the 'normal' parameters too. Of course, proving it would require a complex test - one that (somehow) sorts people into attuned or unattuned on a given subject to begin with, and then makes them work for 10,000 hours on the subject. Realistically, though, I suppose this question just isn't all that interesting. A lot of the time, the important part of the 'nature' component is simply what you're interested in. If you happen to have an interest in a subject, you're vastly more likely to put in the 10,000 hours. I'm a good computer programmer because I enjoyed and was good at it from the beginning, so I spent more time at it. I'm a terrible dancer because I spent maybe a hundred hours on it, sucked, and lost interest. Maybe if I'd spent a hundred times longer doing it I'd be a world beater, maybe not - but it doesn't matter, because my initial experience was enough to put me off. I imagine someone for whom it clicked more naturally would be vastly more likely to stay interested.

deleted 13y ago

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dschiptsov 13y ago

"Scientists" who still thinking in terms of a single cause of it all (especially in social sciences) instead of complex/chaotic multiple causation are doomed to be ridiculed.)

robomartin 13y ago

Practice makes perfect? Nope. Correct practice makes perfect? Close. Supervised correct practice makes perfect? Yup. 10,000 of practice makes expert? Nope. 10,000 hours of supervised correct practice makes expert? Nope. 10,000 hours of progressively more difficult supervised correct practice makes expert? You got it! Supervised doesn't mean having a teacher standing behind you watching your work. I think it does mean having some degree of feedback on what you are doing and how you are doing it. In the case of coding that could mean having your code critiqued in open-source projects (either explicitly or as a side effect of the process). Then there's the question of what "expert" means in a contextual practical sense. To use a personal example, I was not trained as a machinist. I trained in electronics and software. Yet, I had a need to manufacture parts using various CNC machines, so I learned. Am I an expert? No way. I do, however know I can fabricate nearly any part and, more importantly, in the process developed a great understanding of design for manufacturability. In my own context yes, I am an expert. This did not take 10,000 hours. If I had to guess I'd say less than 1,000 spread over a number of years with an intense focus during a period if approximately six months.

Felix21 13y ago

Its relieving to think "oh I cant do this or that because my brain is just not designed for it." It frees you to be able to give up and not feel any guilt... It is more enlightened however to understand that if you have enough desire to be something, you can truly become as great as you want to be at any field in this world... Its wise to be able to admit that you're not great at x, because you don't have enough motivation or desire to put in the work required to master it. In my first year at university, my brain was exactly like yours. My brain simply didn't work in a way that allows me to write code. In December 2012 when I wanted to start a tech company and realised I needed to be able to "build" myself... ... MY BRAIN CHANGED suddenly it became the kind of brain that was able to code and make simple games in ruby and python? Why? because in December, I acquired a DESIRE to learn code so I could build my company...

ChrisAntaki 13y ago

Keeping it enjoyable is important too. Some people attach self criticism to their skill, which makes it painful for them to proceed. Enjoying the skill is really the first step. After that, it's a matter of enjoying to improve. And then doing that every day.

eranki 13y ago

Nobody knows how to identify "talent" other than in retrospect. We say people are talented when they produce results, and then we select little anecdotes about their story to allude that it was destiny. We can't settle this debate because we just don't know enough about how the mind works and how genetics play a role. My question is, what's the actionable piece of advice? If you try programming and don't get it, you'll never be a good programmer? At what point do you give up and say that you just aren't talented enough? It seems to me that the only people asking the nature vs. nurture questions are the ones that want an excuse to give up.

31reasons 13y ago

Wow I can't believe how immature this article is. No one should make such negative generalized statements about people who are not naturally gifted that they can't become experts. It may be true for people with mental disabilities but to make the same statement for healthy people is ridiculous especially when very little is known about the brain.

gboudrias 13y ago

This article has a lot of theory and very little data. I don't think you can correct someone without producing any actual evidence, or at least trying to.

shakeel_mohamed 13y ago

I'm surprised the main point needed elaboration. Of course one needs some basic nature in order to perceive success. I thought the 10k hour rule talked about the hours alone not being enough. It's usually unique opportunity + one grasping it + dedicating x hours = success, in my understanding.

randomsearch 13y ago

At school, people marvelled at how effortlessly I seemed to achieve good grades. Everyone talked about how academic or talented I was in that regard, how lucky I was. In truth, I put in more hours for homework and exam revision than anyone else. By a large margin.

breadbox 13y ago

It's true that people often use the 10k-rule to downplay nature, but I disagree slightly with the article's thesis. When I first discovered what programming was, I was obsessed from that moment on. It was all I wanted to do. Did I have a brain that was naturally talented in the kind of abstract reasoning that makes it easy to program? Probably. Did that make it more natural for me to become an expert? Maybe. But to me, what's more important is that I had a disposition that all but guaranteed that I was going to sink 10,000 hours into the practice of programming in record time. So yes, my nature made it easier, but perhaps not in the way that most people think.

shawkinaw 13y ago

Perhaps the role of "talent" is not so much that it directly contributes to ability, but rather that it makes it that much more likely that you will accumulate 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. After all, if you don't feel like you're good at something, why would you devote so much time to it?

hosh 13y ago

That's weird. The authors are conflating "expert" with "success" and does not adequately distinguish the two terms. Further, it's not merely 10,000 hours of "practice". It is 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. Your mind has to be on the practice as you are practicing. If you're simply going through the motions, and your mind is checked out, you're not actually getting anything out of it. And yes, I know "10,000" is a nice round number. Five to seven years, two to three hours of intense, deliberate practice a day is about right.

danielharan 13y ago

Strawman argument alert: "Talent plus ten years of work equals success? Sure!" Actually, what the data shows is that becoming a world-class expert requires 10k hours of practice. Not that said practice will magically make you world-class. It's a necessary, but not sufficient condition. The 10k hour figure is probably inflated, based on self-reports of total practice time.

bradfordarner 13y ago

Core thesis: 'No...Malcolm Gladwell is wrong. You can't be me. Why? Because I'm cool. Yes, that's right. I'm cool, like Warren Buffet." This article is a phenomenal example of an intelligent and successful person lacking any rational and logical basis for their core thesis. There are countless individuals who have become experts in their respective field, yet lack any formal training in logic, argumentation or critical thinking. They naturally believe that because people listen to them in a particular field, their skills of reasoning and grasp of logic must be superior. Often they tend to equally believe that their 'gifts' are 'in-born' because they don't ever remember feeling any different; they have been intelligent their entire life. There are so many logical fumbles in this short piece, whether it be an excerpt or not, that it could be used as an philosophical exercise in pointing out faulty lines of reasoning. Example => So, how does Warren Buffet disprove the 10,000 hour rule? Author's response: "Because he was involved in business affairs from a young age." I assume that her line of reasoning is as follows: 'Warren was incredibly young when he had successfully started his first business. At that age he could not have possibly invested 10,000 hours in the study of business. Thus, he must have been born with business talent.' Interestingly enough, Warren Buffet's case may be worth looking into in order to better refine the 10,000 hour rule. That being said, the above line of reasoning is hugely problematic. Nowhere is Warren Buffet's 'expertise' at a young age commented upon or evidence given in support of it. The 10,000 hour rule says that you will become an expert with 10,000 hours of deliberate practice/training at ever increasing levels of complexity. The rule does not come to say that you can't be successful without 10,000 hours of practice. (Look at Mark Zuckerber!) The author has both misunderstood and misapplied the correlation between these concepts and what could be meant by the word 'success'. Beyond a couple of other problems, the second major issue is that invalidating one proposition does not inherently validate an opposing proposition. Thus, just because the 10,000 hour rule may be invalidated by Warren Buffet's experience, we cannot make the logical leap to declare that he, therefore, has in-born/genetic attributes that we would consider 'talent'. These are 2 entirely separate arguments that may be related but are not directly tied to one another. I could go on and on with the problems in this article. The short of it: Paul Graham was being overly optimistic in thinking that writing helps everyone form better arguments and think more carefully. Somebody should introduce Temple Grandin to a philosophy class on critical thinking and basic reasoning.

dxbydt 13y ago

Its sorta obvious this article won't go down well with the HN crowd. This is a site where everybody either believes they can code, or learn to code in a week, or teach somebody else to code via codecademy or what-have-you. fwiw, I strongly agree with the article. Natural talent & inclination triumphs practice everytime, and while that doesn't mean you shouldn't practice, it does mean that you'd be better off pursuing avenues more closely aligned to your natural talent. Here's how you can convince yourself of the same - lets say you are the typical HN reader - lots of programming experience in one or more languages. How soon can you become an expert in oh I don't know BRST cohomology ? My advisor has a PhD in that, & he can't program his way out of a paper bag. Its easy for me to laugh at him & say, hey he should just try Ruby or JS for a week, but hey, how do I just try BRST cohomology for a week ? Where do I begin ?

vickytnz 13y ago

My favourite example of what seems like talent actually being a damn lot of work: Derek Silver's 15 years of vocal training that took him from a mediocre singer to a the type of one that people would say 'had a gift' http://sivers.org/15-years http://sivers.org/15-years

Xingtao 13y ago

Once a professional Starcraft player said talent or nature are not mysterious. You got talent in some field means you know how to effectively and efficiently work hard in the field, that is it. So, i think 10000 hours are needed for both the talented and the mediocre. The difference is the talent know how to spent their hours.

kamaal 13y ago

A successful person was found to have to put 10,000 hours of practice != If you do 10,000 hours of deliberate practice you will be successful. First thing is don't take the 10,000 hour practice rule too seriously. At best its a metaphor. In the real world you are likely to see success if you start working of hard problems for 10,000 hours than put 10,000 hours of practice and then start solving problems.

qzxt 13y ago

I think people have invested themselves emotionally to this 10000 hours nonsense, so any mention of natural gifted-ness sets them off in a tirade, not because of any analytical opposition, but because their egos are somewhat threatened by the prospect that someone may be naturally better at something than they are. Unfortunately, 10000 hours yadah yadah is not a "new finding" beyond putting a nice round number on a phenomenon that I'm sure your mommies and daddies told you when you were a kid - PRACTICE. Deliberate practice? Does "try doing the harder stuff" sound familiar? The fact that if you practice areas that you're not very strong at you will get stronger has been known for centuries. "Naturally gifted" people aren't those who are experts, neither are they those who have the best technique. 10000 hours on the piano will not make you Beethoven, neither will 100000 hours. Beethoven was Beethoven for many reasons - well known as a prodigy, highly regarded by the culture of his time, etc - merely playing the piano well didn't make him remarkable. For a less ancient example, take Jimmy Page. Anyone who plays guitar will acknowledge that Page's playing was quite sloppy. It's not technique that I would teach to someone. But he's Jimmy freakin' Page. The genius of Zeppelin was in the innovation. They brought a new sound, at the time - and they were really cool too, but don't tell anyone. So, to wrap up, practice makes perfect, but perfect isn't genius. Which isn't to disparage anyone, but to see such pettiness automatically raise its head whenever someone brings up this 10000 hours crap as if it's something new - one guy goes boo-hoo people won't think I'm a genius anymore, the other guy goes, yeah I could be a genius too if only I practiced it - is just sad. No one cares about what you could be. I could be a freakin' Navy Seal if I just enlisted and worked hard and blah blah blah; I'm not a Navy Seal, so all that's irrelevant. All that matters is what you are, so if we're reveling in the fact that we could be better at something if we practiced, rather than actually practicing, well that says more about the human ego rather than human talent.