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IIRC, one of his examples at the beginning of Outliers was a group of Canadian boys who excelled at hockey - in part because they were among the oldest in their
by crgt 13y ago
IIRC, one of his examples at the beginning of Outliers was a group of Canadian boys who excelled at hockey - in part because they were among the oldest in their cohort, and thus had more opportunity for practice and growth relative to their peers. From that example at least, it wasn't clear to me that he meant to exclude athletics from his thesis, anymore than it's clear to me that sports aren't a complex task. Have you tried to hit a baseball lately? Or hit a three-point jump shot? They actually are complex tasks.
- dclowd9901 13y agoAnd if IIRC, that was explained because of the boys' physical size relative to their cohort, and that coaches fed into the loop by granting more attention to the children who appeared to "have natural talent," (when really, their natural talent was that they were born earlier). The book isn't an explanation for the thesis of the 10,000 hours rule. It's an explanation for why outliers exist. In the case of sports, it appears to be a conjunction of physical size + willingness of coaches to round out the edges of their ability. With complex tasks, it appears to be myriad practice.
- YokoZar 13y agoPerhaps more relevantly is it's fairly obvious how a lot of sports can run into physical limits. For certain genetics, all the practice in the world isn't going to make you Olympic-competitive in a fair number of sports.