10 ms·

New Study Contradicts Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 Rule

92 points by jamesbritt 12y ago

jqm 12y ago
I always thought this "rule" sounded like something pulled completely out of thin air. Of course practice is necessary to become proficient, and lots of practice is necessary to achieve mastery. But, the amount needed has to vary depending on the person, and some people will never achieve mastery in some areas. There is such a thing as native skill. And the inverse.
- PM_Tech 12y ago
  Native skill is largely a myth. According to Matthew Syed in Bounce (a very good read) there are numerous fields in which native or genetic skill is considered the norm (sports, chess, math) but no studies support that hypothesis. Conversely a number of studies actively disprove that native skill exists. Ultimately, barring true genetic freaks (Michael Phelps wingspan for instance) anyone could achieve any level of any pursuit with enought focussed practice and a degree of luck.
  - Yunk 12y ago
    When I look at a field like sports, I assume the genetic advantages are not so direct to the routine tasks. For example, significant genetic factors may be: healing or failing to heal without permanent damage or being flexible in a way that causes or prevents a frequent injury. For many star players the fact that they can keep playing at all may be the freak of genetics or initial behavior that allowed them to get to their level. For example, football helmet impact data seems to support the direction that many should be dropping out due to traumatic brain injury. Yet some players deteriorate remarkably slower than medical science previously predicted.
    - shawnb576 12y ago
      These are good points. I think this 10,000 hour idea is a vast oversimplification. For example, it's often difficult to differentiate rate of progress from final ability. As someone who has been involved with elite athletics, there are people out there who are simply better at absorbing training, in terms of biomechanics (mostly injury resistance), recovery, and compensation (getting stronger). I've seen lots of folks, new to a sport, with little training, absolutely crush mush more seasoned/conditioned folks. There are many examples of this (see: Chrissie Wellington). For each of them you can contrive some story "well, she lived at altitude", but that's the point, these people exist. And to be clear, I take nothing from Chrissie's worth ethic, etc. She's simply better than a whole host of other elite athletes that have worked hard their whole lives and she went out and clowned them for several years. The difficult question is, if an average person kept at it for 10,000 hours, would Chrissie plateau and that average person catch up? And here you can substitute math, chess, coding, whatever. I don't know, but both my sporting and software engineering experience (anecdotally, N=1) says no. Different people are sometimes differently suited to tasks. I'd love to understand the causation.
    - jacques_chester 12y ago
      > When I look at a field like sports, I assume the genetic advantages are not so direct to the routine tasks. I assume that larger samples produce more extreme outliers, even as sample variability falls. This means more dominating freaks of nature. The Russians, Bulgarians and Chinese dominate Weightlifting. They also happen to have far more lifters than other countries.
  - Someone 12y ago
    "Ultimately, barring true genetic freaks (Michael Phelps wingspan for instance) anyone could achieve any level of any pursuit with enought focussed practice and a degree of luck." So, why do you think there are so few top basketball players under five feet nine (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shortest_players_in_National_Basketball_Association_history http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shortest_players_in_N...)? So few rowers average lung volume? I doubt that is self-selection/cultural (you're too short for the NBA, so it isn't worth trying) or correlation vs causation (your lung volume is high because you trained so much)
    - kenjackson 12y ago
      The sport has a height bias towards height given the goal location. But if you just assess skills... Dribbling, shooting, etc I think that there are a lot more sub 5'9"master players.
      - PM_Tech 12y ago
        Exactly this. Basketball sits in a quasi-unique category because it rewards height immediately with very few ways to neutralise that. The point that Syed is making is not Play A of X height and Player B of Y height are equal. He reports (cited academic studies) that given the same height Player A and Player B have no intrinsic native advantages over each other - all advantages are cultural and luck. Player A may have a great coach, a great basketballing school etc or Player B may just simply work harder. There are a legion of examples to back up his claims including the Williams sisters. Two prodigies who came from a family that had not even heard of Tennis until their father decided they would be tennis champions. There is also Syed himself who played in the Olympic and Commonwealth Games at table tennis. Curiously enough 50% of the national team for table tennis also came from his street... ...lucky enough to be born next to a world class club.
        Marazan 12y ago
        And then you have someone like Rupeni Caucau who by everyone's accounts (including himself) is one of the laziest professional rugby players ever to get a contract, repeatedly missing training, unexplained absences, incredibly poor diet and conditioning and yet can do stuff like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3f0BggE__4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3f0BggE__4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0svVz4kSWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0svVz4kSWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6qdM6O26CY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6qdM6O26CY If you want to tell me how many hours training it would take to score that first try I am all ears.
  - Marazan 12y ago
    Matthew Syed's thesis is fundamentally challenged by reality. Certain activities/sports have a clear bias towards certain body types (as a reductive but clear example who would you favour to get an item off a high shelf unaided, the 6 foot 4 inch tall person or the 5 foot 6 inch person?). It is true that training dominates 'talent'/'genetic biomechanics'. But, at similar levels of training some other factor will play a part in determinnig who is best, and at the elite end everyone is basically at the same levels of training so 'talent'/'genetics' will be the deciding factor. There is a reason why each discipline in pro-athletics seems to attract such a homogeneous collection of body shapes and why the people who 'break the mould' are often the most successful at the sport.
    - lloeki 12y ago
      > Certain activities/sports have a clear bias towards certain body types None of which are significant enough to not make someone a master. You don't have to be The Best to be a master at anything, as this is again conflating success with mastery. Being arguably masters at the most remotely similar activity to your example in a tall guys field, [0], [1] and [2] beg to differ, and were also successful on top of it: [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Murphy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Murphy [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muggsy_Bogues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muggsy_Bogues [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spud_Webb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spud_Webb
    - PM_Tech 12y ago
      It's not challenged by reality at all, you are just misunderstanding it (probably because you have not read the book and probably because of my terrible simplification). You keep referring to talent. Which does not exist, has never been proven and has been disproven numerous times by taking sportsman out of their chosen sport but into a new sport requiring similar talent and testing their performance which is always sub-par and hovering around average. The primary example used is table tennis players are famed for having naturally quick reflexes. In every academic study, table tennis players performed no quicker than average in any reflexes test and in some cases performed worse than various random individuals from the street. There are others but you should read the book before discounting a hypothesis. I have read enough to convince me natural talent is a myth; the equivalent of a rain dance is the reason for rain.
  - meowface 12y ago
    While practice still plays a huge role, I don't think you can compare physical/atheletic skills to more mental or abstract ones in this case.
    - PM_Tech 12y ago
      Why not? Human beings can be taught to think mathematically through practice. Language learning is practice.
      - meowface 12y ago
        I was suggesting that it's more common for humans to be physically "gifted from birth" with certain physical attributes that make them excel more at athletic activities, compared to mental activities. Physical prowess is somewhat more nature-driven instead of nurture-driven, even though practice is still very important.
        PM_Tech 12y ago
        It's not common at all. 99.99999% of humans possess no physical "gifts" at all. Anyone can train to become world class at almost any sport barring those we have placed arbitrary systems in place. The same is true for maths, languages, chess, science - anything you care to name. Proven by Laszlo.
        meowface 12y ago
        I do not really think that's true...
        PM_Tech 12y ago
        Do you have anything to suggest it is not? Numerous agree natural talent is a myth http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&uid=1993-40718-001 http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&uid... http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1974-06238-001 http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1974-06238-001 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1996.tb02591.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1996.... Can you even define natural talent?
audeyisaacs 12y ago
God I hate how people parrot that 10,000 hours rule. I doubt this study will do anything to stop those people though.
PM_Tech 12y ago
It's hardly Gladwell's rule. He just happened to be a writer who popularised it.
xname 12y ago
This article is total bullshit. "practice accounted for just a 12% difference in performance in various domains" is not contrary to "10,000 hours of deliberate practice are needed to become world-class in any field". For example, A) 10,000 hours of deliberate practice are needed to become a professional chess player, B) practice accounted for just a 12% difference in performance in professional chess. A and B can both be true at the same time.
- gwern 12y ago
  And yet, (A) is simply not true, see the other mentioned study of chess players in the fulltext, a previous study involving Hambrick which found many top players falling short of 10k and many inferior players exceeding 10k, for a net explained variance of not-that-much.
  - mckeygeeky 12y ago
    I believe that Gladwell was merely suggesting that talent is not innate and the difference is somebody's ability was due to the amount of time they put into it. The top players might have spent several hours on a related field, like what futsal is for football.
    - gwern 12y ago
      > I believe that Gladwell was merely suggesting that talent is not innate and the difference is somebody's ability was due to the amount of time they put into it. Neither is true. Everything is heritable, as the behavioral geneticists like to say, and increasingly the genetics are being defined and nailed down; and the latter is completely refuted by the OP study and the previous Hambrick study - time spent on a field has only a weak relation with results. > The top players might have spent several hours on a related field, like what futsal is for football. Chess players study chess. There is no related field from which meaningful transfer will happen - at the top levels of chess, the problems are only about chess.
      - PM_Tech 12y ago
MrBuddyCasino 12y ago
The 10000 hours rule might be bogus, but the examples given are unconvincing. Sid Vicious not being able to play bass well means just that - hes not good at it, probably because he didn't practise. That it didn't matter for him to become successful is a different story. Slash of G'n R fame practised very hard to get to his level by literally doing nothing else from morning to evening.
- spacec0wb0y 12y ago
  Yes. This. Sid Vicious was nowhere near world-class at the bass. He may be world-class at playing up to the media and managing social situations. But after seeing that example, I feel it made me believe more in the 10,000 hours!
  - MrBuddyCasino 12y ago
    Ironically, he may well have put in the 10,000 hours practicing those skills - fashion, looks and charisma certainly take time to master.
- Dewie 12y ago
  Being an exceptionally good instrumentalist is not how you get to become a world famous rock band (or band in general). If that were true, people like Steve Vai would be more famous than Slash and Guns and Roses.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    Yes, but Vai is a bad artist -- no cultural sensitivity, no sense of melody, restrain, etc. Now, technique is great for classical music, because the pieces are given and are masterpieces in themselves. Beethoven is there, and you just play it as best as you can. But when you write our own stuff yourself based on your advanced guitar hero skills, you end up only interesting people impressed with flashy technique.
    - Dewie 12y ago
prostoalex 12y ago
The critique of the 10,000 rule is not new and here's what the author himself posted in 2013 http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2013/08/psychology-ten-thousand-hour-rule-complexity.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2013/08/... "I think that it is also a mistake to assume that the ten-thousand-hour idea applies to every domain. ... The point of Simon and Chase’s paper years ago was that cognitively complex activities take many years to master because they require that a very long list of situations and possibilities and scenarios be experienced and processed. There’s a reason the Beatles didn’t give us “The White Album” when they were teen-agers. And if the surgeon who wants to fuse your spinal cord did some newfangled online accelerated residency, you should probably tell him no. It does not invalidate the ten-thousand-hour principle, however, to point out that in instances where there are not a long list of situations and scenarios and possibilities to master—like jumping really high, running as fast as you can in a straight line, or directing a sharp object at a large, round piece of cork—expertise can be attained a whole lot more quickly."
- Dewie 12y ago
  It's asinine to write about and promote such a result as "10,000 hours"[1] when the result was really that it varies a lot from skill to skill. Using some constant number like 10,000 gives exactly the idea that there is some hard-and-fast rule to the amount of time needed to practice in order to attain some skill in some endeavour. [1] Whether that was the author himself or the various people that that wrote second/third hand articles about it.
  - PM_Tech 12y ago
    Does employment in a CS career mean that you must be prescriptive in every aspect of your life? The 10,000 hours is a rough guide to a general consensus of sporting and professional pursuits. It is not appplicable to all people in all walks of life. Sometimes I fear for the sanity of coders; how do you people function without technical specifications telling you what to do??
- PM_Tech 12y ago
  Don't try and bring reason to the Gladwell-bashing. Great post though.
stevesunderland 12y ago
does anyone still take Gladwell seriously?
- cpayne 12y ago
  He's a writer, and his business is to write books that people want. I love his work! Similar to Dilbert's Scott Adam's books. After reading them, I don't walk away thinking "you weren't 100% correct, therefore I am going to ignore everything else you've said". I find both authors highly entertaining. I think both would happily bend the truth if it helped the spirit of the work sound better.
bshimmin 12y ago
I've been somewhat interestedly following the guy who is very literally putting this to the test by attempting to become a professional golfer after 10,000 hours of practice, having never played a round of golf before he started. He's about halfway through his hours now and has shot a round of 70. See here: http://thedanplan.com/ http://thedanplan.com/
- abrkn 12y ago
  Now that's dedication.
- thret 12y ago
  Thanks for the reminder, I was interested when he started but hadn't checked up on him since. Golf, what a frustrating game :)
- UweSchmidt 12y ago
  Thanks for the link, I love checking up on his progress from time to time. Small note, he seems to have downgraded his goals though from "winning a PGA tournament" [1] to "obtaining PGA tour card" [2]. Understandably, since the former would be incredible hard, but still... [1] http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/dan-mclaughlins-10000hour-plan-become-a-pro-golfer-11232011.html http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/dan-mclaughlins-10000ho... [2] http://thedanplan.com/about/ http://thedanplan.com/about/
calinet6 12y ago
The idea is not the 10,000 hours; it is the mastery they represent.
frobozz 12y ago
This article suggests that Johansson is confusing commercial success with mastery of a skill. Mastery of a skill does not guarantee commercial or financial success, nor does a lack of mastery guarantee failure. We see this in our own trade - just because you're a mega awesome super-ninja rockstar software developer, it doesn't mean the software you develop is actually worth billions. Summly, when it was acquired by Yahoo, came in for a lot of criticism for being equivalent to a crappy weekend project, but it made Nick D’Aloisio a heap of cash. I doubt that he was master of his craft at the time. Similarly, the number of beautiful autotuned popstars who, without their army of producers and songwriters wouldn't even be fit to grace the stage in the back room of a pub, vs the number of highly skilled musicians whose genre or instrument lacks popular appeal or whose appearance makes them more suited to the radio era, and whose biggest gig is a crowd of 50 in a provincial arts centre. Sid Vicious was in no way a master of the bass guitar, but his band enjoyed success all the same, due to the intersection of their music and the zeitgeist, and some good publicity work by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. Richard Branson may now be a master of business, but he's also definitely had his 10K hours. Had he already been masterful in the early days of Virgin Records, perhaps Virgin Group would number 4000 companies by now and Virgin Galactic would already be planning trips to Mars from their well-established moon base. Who knows?
Oculus 12y ago
I never took his rule too literally. I always thought of it as an explanation for how people become the best at something: practice. I still believe it is true. Though you can't study entrepreneurship, practicing (i.e. gaining experience) makes you better at running companies. The same can be applied to other activities which don't involve rigid structure which can be learned.
- a_bonobo 12y ago
  Your definition of 'practicing' is different from the publication's - the publication specifically looks only at deliberate practice: >This view holds that expert performance largely reflects accumulated amount of deliberate practice, which Ericsson et al. defined as engagement in structured activities created specifically to improve performance in a domain. As an entrepreneur or programmer, I think that it's very hard to do deliberate practice - there are few structured activities you can do to improve your skills, as both fields, even in their more basic tasks, incorporate various skills and approaches. For example, you wouldn't say 'today I practice for-loops' and then do nothing but write for-loops all day. You can say 'today I write a program that uses while loops instead of for-loops', but I think that wouldn't count as deliberate practice anymore - the structure of the task changes with the focus and task of your program (you'd also have to do more like de-bugging, tests etc.) As a tennis player, however, you can say 'today I practice serves' and then do nothing but serve balls all day, that's a structured task that doesn't change. Apparently it just doesn't help that much.
  - sousousou 12y ago
    I'm coming from music as a profession to programming as a profession. In music you can craft repetitive exercises to improve small aspects of your skillset, but in computer science you can't do that exactly (or sanely). However, I do find myself directing my study in a similar way. I have various high-level goals and I try to find some way to get at them on a daily basis. I use concrete projects like reading a book, doing exercises, or taking on a hobby project. It feels very similar to practicing music, but I wouldn't call it practicing. It's my practice!
gwern 12y ago
Fulltext: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/182368464/2014-macnamara.pdf https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/182368464/2014-macnamara...
zmjones 12y ago
Meta-analysis is usually suspect.
- DanBC 12y ago
  Would you say that's true of the Cochrane collaboration?
- scribu 12y ago
  Why?
  - pjscott 12y ago
    I can think of three main suspicions to keep in mind when evaluating the credibility of a meta-analysis: 1. Are the studies it analyzes picked with a bias? For example, if you're looking for meta-analyses of the effects of gun control on crime, and one was published by the National Rifle Association and the other came from the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, then you might as well just throw up your hands and go home, because each will probably have suspiciously convenient criteria for what constitutes a reasonable study worthy of inclusion in their meta-analysis. 2. Do the studies themselves suffer from publication bias? A meta-analysis purporting to show a positive effect should arouse some suspicion, because negative results often simply don't get published, and can not be included in the meta-analysis due to their nonexistence. 3. Are the methods of analysis reasonable? There are a horrifying number of ways to pull positive results out of random noise through poor application of statistics. In this particular case, the authors don't seem to have an axe to grind, their result is negative, and their analysis is very straightforward.

92 points by jamesbritt 12y ago

jqm 12y ago

I always thought this "rule" sounded like something pulled completely out of thin air. Of course practice is necessary to become proficient, and lots of practice is necessary to achieve mastery. But, the amount needed has to vary depending on the person, and some people will never achieve mastery in some areas. There is such a thing as native skill. And the inverse.

PM_Tech 12y ago
Native skill is largely a myth. According to Matthew Syed in Bounce (a very good read) there are numerous fields in which native or genetic skill is considered the norm (sports, chess, math) but no studies support that hypothesis. Conversely a number of studies actively disprove that native skill exists. Ultimately, barring true genetic freaks (Michael Phelps wingspan for instance) anyone could achieve any level of any pursuit with enought focussed practice and a degree of luck.
- Yunk 12y ago
  When I look at a field like sports, I assume the genetic advantages are not so direct to the routine tasks. For example, significant genetic factors may be: healing or failing to heal without permanent damage or being flexible in a way that causes or prevents a frequent injury. For many star players the fact that they can keep playing at all may be the freak of genetics or initial behavior that allowed them to get to their level. For example, football helmet impact data seems to support the direction that many should be dropping out due to traumatic brain injury. Yet some players deteriorate remarkably slower than medical science previously predicted.
  - shawnb576 12y ago
    These are good points. I think this 10,000 hour idea is a vast oversimplification. For example, it's often difficult to differentiate rate of progress from final ability. As someone who has been involved with elite athletics, there are people out there who are simply better at absorbing training, in terms of biomechanics (mostly injury resistance), recovery, and compensation (getting stronger). I've seen lots of folks, new to a sport, with little training, absolutely crush mush more seasoned/conditioned folks. There are many examples of this (see: Chrissie Wellington). For each of them you can contrive some story "well, she lived at altitude", but that's the point, these people exist. And to be clear, I take nothing from Chrissie's worth ethic, etc. She's simply better than a whole host of other elite athletes that have worked hard their whole lives and she went out and clowned them for several years. The difficult question is, if an average person kept at it for 10,000 hours, would Chrissie plateau and that average person catch up? And here you can substitute math, chess, coding, whatever. I don't know, but both my sporting and software engineering experience (anecdotally, N=1) says no. Different people are sometimes differently suited to tasks. I'd love to understand the causation.
  - jacques_chester 12y ago
    > When I look at a field like sports, I assume the genetic advantages are not so direct to the routine tasks. I assume that larger samples produce more extreme outliers, even as sample variability falls. This means more dominating freaks of nature. The Russians, Bulgarians and Chinese dominate Weightlifting. They also happen to have far more lifters than other countries.
- Someone 12y ago
  "Ultimately, barring true genetic freaks (Michael Phelps wingspan for instance) anyone could achieve any level of any pursuit with enought focussed practice and a degree of luck." So, why do you think there are so few top basketball players under five feet nine (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shortest_players_in_National_Basketball_Association_history http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shortest_players_in_N...)? So few rowers average lung volume? I doubt that is self-selection/cultural (you're too short for the NBA, so it isn't worth trying) or correlation vs causation (your lung volume is high because you trained so much)
  - kenjackson 12y ago
    The sport has a height bias towards height given the goal location. But if you just assess skills... Dribbling, shooting, etc I think that there are a lot more sub 5'9"master players.
    - PM_Tech 12y ago
      Exactly this. Basketball sits in a quasi-unique category because it rewards height immediately with very few ways to neutralise that. The point that Syed is making is not Play A of X height and Player B of Y height are equal. He reports (cited academic studies) that given the same height Player A and Player B have no intrinsic native advantages over each other - all advantages are cultural and luck. Player A may have a great coach, a great basketballing school etc or Player B may just simply work harder. There are a legion of examples to back up his claims including the Williams sisters. Two prodigies who came from a family that had not even heard of Tennis until their father decided they would be tennis champions. There is also Syed himself who played in the Olympic and Commonwealth Games at table tennis. Curiously enough 50% of the national team for table tennis also came from his street... ...lucky enough to be born next to a world class club.
      - Marazan 12y ago
        And then you have someone like Rupeni Caucau who by everyone's accounts (including himself) is one of the laziest professional rugby players ever to get a contract, repeatedly missing training, unexplained absences, incredibly poor diet and conditioning and yet can do stuff like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3f0BggE__4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3f0BggE__4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0svVz4kSWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0svVz4kSWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6qdM6O26CY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6qdM6O26CY If you want to tell me how many hours training it would take to score that first try I am all ears.
- Marazan 12y ago
  Matthew Syed's thesis is fundamentally challenged by reality. Certain activities/sports have a clear bias towards certain body types (as a reductive but clear example who would you favour to get an item off a high shelf unaided, the 6 foot 4 inch tall person or the 5 foot 6 inch person?). It is true that training dominates 'talent'/'genetic biomechanics'. But, at similar levels of training some other factor will play a part in determinnig who is best, and at the elite end everyone is basically at the same levels of training so 'talent'/'genetics' will be the deciding factor. There is a reason why each discipline in pro-athletics seems to attract such a homogeneous collection of body shapes and why the people who 'break the mould' are often the most successful at the sport.
  - lloeki 12y ago
    > Certain activities/sports have a clear bias towards certain body types None of which are significant enough to not make someone a master. You don't have to be The Best to be a master at anything, as this is again conflating success with mastery. Being arguably masters at the most remotely similar activity to your example in a tall guys field, [0], [1] and [2] beg to differ, and were also successful on top of it: [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Murphy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Murphy [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muggsy_Bogues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muggsy_Bogues [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spud_Webb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spud_Webb
  - PM_Tech 12y ago
    It's not challenged by reality at all, you are just misunderstanding it (probably because you have not read the book and probably because of my terrible simplification). You keep referring to talent. Which does not exist, has never been proven and has been disproven numerous times by taking sportsman out of their chosen sport but into a new sport requiring similar talent and testing their performance which is always sub-par and hovering around average. The primary example used is table tennis players are famed for having naturally quick reflexes. In every academic study, table tennis players performed no quicker than average in any reflexes test and in some cases performed worse than various random individuals from the street. There are others but you should read the book before discounting a hypothesis. I have read enough to convince me natural talent is a myth; the equivalent of a rain dance is the reason for rain.
- meowface 12y ago
  While practice still plays a huge role, I don't think you can compare physical/atheletic skills to more mental or abstract ones in this case.
  - PM_Tech 12y ago
    Why not? Human beings can be taught to think mathematically through practice. Language learning is practice.
    - meowface 12y ago
      I was suggesting that it's more common for humans to be physically "gifted from birth" with certain physical attributes that make them excel more at athletic activities, compared to mental activities. Physical prowess is somewhat more nature-driven instead of nurture-driven, even though practice is still very important.
      - PM_Tech 12y ago
        It's not common at all. 99.99999% of humans possess no physical "gifts" at all. Anyone can train to become world class at almost any sport barring those we have placed arbitrary systems in place. The same is true for maths, languages, chess, science - anything you care to name. Proven by Laszlo.
        meowface 12y ago
        I do not really think that's true...
        PM_Tech 12y ago
        Do you have anything to suggest it is not? Numerous agree natural talent is a myth http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&uid=1993-40718-001 http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&uid... http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1974-06238-001 http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1974-06238-001 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1996.tb02591.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1996.... Can you even define natural talent?

audeyisaacs 12y ago

God I hate how people parrot that 10,000 hours rule. I doubt this study will do anything to stop those people though.

PM_Tech 12y ago

It's hardly Gladwell's rule. He just happened to be a writer who popularised it.

xname 12y ago

This article is total bullshit. "practice accounted for just a 12% difference in performance in various domains" is not contrary to "10,000 hours of deliberate practice are needed to become world-class in any field". For example, A) 10,000 hours of deliberate practice are needed to become a professional chess player, B) practice accounted for just a 12% difference in performance in professional chess. A and B can both be true at the same time.

gwern 12y ago
And yet, (A) is simply not true, see the other mentioned study of chess players in the fulltext, a previous study involving Hambrick which found many top players falling short of 10k and many inferior players exceeding 10k, for a net explained variance of not-that-much.
- mckeygeeky 12y ago
  I believe that Gladwell was merely suggesting that talent is not innate and the difference is somebody's ability was due to the amount of time they put into it. The top players might have spent several hours on a related field, like what futsal is for football.
  - gwern 12y ago
    > I believe that Gladwell was merely suggesting that talent is not innate and the difference is somebody's ability was due to the amount of time they put into it. Neither is true. Everything is heritable, as the behavioral geneticists like to say, and increasingly the genetics are being defined and nailed down; and the latter is completely refuted by the OP study and the previous Hambrick study - time spent on a field has only a weak relation with results. > The top players might have spent several hours on a related field, like what futsal is for football. Chess players study chess. There is no related field from which meaningful transfer will happen - at the top levels of chess, the problems are only about chess.
    - PM_Tech 12y ago

MrBuddyCasino 12y ago

The 10000 hours rule might be bogus, but the examples given are unconvincing. Sid Vicious not being able to play bass well means just that - hes not good at it, probably because he didn't practise. That it didn't matter for him to become successful is a different story. Slash of G'n R fame practised very hard to get to his level by literally doing nothing else from morning to evening.

spacec0wb0y 12y ago
Yes. This. Sid Vicious was nowhere near world-class at the bass. He may be world-class at playing up to the media and managing social situations. But after seeing that example, I feel it made me believe more in the 10,000 hours!
- MrBuddyCasino 12y ago
  Ironically, he may well have put in the 10,000 hours practicing those skills - fashion, looks and charisma certainly take time to master.
Dewie 12y ago
Being an exceptionally good instrumentalist is not how you get to become a world famous rock band (or band in general). If that were true, people like Steve Vai would be more famous than Slash and Guns and Roses.
- coldtea 12y ago
  Yes, but Vai is a bad artist -- no cultural sensitivity, no sense of melody, restrain, etc. Now, technique is great for classical music, because the pieces are given and are masterpieces in themselves. Beethoven is there, and you just play it as best as you can. But when you write our own stuff yourself based on your advanced guitar hero skills, you end up only interesting people impressed with flashy technique.
  - Dewie 12y ago

prostoalex 12y ago

The critique of the 10,000 rule is not new and here's what the author himself posted in 2013 http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2013/08/psychology-ten-thousand-hour-rule-complexity.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2013/08/... "I think that it is also a mistake to assume that the ten-thousand-hour idea applies to every domain. ... The point of Simon and Chase’s paper years ago was that cognitively complex activities take many years to master because they require that a very long list of situations and possibilities and scenarios be experienced and processed. There’s a reason the Beatles didn’t give us “The White Album” when they were teen-agers. And if the surgeon who wants to fuse your spinal cord did some newfangled online accelerated residency, you should probably tell him no. It does not invalidate the ten-thousand-hour principle, however, to point out that in instances where there are not a long list of situations and scenarios and possibilities to master—like jumping really high, running as fast as you can in a straight line, or directing a sharp object at a large, round piece of cork—expertise can be attained a whole lot more quickly."

Dewie 12y ago
It's asinine to write about and promote such a result as "10,000 hours"[1] when the result was really that it varies a lot from skill to skill. Using some constant number like 10,000 gives exactly the idea that there is some hard-and-fast rule to the amount of time needed to practice in order to attain some skill in some endeavour. [1] Whether that was the author himself or the various people that that wrote second/third hand articles about it.
- PM_Tech 12y ago
  Does employment in a CS career mean that you must be prescriptive in every aspect of your life? The 10,000 hours is a rough guide to a general consensus of sporting and professional pursuits. It is not appplicable to all people in all walks of life. Sometimes I fear for the sanity of coders; how do you people function without technical specifications telling you what to do??
PM_Tech 12y ago
Don't try and bring reason to the Gladwell-bashing. Great post though.

stevesunderland 12y ago

does anyone still take Gladwell seriously?

cpayne 12y ago
He's a writer, and his business is to write books that people want. I love his work! Similar to Dilbert's Scott Adam's books. After reading them, I don't walk away thinking "you weren't 100% correct, therefore I am going to ignore everything else you've said". I find both authors highly entertaining. I think both would happily bend the truth if it helped the spirit of the work sound better.

bshimmin 12y ago

I've been somewhat interestedly following the guy who is very literally putting this to the test by attempting to become a professional golfer after 10,000 hours of practice, having never played a round of golf before he started. He's about halfway through his hours now and has shot a round of 70. See here: http://thedanplan.com/ http://thedanplan.com/

abrkn 12y ago
Now that's dedication.
thret 12y ago
Thanks for the reminder, I was interested when he started but hadn't checked up on him since. Golf, what a frustrating game :)
UweSchmidt 12y ago
Thanks for the link, I love checking up on his progress from time to time. Small note, he seems to have downgraded his goals though from "winning a PGA tournament" [1] to "obtaining PGA tour card" [2]. Understandably, since the former would be incredible hard, but still... [1] http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/dan-mclaughlins-10000hour-plan-become-a-pro-golfer-11232011.html http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/dan-mclaughlins-10000ho... [2] http://thedanplan.com/about/ http://thedanplan.com/about/

calinet6 12y ago

The idea is not the 10,000 hours; it is the mastery they represent.

frobozz 12y ago

This article suggests that Johansson is confusing commercial success with mastery of a skill. Mastery of a skill does not guarantee commercial or financial success, nor does a lack of mastery guarantee failure. We see this in our own trade - just because you're a mega awesome super-ninja rockstar software developer, it doesn't mean the software you develop is actually worth billions. Summly, when it was acquired by Yahoo, came in for a lot of criticism for being equivalent to a crappy weekend project, but it made Nick D’Aloisio a heap of cash. I doubt that he was master of his craft at the time. Similarly, the number of beautiful autotuned popstars who, without their army of producers and songwriters wouldn't even be fit to grace the stage in the back room of a pub, vs the number of highly skilled musicians whose genre or instrument lacks popular appeal or whose appearance makes them more suited to the radio era, and whose biggest gig is a crowd of 50 in a provincial arts centre. Sid Vicious was in no way a master of the bass guitar, but his band enjoyed success all the same, due to the intersection of their music and the zeitgeist, and some good publicity work by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. Richard Branson may now be a master of business, but he's also definitely had his 10K hours. Had he already been masterful in the early days of Virgin Records, perhaps Virgin Group would number 4000 companies by now and Virgin Galactic would already be planning trips to Mars from their well-established moon base. Who knows?

Oculus 12y ago

I never took his rule too literally. I always thought of it as an explanation for how people become the best at something: practice. I still believe it is true. Though you can't study entrepreneurship, practicing (i.e. gaining experience) makes you better at running companies. The same can be applied to other activities which don't involve rigid structure which can be learned.

a_bonobo 12y ago
Your definition of 'practicing' is different from the publication's - the publication specifically looks only at deliberate practice: >This view holds that expert performance largely reflects accumulated amount of deliberate practice, which Ericsson et al. defined as engagement in structured activities created specifically to improve performance in a domain. As an entrepreneur or programmer, I think that it's very hard to do deliberate practice - there are few structured activities you can do to improve your skills, as both fields, even in their more basic tasks, incorporate various skills and approaches. For example, you wouldn't say 'today I practice for-loops' and then do nothing but write for-loops all day. You can say 'today I write a program that uses while loops instead of for-loops', but I think that wouldn't count as deliberate practice anymore - the structure of the task changes with the focus and task of your program (you'd also have to do more like de-bugging, tests etc.) As a tennis player, however, you can say 'today I practice serves' and then do nothing but serve balls all day, that's a structured task that doesn't change. Apparently it just doesn't help that much.
- sousousou 12y ago
  I'm coming from music as a profession to programming as a profession. In music you can craft repetitive exercises to improve small aspects of your skillset, but in computer science you can't do that exactly (or sanely). However, I do find myself directing my study in a similar way. I have various high-level goals and I try to find some way to get at them on a daily basis. I use concrete projects like reading a book, doing exercises, or taking on a hobby project. It feels very similar to practicing music, but I wouldn't call it practicing. It's my practice!

gwern 12y ago

Fulltext: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/182368464/2014-macnamara.pdf https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/182368464/2014-macnamara...

zmjones 12y ago

Meta-analysis is usually suspect.

DanBC 12y ago
Would you say that's true of the Cochrane collaboration?
scribu 12y ago
Why?
- pjscott 12y ago
  I can think of three main suspicions to keep in mind when evaluating the credibility of a meta-analysis: 1. Are the studies it analyzes picked with a bias? For example, if you're looking for meta-analyses of the effects of gun control on crime, and one was published by the National Rifle Association and the other came from the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, then you might as well just throw up your hands and go home, because each will probably have suspiciously convenient criteria for what constitutes a reasonable study worthy of inclusion in their meta-analysis. 2. Do the studies themselves suffer from publication bias? A meta-analysis purporting to show a positive effect should arouse some suspicion, because negative results often simply don't get published, and can not be included in the meta-analysis due to their nonexistence. 3. Are the methods of analysis reasonable? There are a horrifying number of ways to pull positive results out of random noise through poor application of statistics. In this particular case, the authors don't seem to have an axe to grind, their result is negative, and their analysis is very straightforward.