
The 10,000 Hour Rule for deliberate practice is wrong - prostoalex
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/09/malcolm_gladwell_s_10_000_hour_rule_for_deliberate_practice_is_wrong_genes.single.html
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selmnoo
Oh my goodness this is the worst kind of bikeshedding imaginable. Mostly
people who know of the 10,000 hours rule don't embody it as being the cold,
hard, dry truth, everything is very complicated when you get really down and
dirty. But for most practical purposes, you bet that deliberate practice over
10,000 hours, instantaneous feedback, and expert instruction will bring you to
superb mastery for most skillsets. Of course, this is not the whole story,
genes undeniably matter -- but the reason we should ignore that is we cannot
control our genes. 10,000 hours rule is about us becoming really good at
something, it's pointless in this context to be nitpicky about the details
that don't help us. Please don't waste time muddying up 10,000 hour rule -- a
lot of people are starting to believe in it, that's so great, I want it to
remain this way.

Just one more thing: for the article to open up with something about chess
masters (Magnus), and then not mention Judit Polgar
[1]([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r))
-- _the_ strongest female chess player by a large margin, who is kind of a
product of the 10,000 hour rule (see wiki), is very strange. I want to
disregard the article almost entirely just because of this.

[1]: _Polgár was born on 23 July 1976 in Budapest, to a Hungarian Jewish
family. Polgár and her two older sisters, Grandmaster Susan and International
Master Sofia, were part of an educational experiment carried out by their
father László Polgár, in an attempt to prove that children could make
exceptional achievements if trained in a specialist subject from a very early
age. "Geniuses are made, not born", was László's thesis. He and his wife Klára
educated their three daughters at home, with chess as the specialist subject.
She is the first, and to date, only woman to have surpassed the 2700 Elo
rating barrier, reaching a career peak rating of 2735 and peak world ranking
of #8, both achieved in 2005. She has been the #1 rated woman in the world
since 1989 (when she was 12 years old)._

~~~
haberman
Your comment exasperates and frustrates me in much the same way as the
original article does for you.

The article is full of evidence for why the 10,000 hour "rule" isn't really
true at all. But you say you want people to believe it anyway. To me, there
are few things more grating than pop science that isn't true, but gets
repeated because it sounds good.

And the "10,000 hour rule" is worse than just a trivial factoid. It is a
recipe for disappointment. If you tell someone that, despite their initial
lack of talent, they can be "superb" at anything they want, and 10,000 hours
later they are still mediocre at best, don't you think it would be frustrating
to have wasted that much time?

I want people to dream, but also to know themselves and to be able to perceive
the difference between what comes easily and what doesn't. Achieving mastery
of something is a deeply satisfying experience; a person's best shot at that
is becoming acquainted for their real talents.

Judit Polgar is not "a product of the 10,000 hour rule." While it's true that
she devoted an extreme amount of dedicated practice, she also showed extreme
talents from a very early age. When she was five she defeated a family friend
at chess without looking at the board. I doubt she had practiced 10,000 hours
by then, or that most five year olds with a comparable level of instruction
could have done that. Actually I would seriously wager that even with 10,000
hours of practice I would not be capable of doing what she did at 5.

~~~
JeremyReimer
>And the "10,000 hour rule" is worse than just a trivial factoid. It is a
recipe for disappointment. If you tell someone that, despite their initial
lack of talent, they can be "superb" at anything they want, and 10,000 hours
later they are still mediocre at best, don't you think it would be frustrating
to have wasted that much time?

Are there any real-world examples that we can point at of people who actually
did spend 10,000 hours at something and did _not_ become superb at it?

In Malcolm Gladwell's book, he tried to find piano players who had spent
10,000 hours practicing and then given up (having never made it to the
professional scene) but he couldn't find any.

~~~
haberman
> Are there any real-world examples that we can point at of people who
> actually did spend 10,000 hours at something and did not become superb at
> it?

This is confirmation bias. If people plateau in their skill at 1k hours and
then stop such serious pursuit, the burden of proof is on you to say that
their gains would have resumed as they approached 10k hours.

I observe as a musician that most people plateau at some point.

~~~
JeremyReimer
> This is confirmation bias. If people plateau in their skill at 1k hours and
> then stop such serious pursuit, the burden of proof is on you to say that
> their gains would have resumed as they approached 10k hours.

Surely, though, out of all the people who reached 1k hours and thought about
quitting, there would be _some_ who decided to plod through and keep
practicing?

These people, as few in number as they might be, would eventually hit 10,000
hours of practice.

Why hasn't anyone found them and interviewed them?

In any pursuit, people will plateau all the time. It's the nature of practice.
You have to push through the plateau in order to get to the next level. Some
people decide that it's not worth it, so they stop. Are you saying that _every
single one of these people_ wasn't genetically talented enough to continue?

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kazinator
There is also the problem that not all 10,000 hour blocks of time are equal,
because there are efficient ways to practice and there are inefficient ways.

Everyone (non-piano-players too) should read C. Chang's book "Fundamentals of
Piano Practice".

[http://www.pianofundamentals.com/book](http://www.pianofundamentals.com/book)

There is a free PDF here:

[http://www.pianopractice.org/](http://www.pianopractice.org/)

It is quite fascinating reading. One of the main points is that to practice
effectively, do not waste your time playing pieces over and over again. A 50
bar piece might contain only one bar that gives you trouble. If you play the
piece over and over again, you will only encounter that bar 1 in 50 times. If
you just play that bar, you will be practicing the difficult part nearly 50X
faster.

You can use a metronome to identify "stress points". These show up when you
gradually increase tempo. Perhaps at 80 beats per minute, you can get through
the piece, but around 95 b.p.m. there are places where you start to fumble.
Those are the stress points to focus on.

Another fascinating observation or insight of the author is about speed. You
can play a run of several notes infinitely fast with ease: namely, just strike
them at the same time as a chord. There, infinitely fast! So it's actually the
in-between speeds that are troublesome; it's not true that difficulty strictly
increases with speed.

In fact, insanely fast phrases are actually played as chords, with staggered
timing. The hand comes down to play all the notes, but they are offset so they
start at different times.

He regards this backwards: start at infinite speed (playing the chord) and
then it's just a matter of slowing it down from there: stagger the notes so
they sound individually.

Pure genius!

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RickHull
I really wish people in general, and journalists specifically, had an
appreciation for the difference between what is necessary and what is
sufficient.

The 10k hour rule says that 10k is necessary. The article says the rule is
wrong because clearly 10k is not sufficient. What a waste of time and words.

~~~
m_i_s_t
Err... no? "chess players differed greatly in the amount of deliberate
practice they needed to reach a given skill level in chess. For example, the
number of hours of deliberate practice to first reach “master” status (a very
high level of skill) ranged from 728 hours to 16,120 hours." The article
implies at several points that the rule is neither necessary nor sufficient.

~~~
RickHull
The article argues only against sufficiency. Only if you believe that the 10k
hour rule is without exception -- that it's not a broad statement about what
is necessary for mastery in a broad range of fields across a broad range of
talent but instead a precise, ironclad threshold with no other determining
factors -- does the article imply anything about the necessity of a certain
number of hours.

Any one datum is questionable: How were the 728 hours tracked? Were some forms
of practice excluded? Is the _master_ designation in chess equivalent to the
elite mastery the 10k rule describes? Is this measurement for an extreme
talent outlier?

Neither the insufficiency argument nor the existence of outliers argument have
merit against the 10k hour rule, properly understood. One number cannot
possibly cover the range of fields, the range of talent, and the range of
practice measurements (hour tracking, practice quality). Might this single
number still be a broadly useful heuristic? I'm not sure, but this article
tilts at windmills unhelpfully.

~~~
m_i_s_t
There is little point in an argument for or against a supposed 10k rule. The
point is about the balance between genetics and practice, and the article
makes a cogent argument that the "10k camp" has overstated its case for
'practice' and understated the role of genes.

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wuliwong
>Pretending we have the same abilities perpetuates the myth that people can
help themselves if they just try hard enough.

This seems like an absurd conclusion. It is so generic. This issue with
abilities only really makes sense when you have a specific goal that requires
a specific ability or set of abilities to achieve. Generically concluding that
people cannot help themselves by trying harder is crazy. Sure, there are
specific cases but this conclusion is generic and therefore incorrect.

It seems that either I or the author really misunderstand this 10,000 rule. My
understanding was always that I cannot truly master something without 10,000
hours of practice. This is very, VERY different than saying I can master
anything with 10,000 hours. I believe my understanding is the popular take?

I always think of Harrison Bergeron when I read things like this.

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liquidise
Hyperbolic submission title, as the article never references the 10,000 hour
rule.

As for the "rule" itself, the 10,000 hour statement is not about perfection or
being the best. It is an estimation of the effort required to master a trade
or discipline.

~~~
tortoises
The author does reference the 10,000 hour rule here...

> These findings filtered their way into pop culture. They were the
> inspiration for what Malcolm Gladwell termed the “10,000 Hour Rule” in his
> book Outliers, which in turn was the inspiration for the song “Ten Thousand
> Hours” by the hip-hop duo Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, the opening track on
> their Grammy-award winning album The Heist.

~~~
ld00d
also, from the url:
malcolm_gladwell_s_10_000_hour_rule_for_deliberate_practice_is_wrong_genes

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lifeisstillgood
I am trying to wrap my head round this debate.

I think that underneath it we all hope that there is one thing everyone can be
truly world class at. And we hope we will find that thing for us. And that it
will be cool.

And yet with 7 billion of us, we shall have to niche down _a lot_ to get good.
To be in the top 1000 globally, we will have to choose between 7 million skill
sets. And with only 27,000 of job types in Soc2010 ( for example " 9244
Warden, patrol, crossing, school") I think we are going to have some problems.

Look at athletics. Here genetics plays an enormous part (Usain Bolt was born
to excel at sport) but deliberate practise also makes him fast. Yet there are
millions of people each year who complete intensive running regiemes, either
for formal marathons or just as "jogging".

These people achieve "mastery" of running - improved aerobic fitness,
stretched and improved muscles, an understanding of race conditions, of
weather and environment, awareness of traffic, a better understanding of their
own body as well. I have experienced all these things as runner and cyclist.

I am not "world class". But I am easily beyond merely competent in cycling.

And so I think we are setting the wrong goals. 10,000 hours of deliberate
practise sounds too pat too simplistic, but the idea that you can be world
class in anything without years of practise is almost oxymoronic.

So is "world class" what we mean by "mastery of a skill"? Perhaps we would be
better off with "beyond competent". The multiplication of genes and practise
is a powerful formula - but to be the very best is a near psychotic desire. To
be in the peloton is a good aim - but I simply think completing the course
without shame is a skill we can all learn with practise and one to be proud
of.

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tomsthumb
The study with the maternal vs. paternal twins addresses this somewhat, but it
still seems there is the unanswered question of whether or not "deliberate
practice" means the same thing for everyone.

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oAlbe
Here is a TEDx talk right about this topic.

[http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/The-First-20-Hours-How-to-
Lea...](http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/The-First-20-Hours-How-to-Learn)

In short it says that you just need 20 hours to become "proficient" (not
master) at something, anything. It's really worth watching.

~~~
pyoung
Thanks for this, I think this a really good antidote for the misconceptions
surrounding the 10,000 hour rule. Granted, this is still more 'pop science'
than actual science/research. And I think calling him 'proficient' with the
Uke, is a stretch, I think 'functional' is a better description.

For most of us, we are balancing jobs and real world responsibilities, and
can't afford to put in 40 hours a week for 5 years on the long-shot hopes that
we would one day be playing our instrument of choice in front of sell out
crowds in Carnegie Hall. Realistically, I could afford maybe 1 hour/day of
practice (and even that would be a bit of a stretch, probably closer to 3-4
hours/week) which would mean Carnegie Hall wouldn't happen for another 27
years. I think more than anything, the proliferation of the '10,000 hour rule'
was very depressing for me, as a small part of the enjoyment of practicing my
various hobbies comes from dreaming about the possibilities, and when you
break down the numbers, those dreams become highly improbable (i.e.
impossible).

I think a better 'rule' would be as follows, largely from my own anecdotal
experience and observations with a number of instruments, sports, programming,
and other hobbies:

10's of hours = functional; 100's of hours = proficient; 1000's of hours =
professional level; 10000's of hours = world class;

As is noted elsewhere in this thread, these numbers are highly variable and
dependent on genetics, previous experience, and practice strategies. But I
think this is a better way to frame skill acquisition, its a bit more friendly
and realistic. I would like to think that after a couple hundred hours of
practicing a new instrument, I would be good enough to jam out in front of a
small crowd in a shitty bar. And from my previous experience, that has
generally been the case.

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bluker
A more accurate title: _Genetics could play a part in mastering things..._

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StandardFuture
The numbers behind the 10,000 hour rule are kind of funny. If you worked 2
hours EVERY day on doing something (e.g. practice an instrument) it would take
you over 13 1/2 years to meet the 10,000 hour rule. But, the thing is (from
someone who plays multiple instruments), if you were to TRULY practice EVERY
day for 2 hours at piano you would gain tremendous mastery over the instrument
in less than half that time (e.g. 5-6 years). So, in my opinion, 10,000 hours
is actually excessive.

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flint
Duh. Clickbait.

