
10,000 Hours of Practice Won’t Make You an Expert - AndrewDucker
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/05/so-you-know-that-10000-hours-makes-an-expert-rule-bunk/
======
TimPC
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.

~~~
ryanmolden
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.

------
dasil003
> _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.

~~~
austenallred
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.

~~~
hosh
Yes! Exactly!

The difference between attaining skill and "success".

------
MattGrommes
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
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.

------
buzzcut
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
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.

~~~
buzzcut
I see break dancing in your future!

Two points

1) That this seems intuitively obvious is precisely what I was referring to in
my post. This is a scientific question, to the extent it can be answered and
we should probably be unsatisfied with what appears to be obvious. The
research, as I understand it, just doesn't bear out your observation.

2) I think why people stick with something is a super fascinating question.
What's that all about? Why did you stick with programming and become good at
it? Why do I find the same tasks utterly soul crushing and frustrating to the
point of rage? Why do I persist in taking Latin as I am now? I've almost quit
half a dozen times when it's gotten really hard, but I don't quit. There is
something that keeps me coming back to it. I suck at it right now, but I'm not
quitting, in fact, I've been working pretty hard at it. So to me that's the
research I'd love to see: why do you stick with programming when I, despite
numerous attempts, just don't like it and give up on it easily?

~~~
AlisdairO
> This is a scientific question, to the extent it can be answered and we
> should probably be unsatisfied with what appears to be obvious.

That seems absolutely fair enough :-)

> The research, as I understand it, just doesn't bear out your observation.

The question is, does it contradict it, or does it just say nothing about it?

If the research suggests that all people have essentially the same level of
ability to learn all tasks (given enough application), I'd be surprised. We
know for a fact, for example, that IQ is quite highly heritable. Whatever you
think about IQ as a means for measuring 'intelligence', that certainly
suggests a genetic difference in the way people's brains work. That could at a
minimum affect people's ability to quickly pick up (and thus enjoy enough to
keep going with) new tasks, and at a maximum affect their ability to perform
the task at all.

Now, obviously I don't know for sure the answer to these questions :-). The
little research I've read in the past suggests that IQ is correlated with a
base ability to perform a given task at all, but once you have that base level
practise/application becomes the most important factor.

With respect to sticking with something, if natural talent isn't a thing that
exists, inherent desire to stick with something becomes the new natural talent
- after all, if someone finds programming fascinating it's always going to be
vastly easier/more likely for them to put in their 10,000 hours than someone
who has no such inclination.

------
haberman
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).

~~~
1337biz
_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_

I was thinking about that the other day as well and I believe it has something
to do with some form of goal oriented activity behavior. Or at least a
distinct process of continuously "rising the barrier". Otherwise it becomes
like saying "we are walking every day so why don't we end up all being
marathon runners when we turn 40".

In my view it takes a certain kind of competitive mindset that combines being
dissatisfied with ones own skill set and having an intrinsic motivation to
become better, adjusting the skillset to the top performers in the field and
at the same time portraying to the outside a level of confidence in the skill,
in order to reach the true heights of a pro.

~~~
ebrenes
Just as an anecdote, a friend started playing the guitar in high school and he
loved it and played constantly. However, he never reached a level at which he
could be considered an expert despite his incessant playing.

What did happen is he eventually hired an expert to teach him, and well into
his 30's he's improved his playing significantly, now that he's focused his
playing into actual practice. I think that's the key difference in this
discussion.

------
iandanforth
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"

------
cowls
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
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
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
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).

~~~
mion
"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.

------
tokenadult
_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>

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-
Practi...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Complexity-Greatness-Beyond-
Practice/dp/0199794006/)

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>

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>

"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."

~~~
thedufer
I agree with the first half of your comment - the "deliberate" in "deliberate
practice" is definitely necessary to understand what the 10,000 hour rule
means.

However, I think you take it too far at the end. To say that the nature half
of nurture+nature is unnecessary goes against a significant amount of
research. In sports, this becomes pretty clear. What are the odds that short
people never work hard enough to become good swimmers, for example? It seems
drastically more likely that nature has an enormous impact. 10,000 hours of
deliberate practice is necessary, but by no means sufficient, for success at
most sports.

It is less obvious in other domains, but there is still research to the effect
that some people simply aren't wired for certain things, just like short
people are can't swim at world-class levels. In HN's favorite domain,
programming, there is reason to believe that some people simply can't think in
the right way. Here's a reasonable article on the subject:
[http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/09/is-
it-...](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/09/is-it-true-that-
not-everyone-can-be-a-programmer/).

PG's lazy rule sounds good, but only in the absence of opposing evidence. It
behaves like Occam's razor - it leads in the right direction, but don't take
it for truth.

~~~
buzzcut
But your physical form w/r/t a sport isn't really a matter of controversy
since no one thinks a 5'7" person is going to become a basketball great,
although it's not totally impossible <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spud_Webb>

But even in athletics it's more about the type of practice as shown by this
study of swimmers: [http://www.lillyfellows.org/Portals/0/Chambliss-
Mundanity%20...](http://www.lillyfellows.org/Portals/0/Chambliss-
Mundanity%20of%20Excellence.pdf)

What I mean is, of course there is "natural talent" in being 6'7" that pushes
you towards one sport and away from another, but that's not that interesting I
don't think. What's interesting are those things-- chess, music, writing, film
making, etc.-- that aren't tied to physical types, and so far the evidence
seems to be that talent is largely a myth.

Now, the interesting question you raise is why do some people keep going and
others give up.

~~~
thedufer
> What's interesting are those things-- chess, music, writing, film making,
> etc.-- that aren't tied to physical types, and so far the evidence seems to
> be that talent is largely a myth.

Its not clear to me that you actually read what I wrote, since I addressed
this exactly, albeit in the domain of programming. There is significant reason
to believe that, at least in that domain, talent is innately important in the
same way that physical structure is in sports - that is, that it can eliminate
a majority of people (but doesn't really differentiate between the significant
minority that remains).

~~~
buzzcut
Oh I read it, but since it was confined to programming only, leaving out the
vast domain that is the rest of the world, and with the weight of evidence so
far is on the other side, it didn't seem as interesting to me. In addition to
the possible methodological problems mentioned in the Ars article. In any
case, the state of the evidence, always subject to revision of course, is that
innate talent is largely not in play.

------
6cxs2hd6
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.

------
gyardley
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
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.

------
eranki
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.

------
ctdonath
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.)

~~~
bitonomics
He is about half there in terms of time and is getting pretty good.
<http://thedanplan.com/>

------
dxbydt
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 ?

------
bradfordarner
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.

~~~
mion
This. I feel like clapping somewhat like this:
[http://24.media.tumblr.com/7e5dfa0b74481478ee0953944bbc502f/...](http://24.media.tumblr.com/7e5dfa0b74481478ee0953944bbc502f/tumblr_mkvnfgvf081rt89d7o1_500.gif)

------
Felix21
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...

------
ChuckMcM
I'm surprised he didn't mention <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
She.

~~~
asciimo
He and she. Temple Grandin and Richard Panek.

------
forgotAgain
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.

------
sireat
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>), 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
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.

------
robomartin
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.

------
mojuba
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.

------
qzxt
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.

------
precisioncoder
"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.

------
bitonomics
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).

------
breadbox
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.

------
hosh
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.

------
kamaal
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.

------
31reasons
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.

------
danielharan
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.

------
Xingtao
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.

------
vickytnz
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>

------
shawkinaw
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?

------
shakeel_mohamed
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
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.

------
ChrisAntaki
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.

------
dschiptsov
"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.)

------
gboudrias
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.

------
darkpicnic
Anecdotal drivel.

------
gwgarry
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
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>

Derek Sivers review:

<http://sivers.org/book/HowToGetRich>

