
The Expert in a Year Challenge - MichaelAO
http://www.experttabletennis.com/expert-in-a-year/
======
aidos
Related is The Dan Plan in which a chap is trying to become a pro golfer by
dedicating 10,000 hours to it (from zero experience) [1]. I seem to recall it
was after Malcolm Gladwell claimed that it takes that long to achieve mastery
in a discipline. Dan's almost at the 5 year mark now. I check back a couple of
times a year to see how he's getting on.

[1] [http://www.thedanplan.com](http://www.thedanplan.com)

~~~
taybin
It will be interesting to see how well Gladwell's claim stands up to empirical
testing.

~~~
stupidcar
What is it you imagine Gladwell's "claim" to be?

Because he's repudiated the idea that he or any other informed researcher
claimed 10,000 hours was some magic number, or that practice alone is a
substitute for talent: [http://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-
scene/complexity-and-...](http://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-
scene/complexity-and-the-ten-thousand-hour-rule)

It would have been more accurate to say "It will be interesting to see how
well a gross mischaracterisation of Gladwell's claim stands up to empirical
testing".

~~~
icushman
He probably imagines Gladwell's claim to be, and I'm quoting from Outliers,
"In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number
for true expertise: ten thousand hours." You'll note this unequivocally
contradicts the claim you just made.

That Gladwell later wrote a much, much less popular article for the New Yorker
in which he walked back that totally outlandish claim doesn't justify
indignation at people remembering what he wrote.

------
arca_vorago
“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man
who had practiced one kick 10,000 times.” - Bruce Lee

I think that attitude is how you get 'expert'. In the military for example,
you train your _muscle memory_ such that in combat, when your adrenaline is at
an all time high (no drug touches it IMO) your body just tends to do what it
needs to do because you have trained it so. This also ties in with Bruce Lee's
view on forms. You have to learn the form, and practice it, until you forget
it... if that makes sense.

The bottom line is that practice makes perfect. In todays world though, with
athletes who have the ability to do nothing but train, I think it's harder and
harder for a layman to compete. When I was a kid I went to the national junior
olympics without even trying. If I that same kid today, I doubt I could make
it past state.

------
Sprezzaturianna
Always sad to see this myth live on. It is simultaneously as self-evident as
it is nonsensical.

1) Yes you get better with practice 2) Some faster than others 3) Some with a
higher peak than others 4) It is neither necessary, nor sufficient with 10 000
hours effective practice (some win the world championship in high jump after
less than a year [Donald Thomas 2007], others will never become chess
champions, or even ranked among the top 10 000, after 30 000 hours' dedicated
practice) 5) Even the original study just put 10k hours as the AVERAGE
practice time for THOSE few that eventually became masters (i.e. were super-
talented), with a range of 3k-30k hours needed.

However, always good to see people wanting to expand their skill set through
dedicated work - admirable

(but has NOTHING to do with the fundamentally flawed 10k hr roule)

~~~
tonystubblebine
10,000 hours has got to be the least interesting concept in the body of work
around deliberate practice. But it is somehow the concept that is most widely
known.

I would love to know the psychology behind why that concept was so sticky
given that it seems self-evidently worthless to know where the theoretical cap
on self-improvement lies. I mean, how many things do we put 10k hours of
practice in to?

The much better concepts from this world are:

* The deliberate part of deliberate practice. There are very different qualities of practice. Tim Ferriss is making a living on hunting down concepts around minimum effective doses of practice and his third book (Chef) is very good for this. These are all essentially finding more effective ways to practice so that you get more out of each hour.

* The experienced non-expert as an explanation (and pejorative) for everyone who has 10,000 hours of experience but isn't very good.

* Difficulty: the ideal practice difficulty is uncomfortable, falling between trivial and demoralizing.

~~~
mfringel
The 10k hour concept is sticky/durable because it holds out hope.

The hope that you could be one of the best in the world if you just worked
hard enough.

The hope that it's not too late.

~~~
mbesto
Further, the reason the concept of 10,000 hrs is sticky/durable is because it
is:

1\. Actionable - As demonstrated in the blog post, there is a step-by-step set
of actions to be carried out.

2\. Authentic/Believable - No one doubts (without serious consideration) that
any expert hasn't spent 10,000 hours on their craft.

3\. Concrete/Measurable - It's a very specific amount.

4\. Relevant - It's known that it takes a lot of work to become an expert and
who doesn't want to become an expert?

5\. Simple

------
igonvalue
One of the most interesting things I've read (or listened to) about expertise
is a podcast interview with the author of _The Sports Gene_ [0].

> So in my second chapter I sort of tell a story I call the 'Tale of Two High
> Jumpers,' in which I sort of profile two high jumpers, one named Stefan
> Holm, who over the course of 20 years--and by his estimate, 20,000 hours--
> made incremental progress every year, to the point where he became one of
> the best high jumpers in the world. And then in 2007 he travels to the World
> Championships, and is met by a total unknown, a Bahamian jumper by the name
> of Donald Thomas, who just recently had started high jumping, basically
> because he had found out he was good at it on a lunchtime bet at his
> college. And so, Donald Thomas is closer to 0 hours, and Stefan Holm is
> closer to 20,000 hours. So they average 10,000 hours. But Donald Thomas
> actually wins that competition. And so I thought it was a good story to
> explain the fact that not only is there huge variation, but different
> athletes can get to the same place with both different biology and different
> training programs.

[0]
[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/09/david_epstein_o.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/09/david_epstein_o.html)

------
wodenokoto
Reminds me of Moonwalking with Einstein.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonwalking_With_Einstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonwalking_With_Einstein)

------
visakanv
There's a writer from Esquire who's basically made a living doing experiments
like this. He's written things like The Year Of Living Biblically [1] (self-
explanatory), The Know-It-All (he read all of Encyclopedia Britannica) [2],
and other experiments.

There are a lot of others who have done similar things. Matt Cutts from Google
does 30 day experiments. Karen X Cheng learned to dance in a year. There's
something about contained experiments that are quite compelling.

I'm doing my own version of this, as a writer. I'm working on writing
1,000,000 words [3]. I'm doing this in 1,000 sets of 1,000. I'm currently at
240.

760 to go.

–

[1] [http://ajjacobs.com/books/the-year-of-living-
biblically/](http://ajjacobs.com/books/the-year-of-living-biblically/)

[2] [http://ajjacobs.com/books/the-know-it-
all/](http://ajjacobs.com/books/the-know-it-all/)

[3] [http://visakanv.com/1000/](http://visakanv.com/1000/)

------
espinchi
Definitely, an inspiring story.

Comparing "how much of an expert" you can become after a full year of good
training in different activities would be a great experiment.

Anyone dares to create a ranking with some? (Say tennis, chess, web
development, ice hockey, ...)

~~~
Retric
I think this has a lot more to do with people’s expectations than inherent
difficulty. EX: Becoming a chess expert takes what?

~~~
komaromy
The US Chess Federation title directly below Master is Expert. It'd be a bit
more nebulous in other countries.

------
anu_gupta
And of course, there's _Dance in a Year_

[http://danceinayear.com/](http://danceinayear.com/)

------
rawnlq
One public dataset that I think people should analyze is how competitive
rating changes based on number of events you participated in.

For example, in programming competitions the history ratings of everybody is
public:
[http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=AlgoRank](http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=AlgoRank).

One of the most well known competitive programmers is probably tourist:
[http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=222...](http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=22263204&tab=alg).
He started at a rating of about 1200 when he was 12yrs old but took him over 5
years to increase it by 2000 points. For everyone that kept at it for equally
as long, you can see a similar trend in trajectory. The only difference is the
slope at which their ratings increase.

(The ratings probably mean nothing to you, so for some calibration, people
with a rating of about 1500 can easily pass a google interview, and I think a
fresh CS grad with no practice will probably start at around 1000. Which
probably gives hope to the average CS grad since even for the world's best, it
took them about 10 years to get to where they are.)

I just thought this was a nice way to quantify growth vs practice.

~~~
rawnlq
Here's a few more members from the top 10:
[http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=198...](http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=19849563&tab=alg)
[http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=227...](http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=22714443&tab=alg)
[http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=226...](http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=22689544&tab=alg)
[http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=228...](http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=22840511&tab=alg)
[http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=227...](http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=22709180&tab=alg)
[http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=227...](http://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=MemberProfile&cr=22708534&tab=alg)

They all started at a "green" or "blue" rating (i.e., no prior training) and
it took all of them a bit of time to hit "red", which is the arbitrary point
you can start calling them an expert.

------
nopinsight
I believe the number of hours required to become an expert depends on _both_
the nature of the field and the competition in it.

Although there are a lot of table tennis players in Britain, probably not too
many devote significant effort and time to master it. Thus, the effort
required to be in the top echelon is not that great. The same cannot be said
for, say, American Football in the US or soccer in many countries.

The 500 hours or so he spent on table tennis is woefully inadequate to master
mathematics as well, but for a different reason. (Mastering math requires
knowledge and skills on a huge amount of materials accumulated over
centuries.)

------
tokenadult
As is typical in most threads about this perennial topic here on HN, the
people who are most relaxed about putting in their hours of practice are the
people who are most relaxed about their definition of expertise. To be
indisputably an expert (to have, in K. Anders Ericsson's formulation,
statistically reliable superior performance) is not the work of a moment, no
matter how much "innate" ability one starts out with.

------
brosky117
I love the idea of becoming an expert at something in an unusually short
period of time. I felt like this article was entertaining and enjoyable.

That being said, in regards to the 10,000 hours discussion being had here, I
feel like the issue can be summed up as being a classic confusion of
correlation and causation. It is obvious that a master will have practiced
more than the apprentice but the practice itself is not the sole source of
mastery.

------
3327
I have a tennis version of this. EVery day makes a huge difference.

~~~
rickdale
You do? Can you share a little bit of your experience. I just did something
similar with tennis last summer and measured my improvement using the babolat
play stats. If you get the chance, check out Jeff Salzenstein. I improved and
learned more watching his videos and courses than I did in the last 7 years.
Just for example, from the play stats I was hitting 1 out of 4 forehands in
the center of my racket before I knew about Jeff Salzenstein, and in less than
1 month I was at 8 out 10 in the center. Would like to hear about your
experience though.

------
kushti
Reminds me "Balls of Fury" movie

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0424823/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0424823/)

------
easytiger
So flawed I don't know where to begin.

