
The 10,000-hour rule is wrong and perpetuates a cruel myth - dannylandau
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-10000-hour-rule-is-wrong-and-perpetuates-a-cruel-myth-2017-3
======
paulpauper
Gladwell did a bait and switch, in his book first ignoring the role of talent,
and then when pressed for more details, clarifying that the 10,000 hour rule
applies to those who already have talent but then practiced 10,00 hours to
hone such talent. [http://greyenlightenment.com/malcolm-gladwell-bait-and-
switc...](http://greyenlightenment.com/malcolm-gladwell-bait-and-switch/)

I think the amended version of '10,000 hours' is closer to being correct, and
probably not the one the public wants to hear.

Ericsson's research isn't much better either though. His sample size was very
small and his research was never replicated. As the 'how I taught myself
physics in one year' thread showed, it's pretty obvious innate talent exists
and can allow people to attain mastery of very complicated concepts in far
less than 10,000 hours.

Not sure it is a cruel myth...more like wishful thinking that can have
unintended consequences by mismanaging resources (such as having low-IQ kids
in prestigious schools, in the hope that environment will overcome a cognitive
deficit)...if it were so cruel, it would not have taken the world by
storm...'10,000 hours' succeeds as a meme because it tells people what they
want to believe, that with enough practice, anyone can covet the skills of
genius. It's not so much that people want to become world-class musicians or
top physicists, but rather that they have the potential to become those things
if they want to, by practicing enough.

~~~
Swizec
I'm sure you can attain mastery in anything by practicing for 10,000 hours.
Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.

The caveat is that you will not be the best. You might not even be world
class. Or even national class. But you _are_ going to be better than somebody
who practiced only 1,000 hours no matter how talented they are.

What people forget is that at the very high levels of achievement in any
field, 20,000 hours is just the price of entry. _Everyone_ who's playing has
practiced for 20,000 hours. Difference between 1st, 2nd, and 10th comes down
to talent and a bit of luck.

~~~
bryanlarsen
From the article, "For example, the number of hours of deliberate practice to
first reach "master" ranged from 728 hours to 16,120 hours." And given that
this excludes everybody who gives up before reaching master, I believe the
real gap is much wider.

------
chpmrc
This assumption that you either excel at something or you should just do
something else is as dumb as saying that you either become a billionaire or
you might as well live on the streets.

Just because marketing the top 1% is easier doesn't mean the rest is crap.
Just because you won't be the next Bill Gates doesn't mean you shouldn't start
(and enjoy building) your own software company.

Even the 10k hours theory doesn't explain why some people can practice for so
long but others can't. So, clearly, we all start at different positions in
life.

~~~
wvh
I agree, and I'd like to add that what one does with/after those 10000 hours
matters too, i.e. the individual factor. There's not just a large range
between all-or-nothing, but there are many different "alls" too.

As an example: I am a good guitar player. I've put in probably close to 10000
hours. But lots of guitar players can play and come up with things I never
could. And lots of guitar players can't play or come up with some of the
things I can.

There simply isn't one sort of top guitar player, or composer, or inventor.
There are lots of ideas, shades and colours, different solutions to all sorts
of problems. It helps to know your area of expertise, but a truckload of Bill
Gates / Bach / Rembrandt clones wouldn't be able to come up with all the novel
ideas and creative solutions a more diverse set of people with their own
individual quirks could.

Individuals bring things to the table that can't be put that easily into a
quantifiable number; most real life problems are more complex in nature than
an Olympic race where there's a clear winner and way to win. I think it's at
least as important in life to find out in which ways you are unique and can
make (some modicum of) a difference.

~~~
saalweachter
Feynman told a story about his "one extra trick". He ascribed a certain amount
of his mathematical prowess to simply knowing an uncommon integration trick
that most of his colleagues did not. So when they failed to solve an integral,
they would bring it to him, and some of the time, using his one extra trick,
he would solve it, dazzling everyone.

Which is not to say that his one extra trick was particularly powerful, or
widely applicable, but it was unusual, and it produced a difference in
ability. Maybe Feynman couldn't solve _more_ integrals than his colleagues,
but he could integrate _different_ ones, which made him useful and "smart".

Which in turn brings up the nature/nurture question of genius: to what extent
is genius a matter of "innate" skill (in this case, that arises either from
the circumstances of your birth or life) and how much of it is a quirk of your
education, the one extra trick you learned (or didn't) that make you approach
problems in a way different than your peers?

~~~
theoh
This is a good story, and it's worth noting that Feynman reiterated the idea
of building a repertoire of techniques or problems in several different ways.

Here are two:

The way to excel in physics, according to Feynman, was to have several
unsolved problems in the back of your mind, waiting for new information to
spark an insight.

Feynman reports that fraternity kids at the university he attended would be
taught slick answers to classic questions like "why does a mirror reverse left
and right but not up and down" \-- a kind of repertoire of responses that was
part of their initiation.

Creativity doesn't come out of nowhere, it's a cumulative thing.

------
cyberferret
I am always intrigued by the 10KH argument. Here's my story - I just turned 50
last year. Been programming for nearly 35 years of that time. Not just 10,000
hours here - I think we are talking well over 1,000 individual applications
and utilities over that time.

Do I consider myself one of the best at my profession?? Not even close.
Probably wouldn't even rate myself in the top 1/3rd of the worlds programmers.
I've met guys who have been alive less time than I have been programming who
can run rings around me, code wise.

I also play guitar, been doing so for longer than I have been programming, but
I am a very stop/start type of player. Sometimes I will play guitar for 1 to 2
hours per day for a month or two straight, then I will put the instrument away
for a year or more and not touch it because of things like a new baby arriving
in our family, or work commitments etc.

When I don't touch the guitar for a while and come back to it after a long
break, I am like a beginner again. I cannot remember any of the melodies that
I had studied so hard even a few months before, and I feel like I am a newbie
learning again. After a long spell of consistent, deliberate practice (as
Gladwell expounds), I feel as if I am playing at a normal level again. [0]

Is that really what the 10K hours are about? Simply keeping the muscle and
neural memory current, flexible and able to translate intentions quicker? It
makes sense that constant practice keeps the fingers deft, and ensures your
brain synapses are focused on the task of playing, rather than getting
distracted with a million other things.

[0] - [https://soundcloud.com/cyberferret](https://soundcloud.com/cyberferret)

~~~
vidarh
My sons violin teacher made the point to him after observing him practice
(paraphrased):

"What you are doing is playing, not practice. When you play through a piece
like that, you spend most of your time on the bits you already know, and just
a little time on the parts you find difficult, and you end up not repeating
the hard parts very often. To practice, you should stop when you find
something difficult, and repeat that part until you can do it well, and _then_
move on to the next."

You will improve through simple repetition (edit: of a whole piece, or
anything else where you know large parts of it well), but you will waste a lot
of that time cementing things you already know very well.

And this is what marks the difference between time spent "executing" work in
an area and practice in an area. Reaching the top in most areas will for most
people mean shifting the balance between amount of time worked in that area
and the amount of time spent on deliberate practice towards more deliberate
practice and less towards performing.

~~~
joshuaheard
That's very insightful. It's not the time you spend on something, it's the
time you take working through the hard parts that determines success. I read
before that they believe character determines success more than talent, with
perseverance being the most desirable character trait. Your idea aligns nicely
with this.

------
ktRolster
I think this paper should be linked to on every story like this:
[http://cogprints.org/656/1/innate.htm](http://cogprints.org/656/1/innate.htm)

The worst is when people give themselves excuses and say, "I don't have
natural talent, I can't learn math." Well sure, if you don't have natural
talent you might not be Paul Erdős, but you can still get through calculus.

~~~
ralux
Something that strikes out in the BI article is the separation of children on
schools given their profile. Major advancements happened at the crossing of
domains. Interesting perspectives were brought to a domain by people from
other fields, thinking differently. User interfaces for instance, use cases
for technology.

------
dibstern
This article doesn't clarify that the exceptional students who had completed
approx. 10,000 hours of deliberate practice were only 20 years old. It was
said that violinists had only truly mastered the instrument by 30-40, by which
time they had far more than 10,000 hours of practice.

Gladwell misquoted Ericsson. Read Ericsson's book, Peak. Get your facts right.

~~~
igouy
Let's read the Ericsson's short correction:

[https://www.salon.com/2016/04/10/malcolm_gladwell_got_us_wro...](https://www.salon.com/2016/04/10/malcolm_gladwell_got_us_wrong_our_research_was_key_to_the_10000_hour_rule_but_heres_what_got_oversimplified/)

------
paulpauper
_The second reason we should not pretend we are endowed with the same
abilities is that doing so perpetuates the myth that is at the root of much
inaction in society — the myth that people can help themselves to the same
degree if they just try hard enough.

You're not a heart surgeon? That's your fault for not working hard enough in
school! You didn't make it as a concert pianist? You must not have wanted it
that badly._

But the problem is, telling someone who aspires to be doctor or some other
high-IQ profession that they shouldn't try, because they aren't smart enough,
may also seem cruel, so we settle on what we perceive to be lesser of two
cruelties.

------
chillacy
Deliberate practice won't make you top 1% material in most things, since at
higher levels everyone's working hard and genetically gifted. But it'll get
you pretty far assuming you don't have any physical disadvantages (like being
quadriplegic and wanting to be a kickboxer).

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
I would guess that you can be top 1% of the _general population_ in most
things (and probably even like 5% of the field) just by trying really hard.

I mean, you're likely in top 6-7% of football players just by being on your
high school's team. (1mil football players in HS, 15mil students; random
Google numbers)

I would guess with effort, and I mean a lot of effort, pretty much anyone
could make top 20% of a high school team. That puts you in 1% land.

The NFL has an average career length between 3 and 6 years, and has under 2000
players. So it's only 0.2% of high school players, or 0.01% of the population.
(I just pretended average career length was 4 years, so it lines up with a
translated HS cohort.)

This sort of makes sense: you can make 5% relatively easily, and 1% with
serious effort. But top of the top professionals are 1 in 10,000, and to be
that good you have to make it your life's work (plus it helps to be
genetically predisposed).

Ed: Just wanted to add, to be top 1% of the NFL means, literally, you're one-
in-a-million.

~~~
vanderZwan
> _I mean, you 're likely in top 6-7% of football players just by being on
> your high school's team._

Not being from the US, I thought you were talking about soccer for a second,
and your number did not make any sense at all. But that only confirms your
point, in a way: if everyone does something, being part of the top would be
much more difficult.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
From the rough numbers I could find in a FIFA document, if you even _play_
soccer by their definition, you're in only 4% of global population.

That includes schools, street football, and occasional players. If you drop
the occasional part? About 2% of global population. That's still including
schools and street games, corporate teams, etc.

So, just playing with any seriousness puts you in the top 2% of global
population for soccer.

If you're a _registered_ player, it cuts the number down to 1 in 4. So about
0.5% of global population. Im not sure registered players are, as a rule,
better, but someone who is a serious player and registered stands a good
chance of being top 1% globally -- something I think anyone with effort could
do.

Being a professional soccer player puts you at about 1 in 100,000 _globally_ ,
and 1 in 1,000 of people who play more than occasionally. (And 1 in 2,000 of
people who play at all.)

I suspect that this is because I only looked at the NFL, which would be more
like only top-tier teams, not all professionals.

The point being: the numbers actually are pretty darn close, and soccer seems
to confirm my point about top 5% being relatively doable and top 1% being just
effort.

------
hardwaresofton
Could people stop just reading one thing and then living their lives by it?

Whether it's Myer's Briggs, or 10,000 hour rule, or some other self-help book
with a reasonable premise -- I feel like most of the time it's just some
reasonable premise taken to an extreme.

Yes, if you want to be good at something, you'll have to practice a lot. Yes,
practicing mindfully is better than just putting in hours. Yes, there are
different kinds of people and you can (sometimes) broadly characterize them. I
find it hard to respect people that read points like those, take them to the
extreme, and then it becomes their sole mindset for 6/12 months until the next
thing comes along.

~~~
Clubber
The quickest path to success is having rich relatives and friends. Everyone
should just pursue that.

All joking aside, even if they are placebos (and Myer's Briggs certainly is),
whatever it takes to motivate people towards excellence to me would be a
positive.

~~~
LanceH
Ten thousand hours of deliberate practice is hardly a placebo.

~~~
Clubber
It is if it doesn't actually solve the problem it is being sold to solve.

------
deepnotderp
I have a chronic quarrel with psychologists who talk about advancements in
science, technology and math from an ivory tower of the social sciences and
not from the trenches. Far too many discoveries happen as a result of
serendipity and/or hard work. As Terence Tao said, you might not be as smart
as grothendieck,but you can still make your own advancements in your corner of
math.

------
justforFranz
This either/or between effort and genes is ridiculous. Isn't it possible that
something interesting is happening between those 10,000 hours? Isn't is
possible that successful families not only instill success in their offspring
through special training, but also suppress success in other people's
children? Nobody here is talking about the role of tripping your opponent as
he approaches the finishing line, or of the first born queen bee murdering her
rivals before they're born. We're far too focused on positive attributes of
competition.

------
yborg
2014 article, and the pushback on Gladwell's book began almost as soon as it
came out. I think there is a certain level of misunderstanding the argument he
makes, in that it is assumed that the person engaging in the practice meets
the minimum requirements for the activity. If you can't amass enough muscle
mass, no amount of practice will make you into an NFL lineman. The problem is
that in more complex activities or in areas of aesthetics like the arts, what
the required level of talent to attain a high level is hard to quantify or
recognize.

~~~
Marazan
Matthew Seyd (the Author of _Bounce: The Myth of Talent_ ) absolutely makes
the argument that there is not minimum requirements for an activity by denying
any form of genetic predisposition (or 'talent') for any activity.

He puts skill at any activity, from 100m sprinting to fine arts, down purely
to practice and does some amazing logical fallacies to get there.

~~~
ktRolster
_He puts skill at any activity, from 100m sprinting to fine arts, down purely
to practice and does some amazing logical fallacies to get there._

How does he deal with the fact that certain body types are more conducive to
sprinting? Or does he just ignore that altogether?

~~~
goatlover
Yeah, because there's literally nothing 99.99% of people on Earth can do to
get them close to Usain Bolt's physical advantages as a sprinter. Sure, he had
to work hard to maximize his ability, but that work plus his freakish body
means smashing 100 and 200 meter records.

~~~
ktRolster
That's a thought worth discussing, but you didn't answer the question at all.

------
skywhopper
I haven't read Outliers, but I've always understood the "10,000 hour rule" as
a means of expressing the fact that all meaningful skills take years practice
to truly become an expert. It's _necessary_, but not necessarily sufficient.
Did Gladwell actually assert that 10,000 hours is sufficient for anyone to
become an expert at any skill in Outliers? Or is that just a convenient way to
misinterpret the book and the rule to be able to write snarky articles like
this one?

~~~
ctdonath
Having read Outliers, I understood the "10,000 hour rule" as a rule of thumb
for what it takes to go from zero to meaningfully better than most people on
pretty much any given subject (aka: an expert).

Subsequent to reading the book, I do notice that the rule is also widely used
as a convenient way to deliberately misinterpret the book & rule and write
snarky articles. Somehow people think it's clever & fair to take a single
phrase out of a multi-hundred-page context and ridicule it for not inherently
being encyclopedic in depth and peer-reviewed.

Undiscussed is that the "outliers" the book investigates are people who
_started_ with "10,000 hours", having achieved that level of practice when
most competitors (themselves forming a tiny segment of the general population)
are just _beginning_ their 10KH. Also, they tend to do so when the rest of the
field is just beginning to form. Bill Gates had his 10,000 hours in _before_
starting college - and did so just as the "personal computer" was starting to
emerge. The Beatles had their 10,000 hours in _before_ leaving high school -
and were ready when mass-distribution music + rock & roll were emerging as the
norm. To wit: it takes 10,000 hours practice (that's working on the hard
stuff, not the familiar/easy) to become an expert; it takes having done that
_before_ that expert's peers to become an outlier.

------
guest234
Reality is cruel too :(. While I am persuaded by the idea that nature may be
as important or more so than nurture I don't agree with much of what this
article says about politics, social engineering, etc. It says the 10k hour
myth is cruel, but bucketing people into categories and then postulating on
their potential contribution on the basis of science as dubious as the 10k
hour rule is more so.

------
Ellahn
Assumes Correlation and Causation, ignores Social and Economic situations of
the twins groups, doesn't account for the fact that identical twins tend to
share (being geared towards) more experiences due to being perceived almost as
a single "being", ignores cultural differences in upbringing of different-
gender twins, doesn't account for indirect training (i.e. strategy,
memorization, sequential steps etc. are parts of a Chess game), doesn't
account for perception of time (Time passes slowly when we don't like what
we're doing) and completely ignores training "quality" (Playing chess against
newbies is useless as practice, playing against masters is enlightening).

It's ALSO not your "fault" that you do not excel at something. Your
experiences ever since you were a baby shaped you, your tastes and pretty much
determined your whole life.

Still, there is no talent, ask any great programmer, musician, illustrator or
whatever, every single one of them will say he/she was shitty, but loved it,
so kept doing it. This doesn't completely discards the possibility of genetic
disposition to liking something, but undeniably everyone starts on even
ground.

Obviously, being complex areas they are affected by many indirect skills, and
the more something is loved, the safer it is to assume the indirect skills
involved are also loved or at least liked, indirect skills matter. Clearly
fiddling with computers and watching movies that involve technology is not
programming, but will make you better at it.

In the end, the best explanation so far is that your tastes are the defining
factor. And yes, it can be argued that tastes are genetic, but currently
there's not nearly enough data to debunk the standing theory, we need more
studies and we need better studies, taking all variables into account and
actually monitoring the subjects throughout their lives.

Maybe in 50 years we'll find out where our tastes come from. Not that it
actually matters since it's out of our control anyways.

~~~
JackMorgan
I've got over a decade of deliberate and intense study and practice in
programming. I love it and I love learning new things about it. I've worked in
half a dozen professional languages and over a dozen for fun. I give
conference talks and have two books out. And yet several people I work with
can absolutely run circles around me due to much better long and short term
memory. For every hour I put in, they can get farther with ten minutes. I only
hold my own in the same league as them with 5x more effort. It's absolutely
possible that there is a "wet-ware" component to mastery.

~~~
Ellahn
And you probably run circles around a lot of people. If anybody said you were
gifted it would be a lie, it's the result of dedication. I've never seen
anyone say "I have talent", and I've been to music and computer science
colleges. I've seen a lot of people saying that other people have talent
though.

But my point is not that everyone faces the same hardships, is just that those
hardships or lack thereof are not genetic but acquired, probably mostly during
early childhood but I'm not a psychologist so I don't know.

I just think we shouldn't dismiss achievements as a result of just talent (or
luck). Luck actually plays a role, as well as many other things (As I said,
economic and social situations and a lot more).

We just need to be sceptical of linking stuff to genes, humans are not so
simple. There are many other factors at play, and even if we can't change
ourselves, we may be able to raise our kids better by considering these
subtleties and their possible impact.

Plus those "geniuses" love when people acknowledge their hard work, try
talking to them about it. I find the amount of effort some people put into
their craft to be staggering.

------
CoVar
I think there is some nuance that is missed when performing studies that
compares hours practiced to mastery. I'm currently reading a book called A
Mind for Numbers (the companion book for the popular MOOC on Coursera called
Learning How to Learn) and what I am realizing is that not everyone practices
or studies the most optimal way.

"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. This means that one player needed 22 times more deliberate practice
than another player to become a master."

Maybe those 728 hours were more efficient and effective deliberate practice
than the 16,120 hours.

Edit: the book is called "A Mind for Numbers", not "A Mind for Math"

~~~
spdionis
So we can accept this as probably true but we are not willing to accept that
10x programmers exist?

~~~
Eridrus
Even if someone is 10X better in the abstract, real world problems may not
show much of a difference. It doesn't matter who is 10X better if you're
playing football against toddlers. And most programming falls into this
category.

It sort of shows through all the complaints about interviews, most programming
work is just not difficult enough to separate people, so anything that does
needs to be scorned.

------
veritas3241
I'm pretty sure that Malcolm Gladwell clarified his position on the 10,000
hour rule during Tim Ferris' podcast [0]. He was saying that the 10,000 hour
rule was meant to clearly indicate that becoming successful requires a large
support system.

Which seems to make it easier to understand why kids who start really early
can become successful: they don't have to worry about all the things adults
have to. Conversely, it explains a little bit why being an adult makes it
harder to become world-class at something.

[0] [http://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-
gladwell/](http://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/)

------
ZoomZoomZoom
If the rule is wrong then it's really good news! At least for my mental state,
as I've spent countless hours practicing music in a span of 15 years and still
play worse than some of the self-taught beginners with 3-4 years of
experience. It's depressing and is already becoming an obstacle in motivating
to practice further.

If the rule stands, it means it's my fault: I'm not motivated enough, not
passionate enough, not smart enough to organize my practice routine. It's what
I'm thinking today and what hurts my self-esteem. If the rule's wrong that
would be a relief, as it means it's not _completely_ my fault.

------
paulsutter
"There are certain things that writers and critics prize, and readers don’t.
So we’re obsessed with things like coherence, consistency, neatness of
argument. Readers are indifferent to those things" \- Malcolm Gladwell

------
morgante
Gladwell never claimed that we're all given equal potential though. Most of
the book is focused on the gains from deliberate practice amongst those who
_already_ are genetically set up to succeed. In fact, a central point is about
how practice helps to amplify those initial advantages not diminish them.

~~~
goatlover
Seems like at first he was saying talent was mostly a myth, and then backed
off a little when challenged and said that talent matters some, as a
prerequisite or what have you. But I've heard him on the radio talking about
how Wayne Gretzky was the best ever at his sport not because of talent, but
because of love of the game. Apparently, Gretzky just loved hockey more than
anyone else. I guess there are no Rudy's in hockey.

------
zeveb
> But this information could just as easily be used to identify children with
> the least genetic potential for academic success and channel them into the
> best schools. This would probably create a more equal society than the one
> we have, and it would do so by identifying those who are likely to face
> learning challenges and provide them with the support they might need.

Sounds like Harrison Bergeron to me: why not invest those resources into the
best minds, who can increase the standard of living for all mankind, rather
than investing them only to raise folks to average?

Of course, in reality one would invest a little here and a little there, but
it _is_ a zero-sum game: every resource used to help the unintelligent succeed
is a resource not expended to help the intelligent exceed.

------
6stringmerc
My tongue-in-cheek response to the headline, in the context of guitar, make me
chuckle quite a bit:

"Exactly! 10,000 hours is far too few! More like 30,000 if you really want to
start covering all the different styles and techniques with competence!"

It's not always "What" a person practices, but also "How" a person does so.
Attention to detail, trying new things, learning from mistakes, reflection
when away from the hobby/interest. Far too many variables for any one-size-
fits-all perspective on Talent and Achievement, but in looking for
correlatives and "causation approximate" techniques, Practice certainly shows
up time and again.

------
twblalock
Malcolm Gladwell should not be taken seriously.

~~~
avinassh
why is that?

~~~
twblalock
He makes broad, oversimplified generalizations that are not supported by the
research he cites.

This is a problem with science writing in general, but Gladwell is especially
pernicious because he has a good writing style and good marketing.

------
n3on_net
Still, the concept of hard work beating talent without hard work is a very
powerful one. You won't be the best but after such dedication and hard work,
you will always achieve above average results in your area.

So, keep on hustlin!

------
bjterry
Perhaps society pays undue attention to things that can be improved with
10,000 hours of practice. There are many skills that could possibly be learned
only after more than 10,000 hours. Probably so few people have the dedication
that they remain niche pursuits or novelties. And things that require a lot
less than 10,000 hours aren't very impressive (driving, for example) because
lots of people learn to do them. Things that require about 10,000 is the sweet
spot for competition. Note that the examples are almost always competitive
situations or positional goods type situations.

~~~
taxicabjesus
> And things that require a lot less than 10,000 hours aren't very impressive
> (driving, for example) because lots of people learn to do them.

I just guesstimated that I spent maybe 7,500 hours (over 3.5 years) driving
around in a taxi. Towards the end of that period I started to notice things
that the other cars on the road would likely do, and point this out to my
passengers. "See that car? it's going to change lanes and that other guy is
going to have to slam on his brakes..."

Just the other day I was driving with my mother. Our light turned green, but I
saw that the car in the cross traffic couldn't see that his light had turned
red (on account of the sunset). I waited, and watched as he slammed on his
brakes. (Not especially impressive, just recent.)

There's something to putting in time on any activity. With regards to this
article postulating that "10,000 hours rule" doesn't matter... I think the
relevant saying is not "practice makes perfect", but "perfect practice makes
perfect". If you spend 10,000 practicing something wrong it won't be as
helpful as 1,000 hours practicing it right.

Bruce Lee said, "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I
fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."

------
tim333
The article and Gladwell rather skip over that a lot of success is down to
being better than the competition so the hours required should depend on how
good the competition is. So to be expert at the violin may take 10,000 hours
but being say a blockchain expert may take less as your competition haven't
been studying it since childhood.

"The amazing thing is we did so well while being so stupid. That’s why you’re
all here: you think that there’s hope for you. Go where there’s dumb
competition" \- Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's business partner.

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anothercomment
"For a pair of identical twins, the twin who practiced music more did not do
better on the tests than the twin who practiced less"

So this doesn't make sense - otherwise, why practice at all?

And indeed the article goes on to explain that the "music ability test" only
tested some things, like ability to read notes.

Maybe the scientists need to work on improving their measurement devices
first, before making sweeping claims about talent and practice...

~~~
rejschaap
Sounds like the law of diminishing returns to me. Practicing matters, but
there is some point where more practice will not yield a lot of result.

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mcguire
" _For example, yet another recent twin study (and the Karolinska Institute
study) found that there was a genetic influence on practicing music. Pushing
someone into a career for which he or she is genetically unsuited will likely
not work._ "

Out of curiosity, has anyone replicated this kind of genetic study for
professional musicians? It would be interesting to know how many just really
don't have the talent.

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sorenjan
Freakonomics did an episode about this where he interviewed both Malcolm
Gladwell and Anders Ericsson. I recommend listening to it to get their sides
of the story.

[http://freakonomics.com/podcast/peak/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/peak/)

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sitkack
I aim to be "ok" in about 20 hrs of deliberate practice. Hell the FAA says you
can fly plane in 40.

~~~
danblick
In this context "deliberate practice" means more than just "practicing on
purpose". The description here looks okay:

[http://expertenough.com/1423/deliberate-
practice](http://expertenough.com/1423/deliberate-practice)

However in Ericsson's book he puts more emphasis on guidance by an expert
teacher (who can help identify specific challenges appropriate to the
learner).

~~~
sitkack
> Analyzing a set of studies can reveal an average correlation between two
> variables that is statistically more precise than the result of any
> individual study.

I don't know what talent is. And just being good at something isn't it. If you
have the opportunity to sit and watch a lot of different folks "get
something", absolutely do it. Then talk to them about what just occurred. I
have this hunch that talent is having the mental model and the physical world
be sync such that any error in the mental model is instantly repaired. That
the person undergoing talent, is literally doing multiple experiments in the
moment with result times on the order of subsecond to minutes. They aren't
pushing skills in as much as playing. Skills build on skills, dancers,
athletes, musicians. We have all seen someone good in one thing instantly
pickup another and decry, "oh they are so talented!" They applied 100% of what
they already knew and added 1%. What they needed was already in their skill-
dna.

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guest234
Reality is cruel too I'm afraid :(. The article is probably right about the
importance of genes but I'm not sure I agree with anything else it says about
politics, social engineering, etc.

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abemishler
This TEDxCSU talk [0] is a couple years old but directly addresses the 10,000
hour claim.

[0] [https://youtu.be/5MgBikgcWnY](https://youtu.be/5MgBikgcWnY)

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MrFantastic
As an adult, i've found 100hrs of deliberate practice makes you fairly
competent in most hobbies.

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josephagoss
What does it mean to practice programming vs just programming?

~~~
unit91
Probably doing things for which you have little experience, or are bad at,
instead of just doing the day job. For example, I can write templates without
much thought, keep my functions small and well-named, etc. Extra practice
isn't going to get me very far in that regime. Reading about and designing
scaleable systems, or implementing efficient data structures, or practicing
problem solving in a recursive way will be much more fruitful for me
personally.

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mjevans
Site requires scripts to read any content on. I don't like running code from
random websites, so I don't. Can't comment on the article.

I will guess that the 'cruel myth' is that anyone can spent the requisite time
and do anything. (Some people just don't get / can't get X, even if they want
to and try really hard.)

~~~
Bioeye
The Business Insider article links this[0] one as the original article in the
footnote. It's very similar and also worth a read (and I think it shouldn't
require running code to be read)

[0]:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/09/malcolm_gladwell_s_10_000_hour_rule_for_deliberate_practice_is_wrong_genes.html)

