
New Study Contradicts Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 Rule - jamesbritt
http://www.businessinsider.com/new-study-destroys-malcolm-gladwells-10000-rule-2014-7?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_campaign=hootsuite
======
frobozz
This article suggests that Johansson is confusing commercial success with
mastery of a skill.

Mastery of a skill does not guarantee commercial or financial success, nor
does a lack of mastery guarantee failure. We see this in our own trade - just
because you're a mega awesome super-ninja rockstar software developer, it
doesn't mean the software you develop is actually worth billions. Summly, when
it was acquired by Yahoo, came in for a lot of criticism for being equivalent
to a crappy weekend project, but it made Nick D’Aloisio a heap of cash. I
doubt that he was master of his craft at the time.

Similarly, the number of beautiful autotuned popstars who, without their army
of producers and songwriters wouldn't even be fit to grace the stage in the
back room of a pub, vs the number of highly skilled musicians whose genre or
instrument lacks popular appeal or whose appearance makes them more suited to
the radio era, and whose biggest gig is a crowd of 50 in a provincial arts
centre.

Sid Vicious was in no way a master of the bass guitar, but his band enjoyed
success all the same, due to the intersection of their music and the
zeitgeist, and some good publicity work by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne
Westwood.

Richard Branson may now be a master of business, but he's also definitely had
his 10K hours. Had he already been masterful in the early days of Virgin
Records, perhaps Virgin Group would number 4000 companies by now and Virgin
Galactic would already be planning trips to Mars from their well-established
moon base. Who knows?

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

~~~
x1798DE
The article is about the degree to which deliberate practice helps you in
various fields, it's not actually about the specific 10,000 hour rule. The
thesis of the article is that, essentially, deliberate practice does not have
a large effect on your effectiveness in fields which do not have unchanging,
rigid structures (like games whose rules don't change).

As a rule, I reserve judgement about any "new study", but also as a rule I
think that anything Malcolm Gladwell says is bullshit, so I'm torn on this
one.

~~~
mathattack
False versus False?

Gladwell's paper was so explicit that I thought it couldn't possibly be true,
despite the niceties of "We'd like practice to be important"

The best programmers (and martial artists, and runners, and basketball
players) I personally know are the ones who practiced the most, but I've
struggled with causation and correlation. They generally got early head
starts, and kept plowing ahead.

~~~
baddox
The direction of causation is key. I think people with natural propensity
(what you might call "talent") are more likely to practice hard than those who
struggle to see results from their practice.

~~~
mathattack
Exactly why it's tough to tease apart.

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

See here: [http://thedanplan.com/](http://thedanplan.com/)

~~~
UweSchmidt
Thanks for the link, I love checking up on his progress from time to time.

Small note, he seems to have downgraded his goals though from "winning a PGA
tournament" [1] to "obtaining PGA tour card" [2]. Understandably, since the
former would be incredible hard, but still...

[1] [http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/dan-
mclaughlins-10000ho...](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/dan-
mclaughlins-10000hour-plan-become-a-pro-golfer-11232011.html) [2]
[http://thedanplan.com/about/](http://thedanplan.com/about/)

------
MrBuddyCasino
The 10000 hours rule might be bogus, but the examples given are unconvincing.
Sid Vicious not being able to play bass well means just that - hes not good at
it, probably because he didn't practise. That it didn't matter for him to
become successful is a different story.

Slash of G'n R fame practised very hard to get to his level by literally doing
nothing else from morning to evening.

~~~
spacec0wb0y
Yes. This. Sid Vicious was nowhere near world-class at the bass. He may be
world-class at playing up to the media and managing social situations. But
after seeing that example, I feel it made me believe more in the 10,000 hours!

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
Ironically, he may well have put in the 10,000 hours practicing those skills -
fashion, looks and charisma certainly take time to master.

------
prostoalex
The critique of the 10,000 rule is not new and here's what the author himself
posted in 2013

[http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2013/08/...](http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2013/08/psychology-
ten-thousand-hour-rule-complexity.html)

"I think that it is also a mistake to assume that the ten-thousand-hour idea
applies to every domain.

...

The point of Simon and Chase’s paper years ago was that cognitively complex
activities take many years to master because they require that a very long
list of situations and possibilities and scenarios be experienced and
processed. There’s a reason the Beatles didn’t give us “The White Album” when
they were teen-agers. And if the surgeon who wants to fuse your spinal cord
did some newfangled online accelerated residency, you should probably tell him
no. It does not invalidate the ten-thousand-hour principle, however, to point
out that in instances where there are not a long list of situations and
scenarios and possibilities to master—like jumping really high, running as
fast as you can in a straight line, or directing a sharp object at a large,
round piece of cork—expertise can be attained a whole lot more quickly."

~~~
Dewie
It's asinine to write about and promote such a result as "10,000 hours"[1]
when the result was really that it varies a lot from skill to skill. Using
some constant number like 10,000 gives _exactly_ the idea that there is some
hard-and-fast rule to the amount of time needed to practice in order to attain
some skill in some endeavour.

[1] Whether that was the author himself or the various people that that wrote
second/third hand articles about it.

~~~
PM_Tech
Does employment in a CS career mean that you must be prescriptive in every
aspect of your life?

The 10,000 hours is a rough guide to a general consensus of sporting and
professional pursuits.

It is not appplicable to _all_ people in _all_ walks of life.

Sometimes I fear for the sanity of coders; how do you people function without
technical specifications telling you what to do??

------
gwern
Fulltext:
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/182368464/2014-macnamara...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/182368464/2014-macnamara.pdf)

------
jqm
I always thought this "rule" sounded like something pulled completely out of
thin air.

Of course practice is necessary to become proficient, and lots of practice is
necessary to achieve mastery. But, the amount needed has to vary depending on
the person, and some people will never achieve mastery in some areas. There is
such a thing as native skill. And the inverse.

~~~
PM_Tech
Native skill is _largely_ a myth.

According to Matthew Syed in Bounce (a very good read) there are numerous
fields in which native or genetic skill is considered the norm (sports, chess,
math) but no studies support that hypothesis.

Conversely a number of studies actively disprove that native skill exists.
Ultimately, barring true genetic freaks (Michael Phelps wingspan for instance)
anyone could achieve any level of any pursuit with enought focussed practice
and a degree of luck.

~~~
Marazan
Matthew Syed's thesis is fundamentally challenged by reality. Certain
activities/sports have a clear bias towards certain body types (as a reductive
but clear example who would you favour to get an item off a high shelf
unaided, the 6 foot 4 inch tall person or the 5 foot 6 inch person?).

It _is_ true that training dominates 'talent'/'genetic biomechanics'. But, at
similar levels of training some other factor will play a part in determinnig
who is best, and at the elite end everyone is basically at the same levels of
training so 'talent'/'genetics' will be the deciding factor. There is a reason
why each discipline in pro-athletics seems to attract such a homogeneous
collection of body shapes and why the people who 'break the mould' are often
the most successful at the sport.

~~~
PM_Tech
It's not challenged by reality at all, you are just misunderstanding it
(probably because you have not read the book and probably because of my
terrible simplification).

You keep referring to talent. Which does not exist, has never been proven and
has been disproven numerous times by taking sportsman out of their chosen
sport but into a new sport requiring similar _talent_ and testing their
performance which is always sub-par and hovering around average.

The primary example used is table tennis players are famed for having
naturally quick reflexes. In every academic study, table tennis players
performed no quicker than average in any reflexes test and in some cases
performed worse than various random individuals from the street.

There are others but you should read the book before discounting a hypothesis.
I have read enough to convince _me_ natural talent is a myth; the equivalent
of a rain dance is the reason for rain.

~~~
Marazan
This is Syed's stawman, as I state - training is dominant over any innate
'talent' and there isn't anyone seriously engaged in the debate that disagrees
with this.

Hard work and dedication will make anyone _good_ at anything - no-one disputes
this. But Syed wants to apply this to the _elite_ level as well. The elite
level is where outliers live on an everyday basis

The studies he cites goes the wrong way to draw the conclusion that he wants
to draw - it's not about saying table tennis players have super quick reflexes
that apply generally it's that some people have super quick reflexes of a type
that apply to table tennis. So, whilst Table Tennis players' 'quick reflexes'
are clearly trained for the specific situation of Table Tennis rather than
being the results of having 'talented' generalist quick reflexes there will
be, in the pool of all of humanity, people who's natural bio-mechanic
disposition makes them have Table Tennis appropriate quick-reflexes. So if
that person applies hard work and dedication to Table Tennis then they will be
better than someone without the bio-mechanical advantage who puts in the same
hard work and dedication. But if they apply hard work and dedication to
another discipline that require fast reflexes they won't be any better as
their 'talent' doesn't apply.

I follow rugby, rugby is littered with players who were really good but who's
body could not take the strain of the training and broke down through the
effort. Clearly hard work and dedication alone was not enough for them - they
needed a body that could respond favorably to the punishment they were taking.

~~~
PM_Tech
You need to read the book, you disagreeing with the hypothesis with nothing to
back up your assertions other than your opinion.

Do you think human beings with super quick reflexes exist? That does not stand
up to scientific scrutiny. I fear we are at an impasse, you have your views
and it appears they preclude reading anything that challenges them.

Interestingly, I had similar views before reading the cited studies.

~~~
Marazan
No, I am saying that people have physiological maximums. No matter how hard I
train I am not going to become taller (or shorter), no matter how hard I train
my knee and ankles will only support a certain mount of force and torque I
cannot push past that (without suffering repeated and continual injury) - this
is law of the universe stuff.

At the level of becoming very good indeed these limits have no effect on
becoming better as you do not reach them, but at the elite level, at becoming
the best they do. Do you really believe that the guy who came 2nd to 7th in
the 2012 Olympic 100m sprint trained an appreciable, measurable, amount less
than Usain Bolt - with less dedication, application and rigour? Do you think,
say, Gatlin, Gaye and Bailyey trained in a worse environment less conducive to
success than Bolt?

Are you really saying you can go look Donnie MacFadyen in the face and say he
just didn't train with enough dedication?

~~~
PM_Tech
You are appealing to emotion.

Elite athletes are already outliers within the human race however within
athletics there are extreme outliers like Bolt and Phelps who have
astronomically rare genetic advantages. To be representative they need to be
discounted. Not even the Olympics is N number of Usain Bolts racing against
each other. It is N number + Usain Bolt.

Donnie McFayden may have trained as hard as he thought he could. That does not
mean he was in the optimum training environment, he apportioned his time
correctly or he trained with focus required to be better than he is. His
training habits may have become effective simply too late in his career (Maybe
he took training seriously at 8 years old but his competitors (in team and
other team) took it seriously at 4. Maybe he is absolutely outstanding but the
team failed him.

The factors are numerous. It might just be he is unlucky; his coaches didn't
recognise his brilliance or they played him out of position. The point is not
why is Donnie not the absolute _best_ in history. It is 'Can _anyone_ with the
basic requirements reach the level of playing international rugby with the
right focus and training and luck - the answer is yes, yes they can.'

They literally just have to want it enough and have the resources (time,
money, family, coaches) in place to achieve it.

Anyone can be a Chess Grandmaster with enough study. Proven by Laszlo who
specifically taught his children chess _in order to prove geniuses are made
/trained, not born."

[http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200506/the-
grandmast...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200506/the-grandmaster-
experiment)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r)

Also proven by the Williams sisters whose father _decided* they would be
tennis champions and worked them mercilessly towards that goal using any
equipment to hand. Unless your hypothesis is that -

Two genius tennis prodigies were born with the gifts required to be a tennis
prodigy and their father just happened to settle on the sport of Tennis? I
think those odds are considerably more unlikely than "anyone can be a Tennis
champion with the basic requirements and dedication which is what the Williams
sisters had."

~~~
Marazan
You are literally accepting my premise and then telling me I am wrong.

If you accept that Usain Bolt is a astronomically rare genetic freak (which
you just have) then you accept that some people have innate genetic factors
that make them better at a sport than others.

Because people exist on a continuum and not in discrete boxes that means for a
given subset of people, some people in that group have innate factors that
advantage them over others in a particular tasks, just not at the extreme
level of Phellps.

That means some people have 'talent', or as I like to say physiological
factors that give them greater maximum potential.

~~~
PM_Tech
Not quite. You are focussing on 1 in 6 Billion type athletes and discounting
the 99.9999%.

The Olympics is not full of Usain Bolts. It is professional athletes AND Usain
Bolt. Unless you think none of the other 100metre runners are professional
athletes because they don't reach Bolts performance?

------
audeyisaacs
God I hate how people parrot that 10,000 hours rule.

I doubt this study will do anything to stop those people though.

------
xname
This article is total bullshit.

"practice accounted for just a 12% difference in performance in various
domains" is not contrary to "10,000 hours of deliberate practice are needed to
become world-class in any field".

For example, A) 10,000 hours of deliberate practice are needed to become a
professional chess player, B) practice accounted for just a 12% difference in
performance in professional chess. A and B can both be true at the same time.

~~~
gwern
And yet, (A) is simply not true, see the other mentioned study of chess
players in the fulltext, a previous study involving Hambrick which found many
top players falling short of 10k and many inferior players exceeding 10k, for
a net explained variance of not-that-much.

~~~
mckeygeeky
I believe that Gladwell was merely suggesting that talent is not innate and
the difference is somebody's ability was due to the amount of time they put
into it.

The top players might have spent several hours on a related field, like what
futsal is for football.

~~~
gwern
> I believe that Gladwell was merely suggesting that talent is not innate and
> the difference is somebody's ability was due to the amount of time they put
> into it.

Neither is true. Everything is heritable, as the behavioral geneticists like
to say, and increasingly the genetics are being defined and nailed down; and
the latter is completely refuted by the OP study and the previous Hambrick
study - time spent on a field has only a weak relation with results.

> The top players might have spent several hours on a related field, like what
> futsal is for football.

Chess players study chess. There is no related field from which meaningful
transfer will happen - at the top levels of chess, the problems are only about
chess.

~~~
PM_Tech
Can you give an example of a _" talent"_ that you think is heritable?

I ask because inherited talent is a myth.

~~~
DanBC
> Can you give an example of a "talent" that you think is heritable?

Long distance running.

~~~
PM_Tech
Nope.

------
calinet6
The idea is not the 10,000 hours; it is the mastery they represent.

------
stevesunderland
does anyone still take Gladwell seriously?

~~~
cpayne
He's a writer, and his business is to write books that people want.

I love his work! Similar to Dilbert's Scott Adam's books. After reading them,
I don't walk away thinking "you weren't 100% correct, therefore I am going to
ignore everything else you've said".

I find both authors highly entertaining. I think both would happily bend the
truth if it helped the spirit of the work sound better.

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

------
zmjones
Meta-analysis is usually suspect.

~~~
scribu
Why?

~~~
pjscott
I can think of three main suspicions to keep in mind when evaluating the
credibility of a meta-analysis:

1\. Are the studies it analyzes picked with a bias? For example, if you're
looking for meta-analyses of the effects of gun control on crime, and one was
published by the National Rifle Association and the other came from the
Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, then you might as well just throw up your
hands and go home, because each will probably have suspiciously convenient
criteria for what constitutes a reasonable study worthy of inclusion in their
meta-analysis.

2\. Do the studies themselves suffer from publication bias? A meta-analysis
purporting to show a positive effect should arouse some suspicion, because
negative results often simply don't get published, and can not be included in
the meta-analysis due to their nonexistence.

3\. Are the methods of analysis reasonable? There are a horrifying number of
ways to pull positive results out of random noise through poor application of
statistics.

In this particular case, the authors don't seem to have an axe to grind, their
result is negative, and their analysis is very straightforward.

