

10,000 hours - bdfh42
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/12/10000-hours.html

======
brandonkm
There isn't a magical threshold of hours one must reach to be a "superstar" or
"extremely good". There also isn't much substance in the claim of people
bailing even before 5,000 hours. It seems like the crux of this argument is
just throwing 'numbers' and 'hours' out there with disregard to other factors
that come into play when someone makes a time commitment this large. Things
like efficiency, pre-disposition, and teaching others are all factors.

So, even if someone invests 3750 hours they can be just as good. This all
seems besides the point though, when you are investing thousands of hours into
something your not keeping track of 'hours put in' or 'exactly how good you
are', its a passion and you're just into it. If success follows then great, if
not then that wouldn't stop someone from continuing on.

~~~
whacked_new
There is actually some good research behind the number, which is just given as
a rule of thumb. The other rule of thumb figure is 10 years, which is much
easier to conceptualize. 1000 of productive hours per year.

Basically it encompasses a jumble of things that includes passion, patience,
practice, and persistence. The 4 Ps is a coincidence.

Of course it's not a magical threshold, but when you can do something (in a
focused and conscious manner) for 10 years, it's not hard to imagine that you
have reached mastery.

The crime of fluffy writing (dunno about Gladwell's new book; didn't read it)
is taking rule of thumb numbers and citing them as precision numbers as a way
to seem exacting and scientific.

~~~
axod
_or_ , we could all just continue to say "Practice makes perfect" to each
other.

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hassing
Godin, or maybe Gladwell (haven't read the book), is missing the point of the
"10,000 hours" theory. It is about being "good" at a subject, not being famous
for it.

Tiger Woods has spent thousands of hours practicing and is one of the best in
his field (and is famous for that). Miley Cyrus is (afaik) not considered
among the best actors in the world - she's just famous for landing a disney
role.

~~~
teej
"Miley Cyrus is (afaik) not considered among the best actors in the world -
she's just famous for landing a disney role."

I have to call you out on this point. Miley Cyrus isn't famous because she
acted for Disney. There are plenty of child actors who did the same and went
nowhere. Miley Cyrus is famous because she is the face of the Hannah Montana
brand run by the Disney marketing machine. A brand that has net Disney
revenues in the tens of millions of dollars.

~~~
axod
You can't deny she is a talented actress, has a great voice, and is generally
'star quality'. A lot of it's just in the breeding and growing up around it
all. She's probably done 10,000 hours of watching other people acting +
singing while she grew up.

Disclaimer: Sure, I'm a Miley Cirus fan. Admission is first step to recovery +
all that.

~~~
unalone
I don't think she's particularly talented. She's decent in a field where
everybody else is worse, but I've seen young actors that blow her away.

Her voice, too, is good but not great. Again: there are young singers who are
incredibly better than her.

She's not terrible. But she isn't exactly good, either.

~~~
axod
What about the song writing that's sold millions of albums? For a 16 year old
that's reasonably impressive no?

~~~
whatusername
But then does the impressiveness rest with the Disney Marketing Machine for
Hannah Montana. In part it seems like she would be replaceable (or at least -
another could havew been picked) with probably no detriment to the result.

The same doesn't work for Tiger Woods or Bill Gates.

~~~
anamax
> In part it seems like she would be replaceable (or at least - another could
> havew been picked) with probably no detriment to the result.

Disney doesn't think so - she turned the role down and Disney put the show on
hold for over a year while they tried to convince her to do it.

While there's no doubt that that show wouldn't have been nearly as popular
without Disney pushing it, it doesn't follow that any cute kid would have been
as successful given the Disney push. Disney is constantly pushing kids and
only a few make it big.

If you're better than Disney at picking child stars, big bucks await.

~~~
unalone
Are you kidding? Disney very frequently makes kids this huge. When the kid's a
singer/actress, especially so: they've done a good job of marketing her in
both directions.

If you write a show entirely around one person, then yeah. You'll put the show
on hold to wait for them. That doesn't mean she's particularly brilliant. Just
that she's not entirely awful.

~~~
anamax
> Are you kidding? Disney very frequently makes kids this huge.

"Very frequently"? I don't see enough "kids this huge" to justify
"frequently".

And they didn't write the show for Cyrus. They created the show and she
auditioned. They offered. She declined. They waited.

If Disney can create hits at will, why don't they?

Instead, they ride the hits that they have. They try a lot of things. When
something works small, they go bigger. If it still works, they hit the gas.

Like I said, if you can do better, big bucks await.

------
skmurphy
The Ericsson's research was aimed at fields that were not changing a lot:
athletic performance, chess, classical music instruments. I think what it's
documenting is how much deliberate practice is required to re-wire your brain
to allow for unconsciously expert perceptions and performance. That's the
inference I make reading <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=409696> and
these two sentences from the concluding paragraph in
[http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.ht...](http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.html)

"...the difference between experts and less skilled subjects is not merely a
matter of the amount and complexity of the accumulated knowledge; it also
reflects qualitative differences in the organization of knowledge and its
representation (Chi, Glaser & Rees, 1982). Experts' knowledge is encoded
around key domain-related concepts and solution procedures that allow rapid
and reliable retrieval whenever stored information is relevant."

------
replicatorblog
I don't see this as a repudiation of the 10K hours theory. Hannah Montana's
fame is due to the Disney machine as teej mentioned. I'm sure the brand
managers, agents, marketers and other pros responsible for her success have
logged that kind of time individually and she is the product rather than the
producer. I'm not a Doors fan, but maybe they had a stellar agent who spent
countless hours developing relationships and promotional skills. Godin's
better point is that it may take far less time to become successful in
emerging media rather than mature businesses since there are no established
benchmarks.

~~~
axod
Sorry, but I disagree. Of course it helps to be under the Disney name/brand.
But to say she's a "product rather than the producer" is plain wrong.

"She wrote eight of the ten songs, credited by her birth name Destiny Hope
Cyrus." (wikipedia)

People generally don't blindly buy music that sounds rubbish just because it
has the Disney name on it. Give her some credit at least... Perhaps you
dislike the particular genre of music, but that doesn't mean there isn't a
large amount of talent there. Especially for a 16 year old.

~~~
replicatorblog
Axod, I agree the Disney name alone isn't going to ensure success, but I also
don't think she rose to the top because of native talent. She has 1) famous
father in the business 2) the backing of the most impressive youth marketing
organization in the world. Can she sing and write music? absolutely, but I
find it hard to believe her success is due to her song writing rather than the
push of the amazing organization around her. Again no judgment on her I just
think she has the benefit of superior promotion.

------
whacked_new
"In some ways, this is a restatement of the Dip. Being the best in the world
brings extraordinary benefits, but it's not easy to get there."

Not The Dip... ... the devil's in the details, which The Dip has nothing to do
with. If you cast a wide and fuzzy net you can claim you said a lot by saying
a little.

/I read that book and am not entirely unabashed about it. If anybody wants
that book, just to find out why, let me know. Geographic constraints apply.
But don't shell out howevermany dollars it is at the bookstore. _-_-_

------
mattmaroon
He makes the mistake of assuming quality and success are directly related.
Miley Cyrus may have been popular before 10,000 hours, but that doesn't mean
she was good at whatever it was she succeeded at, which I don't even know.
Same with The Bee Gees.

Not that I buy the 10k hours thing anyway, but just wanted to point out that
skill and success are not the same thing. There are a million musicians more
skilled than Britney Spears or 'N Sync, there are very, very few who've been
more successful.

------
epicurus
I like the 10,000 hours concept as a motivating factor. It shows that practice
pays off. Even the most gifted people still need to put in those hours to get
to that high level of achievement. So rather than see it as "I need to put in
X hours this year to succeed", I see it as an exaltation of hard work.

------
kingkongrevenge
> Bill Gates, the Beatles

Bill Gates didn't get rich as a programmer. He got rich as a business man and
negotiator (QDOS, IBM). He got stinking rich as a monopolist. (Interesting
note: Bill G's father was an anti-trust defense attorney.)

The Beatles did not get rich as live musicians and were never considered a
great live act. They made it big as a studio band. I fail to see how cranking
out the same songs over and over again for 10,000 hours in Hamburg builds your
studio composition chops. Especially when it didn't even seem to lead to great
live performance ability.

Haven't read gladwell's book, but it smells like a sloppy pile of misleading
anecdotes from here.

~~~
walterk
What original arguments Gladwell makes are clearly speculative, but it's
inherently sloppier to attempt to refute an argument whose reasoning you can
only speculate about.

Your arguments about Bill Gates and The Beatles are themselves flawed and
classically oversimplistic. Bill Gates didn't get rich as a business man /
negotiator / monopolist: he got rich as a _programmer_ business man /
negotiator / monopolist. Hard to believe a regular on HN could fail to see how
Gates' having serious technical chops was essential to his success.

As for The Beatles, I'll leave it to you to actually read the book.

