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The 10,000-hour rule is wrong and perpetuates a cruel myth

217 pointsby dannylandauabout 8 years ago

34 comments

paulpauperabout 8 years ago
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. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;greyenlightenment.com&#x2F;malcolm-gladwell-bait-and-switch&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;greyenlightenment.com&#x2F;malcolm-gladwell-bait-and-switc...</a><p>I think the amended version of &#x27;10,000 hours&#x27; is closer to being correct, and probably not the one the public wants to hear.<p>Ericsson&#x27;s research isn&#x27;t much better either though. His sample size was very small and his research was never replicated. As the &#x27;how I taught myself physics in one year&#x27; thread showed, it&#x27;s pretty obvious innate talent exists and can allow people to attain mastery of very complicated concepts in far less than 10,000 hours.<p>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...&#x27;10,000 hours&#x27; 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&#x27;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.
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chpmrcabout 8 years ago
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.<p>Just because marketing the top 1% is easier doesn&#x27;t mean the rest is crap. Just because you won&#x27;t be the next Bill Gates doesn&#x27;t mean you shouldn&#x27;t start (and enjoy building) your own software company.<p>Even the 10k hours theory doesn&#x27;t explain why some people can practice for so long but others can&#x27;t. So, clearly, we all start at different positions in life.
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cyberferretabout 8 years ago
I am always intrigued by the 10KH argument. Here&#x27;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.<p>Do I consider myself one of the best at my profession?? Not even close. Probably wouldn&#x27;t even rate myself in the top 1&#x2F;3rd of the worlds programmers. I&#x27;ve met guys who have been alive less time than I have been programming who can run rings around me, code wise.<p>I also play guitar, been doing so for longer than I have been programming, but I am a very stop&#x2F;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.<p>When I don&#x27;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]<p>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.<p>[0] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;soundcloud.com&#x2F;cyberferret" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;soundcloud.com&#x2F;cyberferret</a>
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ktRolsterabout 8 years ago
I think this paper should be linked to on every story like this: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cogprints.org&#x2F;656&#x2F;1&#x2F;innate.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cogprints.org&#x2F;656&#x2F;1&#x2F;innate.htm</a><p>The worst is when people give themselves excuses and say, &quot;I don&#x27;t have natural talent, I can&#x27;t learn math.&quot; Well sure, if you don&#x27;t have natural talent you might not be Paul Erdős, but you can still get through calculus.
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dibsternabout 8 years ago
This article doesn&#x27;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.<p>Gladwell misquoted Ericsson. Read Ericsson&#x27;s book, Peak. Get your facts right.
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paulpauperabout 8 years ago
<i>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.<p>You&#x27;re not a heart surgeon? That&#x27;s your fault for not working hard enough in school! You didn&#x27;t make it as a concert pianist? You must not have wanted it that badly.</i><p>But the problem is, telling someone who aspires to be doctor or some other high-IQ profession that they shouldn&#x27;t try, because they aren&#x27;t smart enough, may also seem cruel, so we settle on what we perceive to be lesser of two cruelties.
chillacyabout 8 years ago
Deliberate practice won&#x27;t make you top 1% material in most things, since at higher levels everyone&#x27;s working hard and genetically gifted. But it&#x27;ll get you pretty far assuming you don&#x27;t have any physical disadvantages (like being quadriplegic and wanting to be a kickboxer).
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hardwaresoftonabout 8 years ago
Could people stop just reading one thing and then living their lives by it?<p>Whether it&#x27;s Myer&#x27;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&#x27;s just some reasonable premise taken to an extreme.<p>Yes, if you want to be good at something, you&#x27;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&#x2F;12 months until the next thing comes along.
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deepnotderpabout 8 years ago
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&#x2F;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.
justforFranzabout 8 years ago
This either&#x2F;or between effort and genes is ridiculous. Isn&#x27;t it possible that something interesting is happening between those 10,000 hours? Isn&#x27;t is possible that successful families not only instill success in their offspring through special training, but also suppress success in other people&#x27;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&#x27;re born. We&#x27;re far too focused on positive attributes of competition.
yborgabout 8 years ago
2014 article, and the pushback on Gladwell&#x27;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&#x27;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.
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skywhopperabout 8 years ago
I haven&#x27;t read Outliers, but I&#x27;ve always understood the &quot;10,000 hour rule&quot; as a means of expressing the fact that all meaningful skills take years practice to truly become an expert. It&#x27;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?
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guest234about 8 years ago
Reality is cruel too :(. While I am persuaded by the idea that nature may be as important or more so than nurture I don&#x27;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.
Ellahnabout 8 years ago
Assumes Correlation and Causation, ignores Social and Economic situations of the twins groups, doesn&#x27;t account for the fact that identical twins tend to share (being geared towards) more experiences due to being perceived almost as a single &quot;being&quot;, ignores cultural differences in upbringing of different-gender twins, doesn&#x27;t account for indirect training (i.e. strategy, memorization, sequential steps etc. are parts of a Chess game), doesn&#x27;t account for perception of time (Time passes slowly when we don&#x27;t like what we&#x27;re doing) and completely ignores training &quot;quality&quot; (Playing chess against newbies is useless as practice, playing against masters is enlightening).<p>It&#x27;s ALSO not your &quot;fault&quot; 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.<p>Still, there is no talent, ask any great programmer, musician, illustrator or whatever, every single one of them will say he&#x2F;she was shitty, but loved it, so kept doing it. This doesn&#x27;t completely discards the possibility of genetic disposition to liking something, but undeniably everyone starts on even ground.<p>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.<p>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&#x27;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.<p>Maybe in 50 years we&#x27;ll find out where our tastes come from. Not that it actually matters since it&#x27;s out of our control anyways.
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CoVarabout 8 years ago
I think there is some nuance that is missed when performing studies that compares hours practiced to mastery. I&#x27;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.<p>&quot;For example, the number of hours of deliberate practice to first reach &quot;master&quot; 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.&quot;<p>Maybe those 728 hours were more efficient and effective deliberate practice than the 16,120 hours.<p>Edit: the book is called &quot;A Mind for Numbers&quot;, not &quot;A Mind for Math&quot;
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veritas3241about 8 years ago
I&#x27;m pretty sure that Malcolm Gladwell clarified his position on the 10,000 hour rule during Tim Ferris&#x27; podcast [0]. He was saying that the 10,000 hour rule was meant to clearly indicate that becoming successful requires a large support system.<p>Which seems to make it easier to understand why kids who start really early can become successful: they don&#x27;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.<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;tim.blog&#x2F;2016&#x2F;06&#x2F;21&#x2F;malcolm-gladwell&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;tim.blog&#x2F;2016&#x2F;06&#x2F;21&#x2F;malcolm-gladwell&#x2F;</a>
ZoomZoomZoomabout 8 years ago
If the rule is wrong then it&#x27;s really good news! At least for my mental state, as I&#x27;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&#x27;s depressing and is already becoming an obstacle in motivating to practice further.<p>If the rule stands, it means it&#x27;s my fault: I&#x27;m not motivated enough, not passionate enough, not smart enough to organize my practice routine. It&#x27;s what I&#x27;m thinking today and what hurts my self-esteem. If the rule&#x27;s wrong that would be a relief, as it means it&#x27;s not <i>completely</i> my fault.
paulsutterabout 8 years ago
&quot;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&quot; - Malcolm Gladwell
morganteabout 8 years ago
Gladwell never claimed that we&#x27;re all given equal potential though. Most of the book is focused on the gains from deliberate practice amongst those who <i>already</i> are genetically set up to succeed. In fact, a central point is about how practice helps to amplify those initial advantages not diminish them.
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zevebabout 8 years ago
&gt; 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.<p>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?<p>Of course, in reality one would invest a little here and a little there, but it <i>is</i> a zero-sum game: every resource used to help the unintelligent succeed is a resource not expended to help the intelligent exceed.
6stringmercabout 8 years ago
My tongue-in-cheek response to the headline, in the context of guitar, make me chuckle quite a bit:<p>&quot;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!&quot;<p>It&#x27;s not always &quot;What&quot; a person practices, but also &quot;How&quot; a person does so. Attention to detail, trying new things, learning from mistakes, reflection when away from the hobby&#x2F;interest. Far too many variables for any one-size-fits-all perspective on Talent and Achievement, but in looking for correlatives and &quot;causation approximate&quot; techniques, Practice certainly shows up time and again.
twblalockabout 8 years ago
Malcolm Gladwell should not be taken seriously.
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n3on_netabout 8 years ago
Still, the concept of hard work beating talent without hard work is a very powerful one. You won&#x27;t be the best but after such dedication and hard work, you will always achieve above average results in your area.<p>So, keep on hustlin!
bjterryabout 8 years ago
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&#x27;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.
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tim333about 8 years ago
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&#x27;t been studying it since childhood.<p>&quot;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&quot; - Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett&#x27;s business partner.
anothercommentabout 8 years ago
&quot;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&quot;<p>So this doesn&#x27;t make sense - otherwise, why practice at all?<p>And indeed the article goes on to explain that the &quot;music ability test&quot; only tested some things, like ability to read notes.<p>Maybe the scientists need to work on improving their measurement devices first, before making sweeping claims about talent and practice...
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mcguireabout 8 years ago
&quot;<i>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.</i>&quot;<p>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&#x27;t have the talent.
sorenjanabout 8 years ago
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.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;freakonomics.com&#x2F;podcast&#x2F;peak&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;freakonomics.com&#x2F;podcast&#x2F;peak&#x2F;</a>
sitkackabout 8 years ago
I aim to be &quot;ok&quot; in about 20 hrs of deliberate practice. Hell the FAA says you can fly plane in 40.
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guest234about 8 years ago
Reality is cruel too I&#x27;m afraid :(. The article is probably right about the importance of genes but I&#x27;m not sure I agree with anything else it says about politics, social engineering, etc.
abemishlerabout 8 years ago
This TEDxCSU talk [0] is a couple years old but directly addresses the 10,000 hour claim.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;5MgBikgcWnY" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;5MgBikgcWnY</a>
MrFantasticabout 8 years ago
As an adult, i&#x27;ve found 100hrs of deliberate practice makes you fairly competent in most hobbies.
josephagossabout 8 years ago
What does it mean to practice programming vs just programming?
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mjevansabout 8 years ago
Site requires scripts to read any content on. I don&#x27;t like running code from random websites, so I don&#x27;t. Can&#x27;t comment on the article.<p>I will guess that the &#x27;cruel myth&#x27; is that anyone can spent the requisite time and do anything. (Some people just don&#x27;t get &#x2F; can&#x27;t get X, even if they want to and try really hard.)
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