"New Study Destroys Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 Hour Rule"

[Andy Bell]

Doing a google search for the mastery hourly rule I came across this article. New Study Destroys Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 Hour Rule

Basically its a review of 80+ studies on mastery and comes back saying the 10,000 hour rule is very dependent on the actual area where the person is invested in and not much to do with things like entrepreneurship. Ex.

• In games, practice made for a 26% difference
• In music, it was a 21% difference
• In sports, an 18% difference
• In education, a 4% difference
• In professions, just a 1% difference

Its interesting to look at and makes me think, about the 1% difference for professions. I have no idea how that can be correct, in my profession for online marketing, as I have trained and mastered my craft I see a massive difference, I see little things I didnt see 5 years ago that could of tanked my business profitability. There are things I have learned that have taken tasks that may have taken 500 hours to 20 hours through what I have learned in automation.

So I am really not sure here. I cant think of one informational business profession where 10,000 hours vs 50 hours would not provide a massive boost. Maybe if your on a assembly line pushing a red button to produce widgets I get it...but if your in my profession of marketing and ecommerce I think those 10,000 hours if I were to quantify it would be a 200% different over someone that has 50 hours, 100% difference over someone with 100 hours, then maybe 50% over someone with 500 hours...25% over someone with 5,000 but honestly that small percentage may be what makes all the difference. I saw an analogy here earlier of Usain Bolt running the 100 meter his record time is 9.63 the previous best was 9.75. These are miliseconds, so that extra little percentage difference could make ALL the difference. Understandable with professions being 1% better may mean 1% more profit so it may be different. But I still struggle with this study, its no help the the study link has very little information.

Any opinions on this?

 

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[Champion]

Its never black or white... obviously some skills can be mastered in 10.000 hours while others might need more, others less.

Something I find to be very true in life: "The more you know, the more you know what you dont know".

You never stop learning and you will never know everything or reach perfection in anything.

The way I interpret Malcolm Gladwells 10.000 Hour Rule, is that having spent so much time on one activity, you have definitely been through the "Hero's Journey in that field". In other words, you have failed a bunch, learned from your mistakes, made loads of adjustments and become part of the top 1-2% in that field.

 

[Rabby]

The assembly line is a good metaphor actually, because professionals can take two different paths.

One path has a joke associated with it. We say they have "1 year's experience repeated 20 times." This is the path where someone trains you to do a job a certain way, and you do that over and over and over again. Basically, it's like being part of an assembly line, and you don't try to learn or do anything new. An office of licensed professionals could have 20-30 people like this for every one on the second path.

The second path is the person who is always growing as a professional. If they're in finance for example, they're taking on new types of deals, learning new contracts, moving into M&A, etc. It's somewhat of a personality type. A person who treats their profession this way for 1-2 years can easily be more capable, and more knowledgeable, than someone who has worked in the same profession (on Path 1) for 20 years.

I think the sense of "agency" is probably the biggest determiner of which path you'll take. Some people are only willing to follow, and do what they're instructed to do. Others are convinced of their own ability to learn and improve and make their own decisions, and as a result they do just that.

 

[socaldude]

I have always been skeptical of that rule because the motivation and intent is to mostly get a name in academia and into a mcgraw hill textbook rather than realty. obviously its very dependent on the individual and their capacities and talents.

 

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[BellaPippin]

If you see the articles below that when you google this you will see that "his rule" is based off a study by psychologist K. Anders Ericsson. However he sort of grabbed that number and overly simplified the idea to an extent.

And even the combination of time and natural ability isn't quite enough to guarantee expertise, according to Ericsson. It's about how you spend that time — which has led to the development of a concept known as "deliberate practice."

"Yes, great performers spend a lot of time practicing ... but there are a lot of people who spend a lot of time practicing who never reach world class or even national class levels," said Stulberg. "What separates the great performers from those that don't meet that high bar is not necessarily time spent practicing, but again, what they do as they're practicing."

(from this article)
​

Tim Ferriss is another person that likes to push that concept and plays with the idea of mastering stuff in little time, by doing exactly that. Also sort of applying the 80/20 rule and just finding which key concepts take him the farthest.

I named my You Tube channel 10,000 Hours of Art because of this rule but I took it as a playful way of saying you are going to have to spend a lot of time practicing because that's how you master something. However if I draw the human body wrong a million times without actually grabbing an anatomy book, I can practice for 100,000 and still not master anything. That's what "deliberate practice" means.

You could consider using this forum for resources... thanks to people who spent 10,000 hours failing and share their experiences, I could potentially do the same in less time because I can learn from them. In professions, if you have a mentor guiding you you probably won't need as much time as someone who is doing it on their own.

P.S. is Business INSIDERS recycling news or what

 

[jukido]

IMHO, the key to this "rule" is "mastery is top 1-digit % in the field". But unless you're going for a Gold Medal or Tour de France, you don't need to be in the top single percentage to succeed / prosper.

The nice round number makes for good headlines. If he would have called his book "Practice a lot to become great", no one would have paid attention.

Worse, it's disheartening to people who miss my first point. "You mean I have to do something for 10k hours before I can have any chance of getting hired?!?"

 

[WillHurtDontCare]

I think the sense of "agency" is probably the biggest determiner of which path you'll take. Some people are only willing to follow, and do what they're instructed to do. Others are convinced of their own ability to learn and improve and make their own decisions, and as a result they do just that.

Most people are only capable of following. Even many people capable of leading have to unlearn the trappings of being a follower.

 

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[Ismail941]

A Right 1% change makes a huge difference
Not a Random 1%

0.99 ^ 365 = 0.03
1.01 ^ 365 = 37.78

If you improve 1% each day, you will be 38 times better than what you are today in a year

 

[BlackLynx]

Not practice makes perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.

Meaning that the 10.000 hours rule is only valid if every hour is single-mindedly spent working in that area where you are lacking at that specific point in time. It also implies that practice is done in a "flow" state meaning it does not surpass your skill so much that it becomes frustrating but you're still challenged enough for it not to become boring.

It implies thorough self-knowledge or high-level coaching.

You will never become the world's greatest piano player if you spend 10.000 hours playing the intro to Beethoven's Für Elise.

 

[Solid Snake]

i like the 10,000 hour rule personally, but I will say this with experience in athletics:

being present in the moment of training increases your skills more than just aimlessly practicing.

 

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[S.Y.]

Not practice makes perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.

This. Practice makes permanent. Not perfect.

I don't take those rules literally - regardless of so-called studies or tests. I think the idea behind it is that becoming good at something takes time and effort.

Be it 10 000 hours, 12 000 or 8 000 hours... Mastery requires deliberation, persistence, and consistency.

An interesting thought experiment is inversion. Let's play with that: If you don't want to significantly better than others (in any area of your choice), what would you do?

I played a bit with that thought experiment. And debunked or not, it is wise to follow the message behind the rule.

Now we can push further and look at the type of domain.
- domains where being able to recognize patterns quickly provides a significant advantage will benefit immensely from the rule. Think golf / chess.
- others where the rules are abstract, unclear or incomplete... not so much. Complex systems like an economy falls here (predictors have faired very poorly). You will need breadth much more than depth.

etc...

You can take many angles...

 

[Nick M.]

The issue with a lot of people "debunking" Malcom Gladwell on this point is more that they don't understand his argument. And you can see that already a lot in this thread and in the linked article.

From what I remember reading, he never says "10,000 hours of practice will make you world class". Rather, that "if you want to become world class, you need to put in 10,000 hours of practice".

In other words, to be in the top 1% of the top 1%, practice is necessary but not sufficient for success. There are many other factors.

You can argue all day about whether 10,000 hours will make you world class and by what extent. But he never argued that.

He may still be wrong, but creating a straw-man argument is not how you argue against an idea.

Of course, it's completely possible that I'm misremembering his exact thesis. It's been 2 years since I've read the book.

 

[happiness2go]

"Range" by David Epstein is an interesting read on this topic.

Essentially, the author argues that the 10,000 hour rule only applies for fields where there is a very specific set of rules.

Think chess, classical music, tennis and so on an so forth.

The less specific the set of rules becomes to succeed in any domain, the less the 10,000 hour rule applies.

 

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[Ocean Man]

If you see the articles below that when you google this you will see that "his rule" is based off a study by psychologist K. Anders Ericsson. However he sort of grabbed that number and overly simplified the idea to an extent.

(from this article)
​

Tim Ferriss is another person that likes to push that concept and plays with the idea of mastering stuff in little time, by doing exactly that. Also sort of applying the 80/20 rule and just finding which key concepts take him the farthest.

I named my You Tube channel 10,000 Hours of Art because of this rule but I took it as a playful way of saying you are going to have to spend a lot of time practicing because that's how you master something. However if I draw the human body wrong a million times without actually grabbing an anatomy book, I can practice for 100,000 and still not master anything. That's what "deliberate practice" means.

You could consider using this forum for resources... thanks to people who spent 10,000 hours failing and share their experiences, I could potentially do the same in less time because I can learn from them. In professions, if you have a mentor guiding you you probably won't need as much time as someone who is doing it on their own.

P.S. is Business INSIDERS recycling news or what

I like what you said about the anatomy and drawing the human part. When I was younger, my band teacher used to say, “practice doesn’t make perfect... practice makes permanent.”

We should be practicing, but make sure what you’re practicing is right. It doesn’t help to practice 10,000 hours of the wrong thing.

 

[LittleWolfie]

The assembly line is a good metaphor actually, because professionals can take two different paths.

One path has a joke associated with it. We say they have "1 year's experience repeated 20 times." This is the path where someone trains you to do a job a certain way, and you do that over and over and over again. Basically, it's like being part of an assembly line, and you don't try to learn or do anything new. An office of licensed professionals could have 20-30 people like this for every one on the second path.

The second path is the person who is always growing as a professional. If they're in finance for example, they're taking on new types of deals, learning new contracts, moving into M&A, etc. It's somewhat of a personality type. A person who treats their profession this way for 1-2 years can easily be more capable, and more knowledgeable, than someone who has worked in the same profession (on Path 1) for 20 years.

I like that. Path 1 is how most jobs advertise. X years in finance. Rather than taking on new deals,learning M&A etc.

I disagree it's about personality type. I'd say it's about goal setting and knowing which goals to set.

 

[Fox]

Richard Branson started in the the record business but quickly branched out into fields well beyond music: Virgin Group has 400 companies and is launching people into space.

Lol - ya it is called key business skills.

He has great business vision, knows how to sell and lead, and can find huge gaps in an inefficient market.

It isn't like he spent 10,000 hours learning about records.

---

The 10,000 hour rule is a good benchmark - its 5 years of 50 x 40 hours weeks.

Chances are if you want to compete in business you will be up against people with at least this much experience. I would argue that if you expect to be competitive with a lot less than 10,000 hours you are looking at a niche/industry with a very low level of "Entry".

Also as markets go more global this figure is on average rising. Other people will be willing to put in 10,20,30k hours to reach the top so expect to compete against a few or many.

But on the same hand, you can avoid this too by working with high levels of needs, having a coach or mentor, learning from the past experiences of others, using great strategies etc.

But overall 10,000 hours seems quite accurate.
(The other survey doesn't seem to offer their own estimation???)

 

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