New Research Casts Doubt On the "10,000 Hour Rule" of Expertise 192
First time accepted submitter Scroatzilla writes What makes someone rise to the top in music, games, sports, business, or science? This question is the subject of one of psychology's oldest debates. Malcolm Gladwell's '10,000 hours' rule probably isn't the answer. Recent research has demonstrated that deliberate practice, while undeniably important, is only one piece of the expertise puzzle—and not necessarily the biggest piece.
Agreed. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Agreed. (Score:4, Insightful)
+1, Insightful
Re:Agreed. (Score:4, Insightful)
-1, InFulSight
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In my experience most mastery is at the start (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of the great works people do were based on work they actually did when they started (early doctorate or masters work, beginning music, that kind of thing).
Then they fine tune it.
But the mastery came early. It just got sanitized and polished later.
More eugenics propaganda? (Score:2)
Honest, I'll get to the point but have to lay the groundwork. Quotes are all from TFA.
In the late 1800s, Francis Galton—founder of the scientific study of intelligence and a cousin of Charles Darwin—analyzed the genealogical records of hundreds of scholars, artists, musicians, and other professionals and found that greatness tends to run in families. For example, he counted more than 20 eminent musicians in the Bach family. (Johann Sebastian was just the most famous.) Galton concluded that experts are “born.”
Obviously this line of thinking ignores things that nepotism and cronyism easily explains. Obviously Rockefeller wealth means that his kids get the best education, have way more free time to get an education, and more money to pursue projects and education. People that don't have to clean the house, milk the cows, cook the food, etc.. have a whole lot of time on their hands to devote to intellectual advancement.
Nearly half a century later, the behaviorist John Watson countered that experts are “made” when he famously guaranteed that he could take any infant at random and “train him to become any type of specialist [he] might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents.”
Numerous
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The end of the article however jumps over to the recent flawed study that goes back to eugenics (one of many out of the UK in the last 2 years). That study claims that identical twins can draw pictures more similarly than fraternal twins, therefor genes are the key factor in a persons natural ability to draw. This study is flawed as they obviously ignore every other possible impact on a person's ability to draw a picture, and simply claim "genetics".
Please explain what are the other impacts on a person's ability to draw a picture. The primary difference between identical twins and fraternal twins is genetics. Each family may choose how much to treat its children identically versus differently, but that is a very complex item likely orthogonal to genetics.
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The study failed to mention social biases, hence my statement that the study is flawed and not false. They could easily have provided additional facts to demonstrate any potential bias. Perhaps they have this information in a different location, or unpublished. My point is that _any_ study of this type has serious biases outside of just genetics.
I only provided easy to demonstrate potential bias since you stated that you could not see any way for a bias to exist outside of genetics.
Boys and Girls develop
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All the bias's you list come out in the wash if you use a reasonable study population. Unless you can show that identical twin incidence varies by income.
Re:More eugenics propaganda? (Score:5, Insightful)
meh.
My interpretation of the article: You can't teach height, but tall untrained basketball players can be beaten by shorter experts. To be the "world's best" you need both.
There is a difference between "expert" and "world's best".
When it comes to expert, guided practice and training is generally enough. Even if you are short I can still teach you to be an expert at basketball. Others can still teach you how to block, how to dribble, how to pass, how to shoot, how to referee, how to coach, and how to be an expert.
When it comes to world's best, sure, there is often a genetic component. Most people, no matter how much you train them, will never become the world's best. They can be expert and still judge and teach and work the field, being expert is not the same as being world's best. Similarly, some people, no matter how much they try to work with numbers, struggle to handle them intuitively. Given enough effort they can be taught all the way through college math and become experts, but that doesn't mean they'll become the world's expert on mathematics. Just because someone is tall doesn't make them a world-class basketball player, training is still needed. Just because someone has a pretty voice doesn't make them an automatic world's best vocalist, just because someone has a more intuitive grasp of spatial representations doesn't make them a world renown mathematician, training is still needed.
You can become expert with guided practice, even without much natural ability. To become world's best you need both guided practice AND a genetic predisposition.
Re:More eugenics propaganda? (Score:4, Interesting)
So you say that everybody can pick up a skill equally? Look around you, talent is not equally distributed. Some people are good at math, some people good at writing, some are good at music. Some just pick up a skill intuitively and others struggle with it. The article hints that it is strongly based on genetics and why should it not be? You can see this very well with primary school children. Some pick up math easily and some don't, for example.
But the point you are making is not fully off either. The different talents are distributed more or less evenly in the populace. But to convert that talent into a skill you need practice and tutoring. Your social class will be a strong indicator if you will get the tutoring, mentoring and practice required to convert it into a skill. If you can barely make rent, you will not pay your children around 100 bucks for violin lessons.
In addition you social class will also determine the amount of tutoring you get despite of your lack talent. Not good in math, extra lessons, because we can. As a result your parent's income is the strongest indicator, if you will graduate for the university or not. Partially because you get all the additional training required to even out your difficulties, partially because it is expected of you.
Claiming that genetics has nothing to do with it is nonsense. But there is much untapped talent, simply because of social economic circumstances. It remains that you need a lot of practice to make your talent into a skill.
Is 10,000 your personal peak, perhaps? (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps 10,000 hours is what it takes to reach your personal level of mastery. The average or the genius - once you've put in your 10,000 (or 6000 or 14,000; 10,000 is only one significant digit), you've essentially gotten as good as you will every get, down to some number far to the right of the decimal.
Re:Is 10,000 your personal peak, perhaps? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gladwell's observation was that people who achieve greatness work 10,000 hours.....which doesn't mean that you will reach greatness if you work 10,000 hours, but that if you don't, you certainly won't. More interestingly, he observes that working 10,000 hours is a greater indicator of success than IQ.
I remember reading somewhere also, that it helps to have a master teacher who knows how to guide you through those 10,000 hours. Otherwise you might be swinging with the wrong golf club for half those hours.
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But the mastery came early. It just got sanitized and polished later.
Well, that's fine, I guess, but I thought we were talking about masturbation in this thread [slashdot.org].
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Most people, the average I would say, do take somewhere in the range of 10,000 hours to "master" their craft. That's roughly five years of working at a full time job. I think of all the master project managers, developers, analysts, managers, etc., etc., I know, and I seriously doubt any of them were "masters" in their first five years. Some were naturally inclined with certain skill sets,
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Were they people who'd been doing the same thing in the same language on the same OS at the same company?
A guy I used to work with would say that's one year of experience, repeated ten times.
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Last thing I read was a fairly even age distribution, including both young genius and a gradual peak into old age.
I'm not going to bother finding a citation. You go first.
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I would tend to agree with you, but not for the reasons you list. Without having read the OP, I assume that it doesn't actually say that the 10K hour rule is always false (just like that rule say that you can never become an expert before 10K hours); it just says that it may not always be true. Listing a few examples does neither prove nor disprove a statement that is clearly statistical in nature.
Sometimes, though, you do see these very young experts; I think the most likely explanation is that they simply
Re:In my experience most mastery is at the start (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually the article is trying to discredit the notion that "you can take anybody, let them practice 10k h and you get an expert." What they are basically stating is what everybody knows intuitively, some people pick up a skill easier than others (up 22x) and they affirm that is is genetic in nature. (if one twin can draw well, so can it's sibling.) What remains is, no mater what talent you have you still need to invest much time (e.g. 10k h) until you will master the craft.
Oddly, I think few people believed the original formulation, that you could take anybody and make a master. Nevertheless the 10k hour rule is in essence correct, even if the actual number may differ. You need to practice much to master a craft. The thing that distorts the picture is that only people with a minimum level of talent and passion will actually be willing to invest the time. You can not really compare someone with 10k practice with someone with 2k practice, since both probably have above average talent.
Gladwell (Score:2, Funny)
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Clearly it didn't take you 10000 hours to learn how to dash off a snarky rebuttal with no detail or supporting evidence.
Bravo to you sir - you are a Slashdot commentor! The sky's the limit for you!
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Except this time the snark was perfectly delivered at the perfect target.
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True that. Can't argue with you, Mark[something].
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Gladwell's is a master of relabeling the obvious
Or the false.
Personally, I glanced at a Gladwell book once and just immediately knew, in the blink of an eye as it were, that it was pablum for the toothless mind.
Re:Gladwell (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't agree. I think Gladwell is the master of thought-provoking oversimplified perhaps-sort-of obvious but counter-cultural idea. For example, in this case, although we have the saying, "practice makes perfect", our culture is disposed to believe that some people are simply better than others, and if you're not gifted, you just shouldn't try. Gladwell sets off on an argument that, no, if you spend enough time practicing you can be great. He oversimplifies the whole thing, but probably (I haven't read this book, actually) puts some admission that practice isn't *everything* and people do also have innate gifts. If you really researched it, you'd probably find that he has an interesting point that isn't complete enough to be "the truth".
At least, this is the pattern I've noticed in his other books. And... I don't really mind it. It would be unwise to just read Gladwell's books and take everything he's saying on faith, but I'm not sure that's what he expects you to do. I think he might just be shooting for "thought-provoking", and in that, he's successful.
Re:Gladwell (Score:5, Interesting)
Gladwell sets off on an argument that, no, if you spend enough time practicing you can be great.
The problem is that this is nonsense. Unless you have a LOT of innate talent, you are unlikely to be "great" at anything. When I was in 7th grade, I joined the school band, and I practiced and practiced and practiced. One day the school music teacher took me aside, and advised me to quit. She explained that I basically sucked at music, and no amount of practice was going to make much difference. She suggested that I go join the computer club instead. That was the best advice I ever had, and it changed my life.
Re:Gladwell (Score:4, Insightful)
How can you be sure she wasn't just a terrible teacher? You didn't even get a second opinion.
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Re:Gladwell (Score:4, Funny)
Tell that to Neil Young.
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Apparently you have not heard of Auto-Tune.
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Some people cannot sing in tune. Most people do not need to be taught to do this,
Wow, that is so false you must have not spent much time around high school choirs. Most people do need to practice, a lot, to sing in tune. Some take longer than others to get it.
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Unless you have a LOT of innate talent,
Problem is that no one can identify innate talent beforehand. The primary manifestation of 'talent' is that someone has become very good.
Your music teacher rejected you because you weren't improving. Instead of identifying your weakness and helping you overcome it, she judged you as incapable, not because you were incapable, but because you weren't improving.
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If you practice anything wrong, you won't get better. If you spend 10,000 hours just doing something and not getting better, it isn't practice.
That's not a circular argument - it's two different things.
Someone with talent may need to put in less than 10,000 hours. Someone with little talent may need 15,000 hours. There's no magic number unless you distill out a lot of detail.
But, if you have absolutely no sense for what you're doing, you can't practice on your own and get better. Innate talent implies t
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Re:Gladwell (Score:4, Insightful)
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So you played some musical instrument for a while in the 7th grade and didn't get good at it. And then some teacher said you'd never get good. Therefore, you could never be good at anything musical...?
First, what makes you think that teacher was right? Sounds like a shitty thing to do, to tell a 7th grader that they can never be good at something, and they should just quit. What if it was math? "Hey kid, you're just not a math genius. Better quit studying."
And did you practices for the 10,000 hours
He is the master of shilling for whoever is paying (Score:2)
And I'm not talking about the defunct currency.
http://shameproject.com/profil... [shameproject.com]
But he does prefer the big money over small.
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I was fairly disappointed after reading several of his books when I did follow up research. Every time, I came up empty handed for hard, scientific evidence
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I've at times put forward this very simple argument.
Take someone who is, for whatever reason, fully grown but only four feet tall. This person can practice and practice at basketball, and maybe become very good at it, but is not going to be the center on an NBA team. 10,000 hours of practice won't make him tall enough to be competitive.
I think it's politically correct to say that "anyone can be anything they want if they work hard enough" but it simply isn't true, and TFA says as much.
People are diffe
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Take someone who is, for whatever reason, fully grown but only four feet tall. This person can practice and practice at basketball, and maybe become very good at it, but is not going to be the center on an NBA team. 10,000 hours of practice won't make him tall enough to be competitive.
No, but then there is Muggsy Bogues. So maybe you just have to settle for point guard.
Beyond that, I think it misses the point. I doubt that Gladwell is really trying to argue that there's no such thing as physical limitations or innate ability. It may be the "politically correct" thing to say that anyone can be anything, but it's also the "politically-incorrect correct" thing to say that we just have the abilities that we have, and the people who aren't immediately good at something should know their p
Some off handed saying isn't technically correct? (Score:4, Insightful)
What a shocker..
While there is doubt about the 10,000 hour (Score:2)
rule, that article reliance on genetics isn't it.
And a lot of it no longer jives with modern genetic science.
Exponential curve is exponential curve ... (Score:3)
So decreasing returns isn't obvious that someone needs to study it??
There is an exponential skill on time spent, and the return -- the skill acquired.
If "success" only required mastery the world would be full of experts. One also needs to be in the right time, at the right place, with the right "product."
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Obviously it should read:
There is an exponential fall-off for skill on time spent
aka
Non-linear: Decreasing Returns [theguycancook.com]
In our time and age? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to succeed in anything, forget practicing and start networking.
our time and age? (Score:2)
This has ALWAYS been true. It's just never been quite as important, since most of what 90% of people do today requires little more than communicating.
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The ability to network is a skill I've spent a significant amount of time to become adept at.
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If you want to succeed in anything, forget practicing and start networking.
That sounds like a pretty caustic view of the world. Firstly, the title says to be an expert, not about "succeeding" in anything. And secondly -- as I read it -- you're equating success with earning money in business.
My biggest successes don't have anything whatsoever to do with the success as you describe it:
- I've grown to be a software craftsman
- I have become a gentle and present dad
- I've learned to handle money well
- I can have a nice relationship with a pretty woman
- I've conquered a depression
But pl
What Malcolm Gladwell REALLY Said About The 10,000 (Score:5, Informative)
Gladwell never said you needed 10,000 hours to be an expert...
http://problogservice.com/2012/03/15/what-malcolm-gladwell-really-said-about-the-10000-hour-rule/
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And Ericsson, whose research Gladwell misrepresented, most definitely didn't.
So many practice doing it wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
The article had logic approximately like this:
Doing it for a long time doesn't always make you an expert.
Therefore, it's genetics that make you an expert.
All around me, I see my co-workers doing it _wrong_ for a long time. I just discovered that one guy who has been in the same job for over ten years was completely unaware of some of the most basic concepts anyone starting in the field should know. This is a database administrator and developer who didn't understand that there is a difference between the number zero, the empty string, and null. He just had never heard of null, it seems. After I explained the idea of null to him, he said our database system (DB2) doesn't support nulls. DB2 has supported nulls since it's first release in 1983. This is a guy who has spent 10-20 years as a professional DB2 developer.
He's had lots of practice, but apparently never opened a book, including the manual. So he's been practicing it wrong for 10-20 years. Surprise, he's not an expert!
Re:So many practice doing it wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
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One of the things I do with my co-workers is hypothesize about where the bottleneck is in a system, create a theoretical design that I think is better, try it out, and find out
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All around me, I see my co-workers doing it _wrong_ for a long time. I just discovered that one guy who has been in the same job for over ten years was completely unaware of some of the most basic concepts anyone starting in the field should know.
Years ago I was taught the saying:
Practice doesn't make perfect.
Perfect practice makes perfect
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Practice makes permanent.
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You have to refine your definition though maybe it's too broad.
The 10,000 hours means you will be good at things you have 10,000 hours of experience with. That guy had 0 hours of experience with nulls in DB2, thus I would not expect him to be an expert at using nulls in DB2.
But I bet he is an expert at using integers in DB2 because he has spent 10,000 hours using integers in DB2.
To me this is akin to someone becoming as expert at playing the piano and not knowing about the foot pedals. You can certainly b
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This is a database administrator and developer who didn't understand that there is a difference between the number zero, the empty string, and null.
Maybe he started as a C coder and from there on it was all just computers....
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ctrl-F null returns empty (Score:2)
Doing ctrl-f search for "null" finds no mentions of them in that 580 page pdf, so I don't know what Date's current thinking is. In the last book I read by Date, he was basically suggesting that maybe we should have two types of null. Is that still what he's saying? If he's changed his tune, what is his current suggestion for unknown values?
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> Properly designed databases should in theory never contain NULL-columns or values (unknown state)!
Codd and Date disagree with you. Date may or may not be using NULL is his new database architecture, but relations use nulls to represent "unknown". Of course, you want to reduce the instance of nulls as much as practicable.
> So he probably did it the wrong way (checking for special values),
Unfortunately, not even that. In his mind, and therefore his systems, zero, empty string, unknown, and several
So I don't need to tell recruiters I have 10,000.. (Score:2)
...hours of experience with HTML, just so they know I mean business?
The American Dream? (Score:2)
I suspect everyone always knew this was nonsense. But is this (Gladwell) where it came from?
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Well no, it still holds true. If you want to do something really really really well, you really do have to practice. A lot. Regardless of your genes, parents, or bank roll.
But no matter how much they practice, the mentally retarded will not become chess masters. Even if you've got more or less average genes, some people are simply going to be better than you, quicker than you, with less practice than you put in.
That's a hard lesson for some kids. But what can I tell you, life isn't fair.
But hey, most of tho
Is that really the point? (Score:2)
I haven't read Gladwell's book, but I've heard more than a few different radio programs on this subject (e.g. radiolab, freakanomics, etc), that interviewed Gladwell (although not exclusively).
One could argue that the point from Gladwell's side is that hard work and determination are more important than genetics, and I don't think this is an unfair characterization. Gladwell seems to phrase it slightly differently. That it is the love that certain people have for certain pursuits that gives them the motiv
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I've actually turned a couple of things that I absolutely loathed and avoided as a young adult into things that I'm passionate about now, solely because I decided to spend enough effort to get competent at it, and then it ballooned from there.
Just out of curiosity, what might an example of this be?
I can see how becoming competent at something might lead you to like it rather than hate it. But I think after a certain point, it is quite possible to really enjoy an activity even if you are mediocre.
If we take A: being good at something and B: being passionate about something, I don't think A causes B or that B causes A. I suspect there is a positive feedback mechanism, and in that way you may be able to cause an increase in B by forcing A.
But let
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Ever since John Locke laid the groundwork for the Enlightenment by proposing that we are born as tabula rasa—blank slates—the idea that we are created equal has been the central tenet of the “modern” worldview. Enshrined as it is in the Declaration of Independence as a “self-evident truth,” this idea has special significance for Americans. Indeed, it is the cornerstone of the American dream—the belief that anyone can become anything they want with enough determination.
I think this quote from the article captures the view that I think is telling.
We are clearly not blank slates. Does that mean we cannot become anything we want given enough determination? I think this is the wrong question. I think the right question is "Where does our determination come from?" Even if we were "blank slates", and some of us succeeded (e.g. due to extra determination, etc), that would simply mean that those with more determination are more fortunate than those with less, and surely every
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The more competent people are in a skill, the less confident they are.
That is not exactly what I gathered from reading the wikipedia article. The article seemed to suggest that competent people are more likely to underestimate their skill and incompetent people are more likely to overestimate their skill. This doesn't necessarily imply that incompetent people have more confidence than competent people.
What is described in the article seems to indicate that a A 2 might think they are a 3 and an 8 might think they are a 7.
If you then take the incompetent people and make them more competent, they'll actually LOSE confidence in their skill level, not gain it.
This doesn't really make sense. This would mean that
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Yo dawg. I herd you don't understand the Dunning-Kruger effect, so I put a Dunning-Kruger effect in your Dunning-Kruger effect so you can misunderstand the Dunning-Kruger effect while ur misunderstanding the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Software development managers knew this already (Score:2)
I keep remembering that line from 'Searching for Bobby Fischer,' "for all his natural talent, Bobby Fischer wor
Related work? (Score:2)
Perhaps the flaw is identifying the "deliberate practice" as the only dependent variable. For example, I play guitar. I'm probably better than other people who have put in the same amount of practice time than I have, since I've put in 10 years on clarinet. Those ten years of music experience, give me an ability to interpret rythym, understand some music theory, read notes quickly, hear pitch, etc. than someone who is "just picking it up".
Similarly, I know some quite good chess players who play Go as wel
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No rule (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate hearing described this supposed "10,000 hour Malcom Gladwell rule". There's no such thing. Gladwell has long been trying to explain that the 10,000 hour rule was not a recipe for success, only a requirement for mastery. The fact is that mastery is no guarantee of success.
And lately, Gladwell has been giving a much greater emphasis to the notion of love for what you're doing being a more direct quality of those who are successful. And it's more than really just "love". There's an element of intent and desire and yes, love. What made Michael Jordan shoot free throws for hours and hours after it had gotten dark when he was 12 years old? And continue to do so when he was 27 and already a world champion? Why did Charlie Parker disappear for three years and practice 13 hours every day after he had been so badly embarrassed on the bandstand for not knowing how to play in more than one key? Part of it was his desire to "show those guys" after his earlier failure. And part of Michael Jordan's incentive was his famous (or infamous) almost pathological competitiveness. But those things are never enough. Because spite and desire can only take you so far, and they both have negative effects. They'll eventually eat you up (as may have been the case in Bird's example, because clearly his drug use and self-destructiveness would seem to indicate that something was eating him up). But to put the time in requires love. Doing something because it's something you can't imagine not doing. Because that's how you see yourself - that's who you are. The possible financial rewards are not nearly certain enough for that to be the sole motivation. I will bet that Michael saw himself as a basketball player and Bird as a jazz man well before they were on their way to success.
There's no guarantee for success, but there are recipes and the ingredients are often kind of specific. The good news, is that if you really love doing something, it improves the chances the recipe will be successful. Kind of like garlic and butter. There's no guarantee that a dish will be delicious, but if you start with garlic and butter, the odds improve, you know?
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Excellent comment, as usual.
Gifted vs. Hard working (Score:4, Insightful)
The world is full of people that are gifted in some way but don't work hard (it came too easily or they burn out). They ultimately don't make near the impact that good but not necessarily gifted people that work their butts off.
It's a truly rare bird when someone is truly gifted, they personally recognize it early, chase it, and has the drive to perfect their skill until it shines above the rest. These are the oddballs in society, secretly feared/hated and sometimes taken advantage of by their more socially adjusted but lesser peers, that move their world of influence forward. Socrates. Archimedes. (William) Tyndale. Galileo. Newton. Mozart. Tesla. Einstein. (George) Patton. Bobby Fischer. Michael Jordan. Imagine if any of these people decided to sluff off... How different would our world be?
Worth questioning... (Score:2)
The way the rule is stated and repeated in modern culture is a vast oversimplification, and so a critique is fine. As some have noted, the argument was also about the "ability and drive" to put in the 10,000 hours. Certainly, individual factors do play a role. The only reason this is controversial is when people try to apply it to certain populations, where there is no evidence for that at all (in fact, plenty to the contrary). The article itself notes this.
But, it does raise a question: Are there skills re
Dungeons and Dragons got it right (Score:4, Insightful)
10,000 hours isn't some magical perfect answer to every one of life's skill and talent questions. It's a round number - notice that there's only a single significant digit. And "mastery" really changed depending on your subject. But more importantly, you're parent rolled 3d6 for all 6 of your attributes and, god damnit, if you got a 5 for intelligence you are never going to be a fucking magic user no matter how many hours you study. Hell, you could have rolled an 18, but you're still going to need to get some experience if you really want to cast a delayed blast fireball.
10,000 hours is about 5 years of working at something - diligently - full time. Your profession, your reason for being, your everything. Yes, somebody is going to be better than you and beat you to it with less time. There are 7 billion people in the world, the chances of finding somebody with more innate talent is pretty damned high. And, hey - no matter how long you practice, the chances of you becoming a master in something for which you have no aptitude or - worse - missing some serious prerequisites is going to be very low. But take the average person with average aptitude and give him or her 10,000 hours to practice or train with the goal of becoming proficient in a chosen field, and they're going to learn enough to be considered a "master". Not the best in the world, probably not the second or third best, or whatever you want to call the absolute cream, but you will have mastered it.
And, lets face it, even after 10,000 hours you're still not going to be able to cast a Wish spell and get what you want, but you can sure as hell go on a quest with me 'cause after 10,000 hours you're going to be one bad ass magic user. Or dragon poo. (which I understand goes for a fair sum to the right NPC)
wtf? (Score:3)
WTF?
The rule isn't "practice 10,000hrs and you'll be successful"
It's: "If you are successful, you probably practiced 10,000 hours"
Meaning, if you have the correct body shape, mental acuity, financial situation, then 10,000hrs of practice could give you the opportunity to be an outlier. Midgets can't be in the NBA just because they practiced a lot. I'm not going to win spelling bees just because I've spent 10k hours posting to slashdot. etc...
I caught mastery of programming after 22 years. (Score:2)
Passion + Education + Practice (Score:2)
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Can be much less (Score:4, Funny)
You can get awesome at anything in much less than 10,000 hrs if you have a montage.
I must be a genius (Score:3)
It seemed obvious to me, even when I was young, that lots of practice is important in mastering a skill.
But it also seemed obvious that having innate talent is just as, or more important than practice. Guy with 90 IQ is never gonna be a chess grandmaster or a nuclear physicist, even after 10,000 hours or 100,000 hours.
Or maybe I'm not a genius and these are pretty damn obvious points that should occur to anyone looking without blinders on (e.g. religious liberal belief that every child is a precious flower equally capable of anything as every other child)
Re:The difference between skill and talent (Score:5, Funny)
You can train a skill, but you cannot learn talent.
And Justin Bieber is proof that a lack of both doesn't correlate with success.
Who is Justin Bieber? (Score:2)
But is he someone I need to know about to be not oblivious to current culture, that is, apart from "getting" Justin Bieber jokes on late night TV?
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I know the bit about him being from Canada and having something to do wtih music and about him being unpleasant to neighboring homeowners.
But is he someone I need to know about to be not oblivious to current culture, that is, apart from "getting" Justin Bieber jokes on late night TV?
Justin Bieber is to music as Rob Ford is to politics.
Both are Canadians, both have problems with the cops, the people around them, the news media, booze,drugs, inappropriate public behaviour, more money than brains, etc.
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I'd be most worried if a heart surgeon I needed didn't have four years of pre-med, four-years of medical school, and many years of surgical and cardiac surgery residency and practiceÃ"a heck of a lot more that 10,000 hours.
Or they could have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express...
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Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is insanity. 10,000 hours of practice might be better thought of 10,000 hours of experimentation. Each repetition, you try something. If that doesn't work, you vary something slightly, repeat and observe the outcome. You then take that result and make another change, and repeat the whole process. If you just dedicated 10,000 hours doing the exact same thing, the exact same way, you're insane to expect anything other than the exact same resu
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The entire nature/nurture debate almost always ignores the "quality of practice" issue. Not all practice is equal, just because it is deliberate. The specific activities chosen may be more or less efficient at improving a skill.
It also depends on what talent, or aspect of personality, you're looking at. One case which has been heavily studied, because it has such a large impact on society, is psychopathy. The answer to the question of "is it nature or nurture" is "yes". In other words an at-risk child doesn't necessarily develop a full-blown personality disorder (= psychopathy) unless the conditions are right, and conversely a child treated a certain way doesn't necessarily automatically develop a personality disorder (that's in
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