Slashdot Mirror
New Research Casts Doubt On the "10,000 Hour Rule" of Expertise
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.
I mastered masturbation in far less time.
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.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Gladwell's is a master of relabeling the obvious. Looks like he picked the wrong research to slap his own label on this time.
What a shocker..
rule, that article reliance on genetics isn't it.
And a lot of it no longer jives with modern genetic science.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I joined a fairly well populated art site about 9 years ago and though it might be useless I observed that generally people who push themselves to grow will learn more with less effort than people who think doing the same thing over and over will somehow yield talent.
It has been enlightening to watch people gain skill at different rates but sad when you see a stubborn person run in circles for 5+ years doing it "their way"
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."
If you want to succeed in anything, forget practicing and start networking.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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/
My wife teaches violin. She can usually tell from the first couple of lessons if a child will do well. Some naturally hear the notes and rhythms, some never do.
With the 5 second rule one does not need any practice when it comes to eating cookies.
They do say "With very few exceptions, deliberate practice correlated positively with skill." I don't think anyone believed that ALL it took was the hours of practice, but that, for a given level of skill and ability, the practice is what allows a person to become expert. Will there be prodigies? Yup, but that's anecdotal. Nobody believes that just any random person could be as fast as Usain Bolt by practicing, but they could (perhaps) realize *their potential* by putting in those hours.
You can train a skill, but you cannot learn talent.
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!
...hours of experience with HTML, just so they know I mean business?
Not snarky - but I've noticed that some Hollywood movies explicitly (or implicitly) state that if you want to do anything really, really well, you just have to practice, practice, practive. This sounds like a restatement of the 10,000 hour rule. Oh, and you have to really want it.
I suspect everyone always knew this was nonsense. But is this (Gladwell) where it came from?
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
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 motivation to *easily* put in the 10,000 hours of work to become an expert. Sure maybe some people require 22x as much *deliberate* practice to become a master. Maybe the person who only spent 728 deliberate hours of practicing spends 24 hours a day thinking and dreaming about chess (i.e. a lot of non-deliberate hours). Maybe the person who required 16000 hours of deliberate practice, actually hated chess and only did it to please his chessmaster father, etc.
Even if Gladwell's view turns out to be true, it simply raises deeper questions. What causes some people to love certain pursuits and not others. In the same way that genes can cause exceptional predisposition to skill of a particular type, isn't it just as likely for genetics to be able to cause exceptional love of a particular thing like chess, music, etc.
This deeper point that born with the love of chess *may* be a more important attribute than being born with a predisposition to be good at chess, for me, is not so much an empirical question as a philosophical question, if only for the reason that I think these sorts of questions are very difficult to answer empirically.
But if it is true that the passion for something like chess or music can be genetic (and I don't see any reason why this wouldn't be the case), then this is simply an alternative path for genetics to play a role in becoming an expert, rather than an alternative *to* a genetic path.
I know the study did the work and examined the actual performance of the subjects, but most development managers know this already. How many software development managers keep seeking the '10X coder,' that person that just sees the most elegant way to solve the problem with the code. Yes, they work hard, they spend time learning, but they make fewer mistakes and their code is just more elegant.
I keep remembering that line from 'Searching for Bobby Fischer,' "for all his natural talent, Bobby Fischer worked harder than anyone." Talent+time = the elite.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
And Ericsson, whose research Gladwell misrepresented, most definitely didn't.
it's in my head
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 well -- one of whom is the champion of a small Nordic country. A player of Shogi recently switched to chess -- and he's quite good. Or perhaps, a good COBOL programmer could be a good Swift programmer with less effort?
There's very little in the article discussing the role of "related skills" -- and perhaps this can help explain the gap.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
is doing more harm than good, is what I'm beginning to think. Even if it didn't make logical errors like other posters said, what is the point of their conclusion that we should pretend we're all equal and should not chase our dreams? Should one give up on their dream because their genetics *might* not be up to the task in a way that is not obvious to the person, according to one study? And even if the claim in the study is accurate, should one give up on the *process* of chasing their dreams because they may not become a master? Because no good can come up from opening new horizons in one's life unless some predetermined goal is achieved?
This "science" is worse than useless.
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?
You are welcome on my lawn.
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 sociological experiments have confirmed this same thing. It's not the genes you are born with as much as the education, life style, and social surroundings you have growing up that matters. Hanging around with great musicians as a youngster results in someone learning music and being a good musician over time. This obviously assumes no disorders that prevent learning and activity.
The 10,000 hour rule seems to work from that same line of thought. Hard work yields results, at least most of the time.
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".
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
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?
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 require innate abilities to truly master, and if so, what are they and how do they differ from those that don't? There is evidence to suggest that the former is true.
This rule is often linked to how to be successful, but the studies have all been on skills that have no direct links to financial success. Brilliant musicians don't get paid well by default. Chess players aren't sport stars. Artists struggle.
I am curious if programming is a skill that does require an innate mindset to truly master (I do believe these skills do exist), or if it just a skill that demands disciplined practice. I've seen no evidence either way, so anything would be speculation on my part.
The 10,000 hour rule has always been stupid. Mastery of a field depends on the complexity of the skills required.
I worry not if the guy changing the tires on my car has worked at it for only two weeks. 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.
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.
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)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
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.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
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'm not exactly sure how many hours it took or when it clicked, but after programming video games for 22 years, I finally can code anything I want very rapidly. While I can't grant you all the insight into how I do software architecture, I found one really cool method. If you design your memory structure(data structures) first, all your methods should write themselves. When I started coding games, it was the hardest thing I ever did mentally, way harder than even physics when they do rocket science. But now the only mental challenge I have when coding is thinking,"Is anyone even going to want to play this when I'm done? Is it worth putting time in if I get nothing back?"
It's been discussed before that the ap stores are like lotteries where you input time, and then hope to win money. It is very discouraging, but when I think about it, I can't do anything quite as well as code, so isn't time where I'm not coding wasting my skill? So this code warrior rides on.
God spoke to me
Maybe C+ is a good enough achievement.
I think it really requires all of the above (Passion, Education, Practice) to be a real expert. Those that really love a particular subject tend to do the other two automatically. Whether it's fixing cars, botany, math, or computer programming. I look for people with passion to work with. If they do what they do just because it's a job, I don't really want to work with drones.
everyone knows its possessing 10,000 Midi-chlorians.
And I'm not talking about the defunct currency.
http://shameproject.com/profil...
But he does prefer the big money over small.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
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?
I find discussion in this thread a little bit wanting as not everyone is the same
Some had an "early start" while others may be "late starter" because not everyone had their insights straight from the start
Those who had early insights can hone their mastery very early because they already had a "road path" drawn up for them (as long as they do not give up, that is), and all they need to do is to gain enough knowledge to put their insights into words, or in scientific terminology
Others may be late starters because their "insights" took quite some time to "gel"
I happened to know people from both camps. Neither camp can claim to be more smart than the other
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Gladwell took a German study of the practising habits of orchestral violinists compared to their achievement. In this particular study, the violinists who achieved mastery practised a wide ranging number of hours. 10,000 was only the average. Some practised far more and some practised far less. Gladwell clearly doesn't know what he's talking about.
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. The emotions one has that govern positive/negative neuroplastic feedback quite likely affect the result. Additionally, the thought patterns one employs to focus, figure out what you're doing wrong, and correct it likely has a high impact on the efficiency of learning, and likely varies a lot between people. Indeed, by a young age, every single person in the world likely has a unique propensity to different styles of critical thinking and feedback emotions. These styles can likely be altered deliberately and non-deliberately. I know that my own thinking style is much different from most people I know, and it makes me quick to pick up certain types of thing but not others. There is no way to say with current evidence (as far as I know) the extent to which these factors are governed by nature or nurture, but I guess I'm providing more factors other than nature that may account for the some of the variation not explained by practice time. These are not out of experimental reach however. Hopefully neuroscientists and psychologists will figure out a way to test them.
In conclusion, to quote the great Alan Iverson, "We talkin' 'bout practice!"
It's been quite some time since I read that book but as I remember it 10,000 hours was never presented as some iron clad rule defining how long it took to achieve mastery but rather it was a convenient notational shorthand for "lots and lots of practice is required". To nit-pick over the specific number of hours is to completely miss the point. The point was that lots of practice is required, and those that don't put in that practice (because of lack of passion or lack of opportunity) will never achieve mastery.
I wish I were as sure of anything as some people are of everything
You can get awesome at anything in much less than 10,000 hrs if you have a montage.
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
The 10,000 hour rule shouldn't belong to Malcolm Gladwell, the first time I ever heard this was in a documentary interview with Carmine Nigro who was Bobby Fischer's only chess coach ever. I'm trying to find the reference, but he clearly said in response to a question of "Was Bobby Fischer a genius?". Carmine responded with a very intelligent response of "I've never met a genius who didn't put 10,000 hours into it first."
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)
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?
But only a few of those hours are actually useful. This isn't an argument that there is a magic formula that will maximize the efficiency of learning. And this isn't an argument for human husbandry and weird breeding mechanics. Seriously, couples are just much more functional and happy when they actually love each other. We could all learn a lot from pondering. A person playing a guitar for 12 hours straight every day would just get a repetitive stress injury. Take the time and be diligent, it makes a difference.
http://thedanplan.com/
"Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect."
If you code at a 1st year level for 10,000 hours, and don't study learn and improve, will you still be a 1st year level coder after 10,000 hours?
If you write fiction at a 3rd grade writing skill level, and don't study, learn, and improve, will you always be at a 3rd grade writing level after 10,000 hours?
I would say no to both. You would be much better for two reasons.
1. You will gain ideas naturally - things you may have learned in 5 minutes of studying might pop into your mind.
2. Your brain actually changes with experience. That which you do becomes easier because your brain changes. (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-changes-in-response-to-experi/)
College is fine, but we are missing some key educational experiences by going away from apprenticeships. I feel that Computer Science, some forms of doctors, and many other fields would benefit from apprenticeship.
As a musician, I've been in situations where someone tries out for my band. He has really nice gear, and can play some neat licks. But when it comes to playing an actual song, or even writing a part, it becomes clear that he doesn't really have any talent. He has definitely practiced and acquired some skill (and I'm not claiming to be some kind of prodigy), but I can detect that he isn't "feeling the music" and won't be invited back. TFA seems to summarize a scientific explanation for this type of "band tryout" story.
As a parent, I'm mindful of the balance between nurturing my child's perceived innate talent and getting her to try new activities until she can figure out what she likes. Hopefully, what she likes will relate to her innate talent so that she'll thrive rather than struggle.
I once heard a physicist remark that talent is just another word for passion. Not sure if I agree, but I noticed when I started my physics degree in college that it came pretty easily to me. I wasn't particularly gifted in math (and I'm still not) but physics asked the kinds of questions and derived the kind of answers that I have always asked myself, ever since being a child. I remember inventing a concept for a perpetual motion vehicle for a school project that was like a hydrogen powered car that used electrolysis to split the water from the exhaust back into hydrogen and oxygen, and I was always wondering why nobody had done something like that. Once I started learning physics, I could show rigorously where and how much energy was lost at each stage, to prove exactly why it wouldn't work.
My point being, I'm certainly not an expert in physics, but I noticed that some people struggled far more than I did, and I think part of the reason might be that I was "practicing" continually because I was internally pondering these questions throughout my childhood. When I acquired the knowledge to formalize these questions, it was very straightforward to answer them.
So, ultimately, I wonder if "talent" just means that you are naturally interested in something, and so for much of your life you have rehearsed it internally without even really meaning to. Which makes both options true: practice is what really makes us successful, but we also have predispositions to "practice" certain unique things mentally, which then manifests as a higher aptitude for those tasks when observed externally.
This misinformation/inaccuracy "ring a bell", raymorris? It should -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
You utter fuckup BIG TALKER bullshit artist!
(You sure "preach a good game" but when the chips are down? See above... you lose/fail & are as GUILTY as those you're cutting down, chump!)
APK
P.S.=> Raymorris = "Do not as I do, but as I say" bullshit artist wannabe, nothing more... apk