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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.
+1, 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.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
What a shocker..
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.
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!
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.
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?
How can you be sure she wasn't just a terrible teacher? You didn't even get a second opinion.
-1, InFulSight
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?
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.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
No, Beethoven for example continued improving his skill until near his death. Long after he'd written pieces of great genius.
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.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
As a music teacher, I have never - ever - found that I could not teach someone who practiced regularly and intelligently to be as good as they wanted to be. Your teacher was too damned lazy to teach you properly and as a consequence has denied you the ability to be the musician you could perfectly well have been. I can't comment on whether you ended up in a better place or not, but I can say, with absolute certainty, that your teacher was dead wrong.
[FUCK BETA]