“The thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.” – Malcolm Gladwell
Made recently popular by Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers: The Story of Success, the 10,000 hour rule theory states: to become an expert in a field of study, it merely takes 10,000 hour of focus and practice on the topic at hand.
This equates to roughly 20 hours a week for 10 years.
I’d like to know: What do you think of the 10,000 hour theory?
Do you think “putting in the the time” is the only way to reach expert status? Or do you think there are shortcuts to becoming an expert?
We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
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I think that’s a bit of a loaded question. How complex is the skill? How much of an expert do you want to be?
If you want to be a total expert at playing a single song on a piano, even without knowing anything about the piano, it would not take 10,000 hours. If you want to be in the top 20% of piano players, it will take less time than wanting to be in the top 5%, and far less than 10,000 hours.
There’s always the controversial topic of passive versus active learning. When learning a language, does listening to your target language count toward your expertise? Personally, I see passive listening as a small modifer; even if it only improves you by 1%, that adds up to a lot in the long run.
On the other hand, if you want to be the foremost expert (number 1) on the human brain, you had better prepare to spend far more than 10,000 hours. And give up on sleep, family, sunlight, and holidays. Some areas of knowledge are just too great for a single person.
Perhaps you want to be a polymath and be an expert on a wide variety of things. As great as that is, do you want to spend 10,000 hours on each thing? I doubt it. Plus you need to maintain your skills after gaining the expertise, which adds up to more hours.
The 10,000 hour rule is dependent on too many things to be a hard and fast rule. If you want to be an expert enough, just take things one step at a time and don’t worry about the 10,000 hour goal.
Response to the quote: Your know what though, if your in tune with what your good at, sometimes it is effortless and those people do not have to put as much time into it. Their in the zone with what they do, who they are, and their total being of why their here? (like the person behind Expert Enough?)
A quick way to put it is:
Watch your environment, for they become your thoughts.
Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become your character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.
I added the first line; the rest is from an unknown author.
John Outlaw is the author.
I think Matt is on the right track by talking about what percentile of expertise you want to reach. I believe that the 10,000 hour rule, while a generalization, applies to reaching the very top of a skill. Like the top .01%.
How many hours would it take to reach the top 10% or the top 25%? Isn’t that what Expert Enough is all about?
Since expertise is relative I would argue that you can be considered an expert by anyone with significantly less skill than you.
Is there a shortcut? Not necessarily a shortcut, but it doesn’t have to be 10,000 hours.
Deliberate practice repeated consistently over a long period of time makes a person reach their full potential.
I agree with you Jake. I think being an expert is very subjective. If you want to be among the top handful in the world, 10,000 hours sounds about right, but to be viewed as an expert, you really only have to know more than others.
For example, I am the foremost goat and livestock expert among my friends. I don’t know that much, but I know a bunch more than they do. To them, I am an expert.
I agree that deliberate practice is required as well. A book I read a while ago, The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle (http://thetalentcode.com/book/) talks a lot about practice and building myelin, the insulation around neurons. The more myelin you have, the better those circuits fire. The more those circuits are fired, the more myelin is produced.
Practice changes brain structure, that is how we improve. Thanks for your insight Jake.
The idea of 10,000 hours leading to possible excellence I first heard from Reverend Bob Richards, an Olympic pole vaulter and minister. He was also an ambassador and motivational speaker for Wheaties back in the fifties. He would visit high schools and encourage athletes and academics to spend 10,000 hours training or studying respectively to accomplish their goals. I use his example today in my coaching. While he didn’t guarantee success he said that spending that amount of time would certainly result in very high level of competence in the chosen pursuit.
As a golf instructor and seeing so many golfers at the driving range just beating balls and never getting better, I think it takes a lot of time performing perfect practice rather than just hard work. It is how you prepare that sets you apart and makes you an expert. If I want to be one of the best golf instructors in the country, I have to learn from the best golf instructors in the country through research and watching them give many hours of lessons. I don’t think it takes 10,000 hours depending on your definition of a true expert but it takes a lot of times learning through your own mistakes and study.
I like what Matt said in the previous response that the 10,000 hour rules is dependent on too many things to be a hard and fast rule. You have to put in the time but the amount of time depends on what your trying to be an expert in.
“If you want to be a total expert at playing a single song on a piano, even without knowing anything about the piano, it would not take 10,000 hours.”
I completely disagree. I am pretty sure than any world-class pianist can play a typical song (even sight reading) better than an amateur who has spent hundreds of hours on just that song (without mastering fundamental technique that would apply to other songs also).
In the same way, I would say that to write a single best-selling software program takes as much time and effort as developing the skills that would enable one to write many great programs.
Basically, to do even one thing very well requires bringing in a whole lot more than it might seem, because expertise manifests itself in not only what is produced, but in what could have been produced and what was omitted.
I guess to me it partly depends on how broad or narrow your expertise is.
As mentioned in an earlier comment, are you an expert at one piano piece or are you an expert piano player?
Interesting as well when you look at new expertises. For example, how long do you use Pinterest before you become a Pinterest expert? Don’t know how long it’s been around but it feels like cramming in 10,000 hours of deliberate Pinterest practice seems a bit tough…
I’ve won design awards and managed a face-to-face sales closing ratio of over 100% (with referral closes), but while I didn’t go through over 10k hours for design practice — I went through 7 years of sales (retail + street canvasing), my take on the 10,000 hours rule would be to be prepared to work hard and stay for the journey (beats thinking of it as a long-run) and actually working hard and smart to get things done and accomplish any results you set yourself to achieve.
As a rule, it seems about right if the goal is to become THE expert, not simply AN expert. Since your general principle on this blog is about becoming expert enough, I don’t think 10,000 hours is required to become expert enough for a large number of people to be willing to pay for your knowledge/expertise. It is, however, probably a decent predictor of the focused practice required to reach a point where just about anyone would pay you for your knowledge/expertise.
I think the 10K hour rule is too big a generalization. The MW definition of expert is “one with the special skill or knowledge representing mastery of the subject.” There are subjects that can be mastered in a week. On the other hand, I’ve been parenting for 21 years (I have five kids; that number is chronological, not cumulative) and I’ve fairly certain that there is no such thing as a “parenting expert.”
I’m actually attacking the expert status question from a different direction. I’m about to begin a quest to write one million words in one year, with the hopes that I will be, if not expert, at least proficient (or “expert enough”) at the end of the year. My hope is that number of repetitions will stand in for the number of hours in this case.
Depends on your definition of expert and how you spend the 10,000 hours. As others say becoming *the* expert may require that long but being very good (expert enough?) at something can be done considerably quicker IMO. The other thing would be it might take 10,000 hours of ‘just doing’ but perhaps much less if it was it was disciplined practice. Also some skills are easier than others!
I don’t think is a question of mere hours but rather the quality of those hours. Do you spend those hours practicing something you already know or do you go outside your comfort zone and explore new things, difficult things? As Cal Newport mentions in many of his articles, people become experts by dissecting difficult tasks and making sense of them. It is the tedious task of deliberate practice that makes you great. To regard practice as the single factor in greatness is a mistake. You should read some of Cal Newport’s posts that dive deeper into this very same topic. His theory is right on point.
In a word, yes. You have to put in the time. However, 10’000 hours of deliberate practice is key.
I was having a discussion about fitness expertise with some of the brightest minds in the fitness industry. I was surprised to hear them overvalue experience.
We were discussing when it is ethical to start writing/speaking about fitness. A very experienced and well know trainer said that the 10k hour rule is very good. To be a great trainer: 10, 000 hours of training people.
This idea is flawed, because we as individuals don’t accomplish much on our own. If all you do is train people, you’re not gonna learn too much from 10,000 hours. Definitely not as much as you would when you also read about fitness, spoke to other trainers, and wrote about fitness in a journal/blog.
I know many so-called fitness experts in my country who have over 10 years of training experience, but who have no clue about the latest fitness research. Me as a much less experienced new personal trainer seem to much smarter at some things.
So it’s quality over quantity. Depending on what methods you use, you’ll get either a lot or a little from your experience.
I believe it is also important to consider the idea of individual aptitude in this discussion. The 10000 hour rule may hold on average, but individual humans vary greatly in both the rate of skill acquisition and the maximum proficiency they are able to attain.
Gladwell assertion does not hold very well for true “outliers” like Mozart, Newton, and Jobs. These individuals attained tremendous expertise and created completely new ideas and innovations long before they had an opportunity to put in 10000 hours of practice.
No. It only says what has usually been the case so far.
And it doesn’t differentiate between good and bad teachers or better and worse methods.
Yes, working harder is important. But, the world is full of hard workers.
I believe it is important what the person works hard on and that she works smart, as well.
In the biz world results are rewarded not hard work (It took me years to understand this).
Remembering what my Dad used to ask job applicants ” . . . you say you have 25 years of experience. Is that 25 years of progressively responsible experience or 1 year of experience 25 times?”
With the right approach, you don’t need 10, 000 hours of practice to achieve mastery at something. There is always a better way. Find it.
(Opinion amalgamated from http://longnow.org/seminars/02011/sep/14/accelerated-learning-accelerated-times/ , Tim Ferris’s speech on accelerated learning).
My Martial arts instructor who’s been training for well over 30 years agrees with the 10 year rule because he had written an article about the phenomena years before the book was released.
In his experienced, he felt a strange things happen to him when he reached the 10 year mark in that his movements became more graceful, natural and no longer thought about what he was doing. His brain literally gave in.
Bare in mind that he had trained consistently every single day and did nothing but train.
If you commit yourself to anything and turn pro, i believe anything’s possible. Otherwise it’s simply impossible to become an expert at multiple endeavors in a life time simply because of the time it takes to develop yourself past that threshold, and to then maintain those skills over time.
I read a Brain Study article in Scientific America that drew on brain studies, that it takes 10 years to develop the brain in the area’s that would make you a chessmaster, or a soccer star, expert musician, and the list went on. Hard wiring takes time.
If you’ve run across this research, I would love to have it at my fingertips again.
Approaching this subject from another angle, 1in 4 guys are born with dyslexia caused by a deep dividing the brain in utero by testosterone. It usually takes guys til their late teens or early twenties to develop strategies that will develop different pathways in their brain to overcome this seemingly ‘problem.’
Which is from: The Five Languages of Love by Gary D Chapman
It seems to me that folks use the 10,000 hour rule for two reasons:
1. To have an excuse as to why they could never be an expert, because they don’t have the interest or dedication to hit close to that mark.
2. To have a goal to aim for.
I don’t necessarily want to do something for 10,000 hours, but I know that I have to start putting in a few to at least get the ball rolling.
Expertise vs Wisdom
I’ve often supervised highly trained psychologists and counselors. I’ve found myself struggling against the book learning in an effort to tease out the wisdom. Additionally, I’ve certainly often found some folks extraordinarily wise by virtue of their own experience and thoughtfulness. So…my thoughts? Listen well, think things through, learn as you go and don’t underestimate the value of acquired wisdom. ‘Expertise’ often goes the way of science; oops, it needs to be re-thought.
Perhaps a better question is: WHY do you want to become an expert?
What do you perceive the payoff to be once you are an “expert”?
Is it money, self-satisfaction, fame, adulation, a great girlfriend/boyfriend, or what?
Maybe it’s because I’m almost 65, have played the corporate game, won a few and lost a few, but to me the only expertise I seek anymore is the expertise of self-satisfation, or happiness.
And the longer I live and the more I realize how fleeting material accomplishments are, the more I realize the truth of this saying: “He is richest who is happy with what he has”.
And another quote, attributed to Lao Tze rings very true as well: “If you wish knowledge, add something every day; if you wish wisdom, drop something every day”.
These thoughts may only tangentially touch on expertise but they ring true for me.
Wonderful blog, great question, beautiful comments and commenters.
Okay, granted, I’m coming to the party about 9 months late, but here’s my take on the question…
I think people confuse “expert” with “mastery.”
Does it take 10,000 hours to master something? Yes, it does.
Want to become a master guitarist? You need that 10k hours to build muscle memory. Sorry, no shortcuts here.
Want to become a master poker player? Yup, another 10k there. Instinct needs to be developed, reaction to a myriad of circumstances needs to be experienced, learned and assimilated. It’s a mental skill that needs to be developed. Again, no shortcuts.
But, what is an expert? An expert is merely someone who knows more about something than you do.
There are levels to expertise.
Even if you’re learning how to play guitar or poker, you’re still miles ahead of the novice. Maybe you’re still making some mistakes but you’ve already learned from previous ones – you’re now an expert to those who haven’t made the mistakes yet.
It’s like answering the question, what makes you a professional?
Answer: someone paid me for what I knew or could do.
The whole 10,000 hour thing is just an estimate, and completely depends on the context, when you start, type of practice, presence of a coach or mentor, quality of coaching, the competition within the field, the complexity of the skill-set, etc…etc…
The inspiration behind Gladwell’s book (K Anders Ericson) got started in expertise research because he did an experiment on memory. In that experiment he showed that in 250 hours of practice, he could teach someone to remember 87 numerical digits, the average person can remember 7 or 8. A person who can do this, is in the top 1% in this ability, does that make them an expert?
It’s a relatively small amount of work, in a highly specialized field, in what is a relatively easy skill to master.
What the 10,000 hour rule more refers to is a generalization of complex skill-sets, not a skill itself.
It would take far less time to be the best tennis server in the world, if you could ignore the rest of the game.
Likewise, you could be a human calculator, but most likely it would still take 10,000 hours to become the CFO of a fortune 500 company.
It’s co-relation, not causation.
When you look at a large majority of people who excel in their field (won an olympic medal, play in a professional sports league, are the CEO of a major company, etc…), they have spent roughly 10,000 hours or 10 years in that field.
The gentleman right now, trying to see if it works for Golf, may succeed because golf is a late specialization sport. However, he also have missed key motor skill developmental years in sport development (6-13 years old in particular), which would have made this path smoother in the long-run. It will probably take him more time starting at 30, than a child with similar environment and coaching starting at 9.
10,000 hours is just a rough guide, a reminder that you will have to put in your time to obtain world-class success in complex professions. It’s all relative.
The only sure-fire way to succeed in a field in less than 10,000 hours is extra dedication with natural ability. For example, you may have been born with a creative soul, it won’t actually take you 10,000 hours to get to the point that you can make a painting worth selling. Or maybe you always did well in English class because you actually liked it, your chances of selling a successful novel would probably be higher than the C average student who barely made it through class without sleeping. Think of the prodigies, they’re called that since they accomplish so much at a young age!
All I know is that the human brain is an amazing one, with the capacity for knowledge beyond a supercomputer and multiple abilities that we still use to survive as a species.
But 10,000 hours, even if it does take that long, at least make sure they were productive hours spent. Maybe it’s really 5,000 but the majority of people screw around so much that they can’t seem to figure out the follies of procrastination!