The 10,000 Hour Rule Myth

Malcolm Gladwell pretty much branded the concept of "10,000 hours of practice" rule in his book "Outliers." He is a respected author and can be very influential. In no way will I dispute his writing or his expertise. I have gained much from his work over the years. But the more I have thought about the 10,000 hour rule the more I have been depressed by it.

First off lets get this out of the way, I'm old. So this rule tells me I really have no chance at being great at anything else in my life. If I were able to give up 5 hours a day every day in practice for some skill, it would be 5.5 years minimum before I'm an expert. The reality of finding 5 hours a day everyday is not realistic. Therefore, before I can be an expert at anything new I will be declining physically and mentally according to this. I refuse to accept that.

Second, it seems to define greatness in very singular terms. His study shows for example that the best violinists put in that much deliberate practice to become great. What it misses in my opinion is that greatness should not only be defined by having great skill in one area. There are and can be amazingly great musicians who are more diversified in their talents and genres. The same is true of people. Expertise in one single area is great, sure, but we also see that generalists who can see patterns and explain the innerworkings of processes as incredibly valuable but may not be experts at any one task or knowledge.

And lastly, the study does not show that putting in the 10,000 hours of "deliberate practice" creates a promise of being great. The study was not a double blind study, it did not track those who put in more practice but never made it, it did not track every great violinists either. It simply took some great ones and asked them measures about their past practice.

All that being said, I'm a believer in the basic concept. The right kind of practice is the only way to improve. It is just that we all have a tendency to want quick answers. The 10,000 hour rule is not a quick answer - is that some kind of pun? The right type of practice is of course the best way to mastery, but it is in the defining of mastery that can be misleading.

There was another experiment done with experts that I find interesting and related. In the book "Expert Political Judgement" by Philip E. Tetlock, the author shares a experiment were political and economic experts were asked to make predictions. Of the predictions they said would be impossible and could never happen - 15% of them were wrong. What is much more interesting than that fact, is that the more expert the participant was, the more credentialed they were, the worse they were with their predictions. Those that had a wide range of knowledge but were not experts at any on domain performed much better.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff of Ness Labs puts it this way, "Being able to see new patterns and generate ideas across fields where people don’t usually make connections is an incredibly valuable skill. This superpower rarely comes with deep expertise in one unique field at the expense of other areas of knowledge."

There are no fast answers and there are many more then one way to be great.

This article from Ness Labs is where much of this thinking came from. Read about the hedge hog and fox if you have a few extra minutes.