The Myth of the Ten Thousand Hour Rule...in the Making of an Expert.

I first came across the ten-thousand-hour rule coined by Malcolm Gladwell in his 2008 best seller, Outliers.

Gladwell referenced a study on expert performance by Dr. Anders Ericsson, a cognitive psychologist, in coming up with the rule.

That it takes ten thousand hours of practice to become a master in most fields.

The simplistic interpretations underlying the rule bothered me:

1. That all you had to do to become an expert was to practice for 10,000 hours.

2. The type of practice didn’t matter.

3. It was futile to try if you couldn’t devote 10,000 hours.

Yet the rule turned out to be a myth.

Dr. Anders’ Ericsson, in his book, Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise has this to say about the rule:

• There is nothing special or magical about ten thousand hours number.

• The number used in the study was an average. Not every violinist in the study had practiced ten thousand hours.

• The rule overlooked the type or quality of practice. The violinist in the study did deliberate practice and not any “practice.”

So, how long should you practice if you want to become an expert?

At least as much as the top performers in that field have put in. Deliberate practice!

A few hundred hours if you want to become world-class at memorizing strings of digits.

Twenty thousand hours or more if you want to become a world-class pianist.

Dogbert in a Dilbert comic strip, “I would think a willingness to practice the same thing for ten thousand hours is a mental disorder.”