The actual rule is badly misinterpreted. It's not 10,000 hours of practice: it's 10,000 hours of practice at the appropriate level of difficulty -> You need to be taking on tasks that are just slightly beyond what you can do now for most of this time to achieve success. I also think genetics are not nearly as big a factor as the author makes out to be: there can be plenty of barriers that make it impossible for you to do something, but most of those barriers make it impossible to put 10,000 hours of practice in as well. There is also a self-fulfilling prophecy in the works here though: 10,000 hours is inevitable if you succeed at something, but most of those who don't succeed will drop the hours (searching for fallback careers, getting jobs, etc..) they dedicate to something along the way and are quite unlikely to reach the number.
This. It amazes me the number of people that think "I work 8 hours a day (on average), so I should be world class in about 3.4 years". As you said it is concentrated, skill-adjusted practice, NOT just doing something over and over. The biggest problem is that you generally need an expert coach/mentor to put this work together for you, since you likely would not be a good judge of what would appropriately challenge you at your current skill level. Most people swing to the tails of the distribution in their self-made challenges, either too easy or too hard, you want the Goldilocks zone. I unfortunately have no wisdom for or solution to this problem, it is one of scale (i.e. there are more people that want said expert mentorship than there are expert mentors to give it) and time.
> And that was it. I could do that much — but that was all. I was hopeless. My brain simply doesn’t work in a way that allows me to write code.
Did he really try for 10k hours? I bet he would have gotten a bit further.
This article really bothers me in its defeatism. It doesn't do talented people "a disservice" to say that anyone can become an expert with 10k hours of practice. No one will be offended by praising their hard work, and no one is best served by believing that their talent is god-given and they are naturally better than everyone else. Outside of certain high-profile athletics there simply isn't enough competition to declare oneself abnormally talented in any endeavor.
The talent component of success can't be scientifically determined anyway. The concept of talent itself is amorphous, there is no falsifiable hypothesis to be formulated. It's not that talent doesn't exist or that hard work is infallible, it's just that a belief in hard work will always result in better outcomes for the believer.
This was the part that really turned me off as well. I rember when I started learning to speak Russian, I would think, "Man, my brain just doesn't work like that." And I was right - part of learning a language is requiring your brain to think in a new way. That's the reason it's so hard.
But now when I sit down and start reading Tolstoy it makes complete sense. All that changed was me learning something, and thereby my natural proclivity adapted. I'm sensing the same thing as I learn to program. The initial learning curve is very steep.
Not to say that some aren't naturally more gifted than others, but you can usually make up for that, at least partially, with some extra effort. I guess it depends in what level you're looking at.
Not everyone who plays basketball for 10,000 hours will be Michael Jordan. But they will be a good player.
There are two authors listed, one male and one female. Makes for a bit of confusion when the article dips into personal anecdote, doesn't it? (I'd hazard a guess that the anecdote is Grandin's, since she's "the famous one".)
I really respect Temple Grandin so I hope that this article's almost nonsensical content is due to it being an excerpt from a book.
First, it conflates being successful with being an expert. I can be successful at something without being an expert. I can also be an expert and die penniless and unknown.
"My brain simply doesn’t work in a way that allows me to write code." There may be some disability that causes this but to counter an anecdote with another one, I think we all know people on the autism spectrum who are excellent programmers. And the fact that a particular person's disability prevents them from doing something says nothing about the rest of the population.
These types of articles really bother me because it's a well-known name, in a big "forward thinking" magazine, basically saying if you believe yourself to be "naturally ungifted" it's okay not to try. You have reasons. As someone constantly on the lookout for new things to learn and a brain on the autism spectrum, I can't abide that.
Using Bill Gates as the definition of expert is crazy. He is the "best". The top. Sample size of 1. That doesn't mean that there are not experts. Maybe not as successful and rich but they are expert. One a similar note, using your own personal experience as an anecdote to represent the entire population is also crazy. Once again sample size of one.
The 10,000 hours rule isn't someone's fantasy, it's based on an increasingly large body of evidence, but this article just dismisses the evidence with a wave of the hand and some assertions. A good selection of research is in The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance. Other people here have mentioned also that it's a specific kind of practice that's called for, not just mindlessly amassing hours, but rather relentlessly working on your weak spots and on skills that are just a bit outside what you can currently do.
The Grandin book looks interesting, but this excerpt just seems lazy.
There is also the recent research on grit by Angela Duckworth who is demonstrating that success depends on perseverance.
That observation probably seems pretty intuitive, but she's demonstrating it with research. The "I was hopeless" reaction to something hard is just a failure of grit. The author has no idea how they would do if the ground it out through the really tough parts.
I also find that when I talk to people about this they are often very resistant to this model of essentially talent-free skill development. It makes a lot people uncomfortable, and just seems wrong to them. I think maybe the notion that it's all innate talent absolves them of the need to work hard to develop advanced skill. Instead nature capriciously doles out talent and that's the story of why I'm not ...
I don't think it dismisses the evidence - it agrees with the idea that 10,000 hours might be required. It just states that it takes 10,000 hours for a talented person to become good at a field - that a person untalented in a field won't necessarily become a true expert given enough practise.
To me this seems intuitively obvious - people's brains aren't built alike, and if we're willing to accept that brains at the fringes (e.g. aspergers) are more attuned to certain tasks, it's not too out there to suggest variance within the 'normal' parameters too. Of course, proving it would require a complex test - one that (somehow) sorts people into attuned or unattuned on a given subject to begin with, and then makes them work for 10,000 hours on the subject.
Realistically, though, I suppose this question just isn't all that interesting. A lot of the time, the important part of the 'nature' component is simply what you're interested in. If you happen to have an interest in a subject, you're vastly more likely to put in the 10,000 hours. I'm a good computer programmer because I enjoyed and was good at it from the beginning, so I spent more time at it. I'm a terrible dancer because I spent maybe a hundred hours on it, sucked, and lost interest. Maybe if I'd spent a hundred times longer doing it I'd be a world beater, maybe not - but it doesn't matter, because my initial experience was enough to put me off. I imagine someone for whom it clicked more naturally would be vastly more likely to stay interested.
1) That this seems intuitively obvious is precisely what I was referring to in my post. This is a scientific question, to the extent it can be answered and we should probably be unsatisfied with what appears to be obvious. The research, as I understand it, just doesn't bear out your observation.
2) I think why people stick with something is a super fascinating question. What's that all about? Why did you stick with programming and become good at it? Why do I find the same tasks utterly soul crushing and frustrating to the point of rage? Why do I persist in taking Latin as I am now? I've almost quit half a dozen times when it's gotten really hard, but I don't quit. There is something that keeps me coming back to it. I suck at it right now, but I'm not quitting, in fact, I've been working pretty hard at it. So to me that's the research I'd love to see: why do you stick with programming when I, despite numerous attempts, just don't like it and give up on it easily?
> This is a scientific question, to the extent it can be answered and we should probably be unsatisfied with what appears to be obvious.
That seems absolutely fair enough :-)
> The research, as I understand it, just doesn't bear out your observation.
The question is, does it contradict it, or does it just say nothing about it?
If the research suggests that all people have essentially the same level of ability to learn all tasks (given enough application), I'd be surprised. We know for a fact, for example, that IQ is quite highly heritable. Whatever you think about IQ as a means for measuring 'intelligence', that certainly suggests a genetic difference in the way people's brains work. That could at a minimum affect people's ability to quickly pick up (and thus enjoy enough to keep going with) new tasks, and at a maximum affect their ability to perform the task at all.
Now, obviously I don't know for sure the answer to these questions :-). The little research I've read in the past suggests that IQ is correlated with a base ability to perform a given task at all, but once you have that base level practise/application becomes the most important factor.
With respect to sticking with something, if natural talent isn't a thing that exists, inherent desire to stick with something becomes the new natural talent - after all, if someone finds programming fascinating it's always going to be vastly easier/more likely for them to put in their 10,000 hours than someone who has no such inclination.
I completely agree that natural talent is a huge part of the equation. The best example for me is sight reading on the piano. (For non musicians: "sight reading" is the skill of being able to play from music you've never seen before).
I am a musician (singer, mostly) and when it comes to sight reading as a singer I would estimate that I'm in the 95th percentile or so. But I've tinkered with the piano recreationally for basically my whole life, at times more seriously than others, and yet I still cannot sight read on the piano for my life. There's just too much information for my brain to process in real-time. I've played some pretty difficult music on the organ, but I have to basically memorize the piece to get to that level.
I strongly believe that no amount of time at the piano will make me a good sight reader. I believe I could get marginally better, but I will never reach the level of even an average pianist.
Now one could be tempted to say: "you've spent far more time sight reading as a singer, which explains why you're better at it." And while this is somewhat true, it gets the causation backwards. It was obvious to me from a very early age that I was better at sight reading as a singer, so I spent more time doing it.
I sometimes wonder if this is where the 10,000 hour rule comes from: no one could stand spending 10,000 hours doing something they truly suck at. But on the other hand, I know plenty of amateur musicians who love what they do and have spent their entire lives making music, but will never reach a professional level (which is totally fine, but contradicts the 10,000 hour thesis).
I know plenty of amateur musicians who love what they do and have spent their entire lives making music, but will never reach a professional level
I was thinking about that the other day as well and I believe it has something to do with some form of goal oriented activity behavior. Or at least a distinct process of continuously "rising the barrier". Otherwise it becomes like saying "we are walking every day so why don't we end up all being marathon runners when we turn 40".
In my view it takes a certain kind of competitive mindset that combines being dissatisfied with ones own skill set and having an intrinsic motivation to become better, adjusting the skillset to the top performers in the field and at the same time portraying to the outside a level of confidence in the skill, in order to reach the true heights of a pro.
Just as an anecdote, a friend started playing the guitar in high school and he loved it and played constantly. However, he never reached a level at which he could be considered an expert despite his incessant playing.
What did happen is he eventually hired an expert to teach him, and well into his 30's he's improved his playing significantly, now that he's focused his playing into actual practice. I think that's the key difference in this discussion.
> no one could stand spending 10,000 hours doing something they truly suck at.
I think that's an important notion people tend to overlook. Doing something you are naturally good at is enjoyable, and doing things you're naturally bad at, is not.
This is less apparent when you're just having fun, like singing karaoke with friends, playing guitar at campfire, playing sports recreationally, etc.
But when you set a conscious goal of being better than most other people, and notice that after hours/days/weeks of deliberate practice, you are still not as good as the more talented people with little practice, it becomes pretty hard to maintain motivation and optimism.
If you set a goal to be better than most people, you're just setting yourself up for failure. The world is a big place. Instead of focusing on how much worse than other people you are despite working hard, look back and see how far you've come.
There is a spectrum from recreational hobby, casual pursuits and being an expert. And if your goal is to be an expert, it basically means you have to be better than most.
In music theory class years ago, we asked our professor how he was able to sight-read on the piano so easily. His explanation was that the music consists of lots of reused patterns and ideas, and once he mastered those patterns, he could recognize them in the score and it became much easier to play the piece without rehearsing it first.
I know nothing about the piano but this sounds exactly the same like reading any language. At first you have to struggle to recognize every single letter, but after enough practice you can identify whole words immediately and later even whole phrases.
You have to start with really simple things. When you can sight read a grade 1 piano book, move on to grade 2. Doing written theory homework also helps, because it forces you to think about all the little details and it means your fluency goes up. I really don't believe this is about talent, it's just difficult in the same way that learning to read English is difficult. Also stopping and starting is a no-no, and recording yourself and analyzing where you slipped up helps too. Really, if you want to do it, I'm sure it can be done, but you probably need a better approach.
Maybe I didn't make this clear enough. I grew up in a household with a piano teacher and could play simple Bach pieces from an early age. I studied organ for four years. On my senior recital, I played this very difficult piece: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtA_6lIhKWY I have achieved some skill on the keys, and spent a lot of time doing it. And still I can only sight read basic things. Like a four part hymn is basically the limit of how much information I can process in real time.
Contrast this with a musician I work with regularly who can sight read from an orchestral score WHILE TRANSPOSING. I could work my whole life and never be anywhere close to what she can do.
Look, I've had people tell me before that they're sure that I'm just not practicing right. Just because certain techniques work for you doesn't mean they will work for everybody. I have a whole lifetime of data that says that things that are relatively easy for other people are very difficult for me.
People really wish this wasn't true, and they wish it so badly that they continue to fool themselves into believing there is no innate talent. It's basically Wizard's First Rule at work.
How quickly people forget the whole "Blank Slate" fiasco in the field of psychology. Certain proclivities, likes & dislikes, and yes, talents, are innate. It is not such terrible news ... you can still accomplish a hell of a lot in a direction of your choosing by dogged, deliberate practice.
Well, what is your method for improving your sight reading? Have you thoroughly addressed all of the training aspects described in the Wikipedia article on it?
If you want to make some point about talent, obviously the best way to do that is to be resistant to improving your practice. If you genuinely want to be better at sight reading, then obviously it's going to conflict with your beliefs about talent.
So, you're in a bit of a jam if you want one or the other, but I'm pretty sure the explanation for competent sight reading ability is not all talent (nature) or all practice (nurture). Even the research quoted in the article I linked to says it's a combination of a strong working memory combined with lots and lots of practice.
If you're admitting that talent plays a role, then we are in agreement and I'm not sure what you're arguing against. I'm arguing against the 10,000 hour rule, which attempts to discount or minimize the role of talent in one's ability to develop skill.
Over the years I have practiced keyboard sight reading in various ways. I own this book and practiced with it for a while: http://www.amazon.com/Speed-Reading-Keyboard-Edward-Shanaphy... And sure, it made me slightly, marginally better. But contrast this with sight reading as a singer, which I have always been good at without even trying. I have never had to specifically practice sight reading as a singer, and yet I've always been better at it than most people.
The 10,000 hour rule isn't much of a rule if for every counterexample you say "you weren't trying hard enough."
> I strongly believe that no amount of time at the piano will make me a good sight reader. I believe I could get marginally better, but I will never reach the level of even an average pianist.
So, in the absence of technique problems, I think you can become an average sight reader. I think it's much harder to say whether you can become an excellent sight reader. Seriously, if you have classical piano books at home, just start with every piece in the grade 1 or kindergarten book, then the grade 2 book, and so on. Usually sight reading 2 grades below your playing level is a reasonable end goal. It can be boring to play those simple pieces but it's the most effective method in my experience.
Perhaps you are good at sight singing simply because you are a singer, and if you were a pianist in the same way you are a singer then your sight reading would improve. Perhaps you don't need or want to be good at sight reading, in which case there's no point in pursuing it.
I'm not denying your experience of one being easier for you than the other, but I'm also not convinced that you have 10,000 hours of piano sight reading practice, so I guess it doesn't strike me as a counterexample. How many hours would you say you had for each of singing, sight singing, piano playing, and sight reading? If it's really 10,000+ hours each, I'll eat my hat.
My piano teacher had me practicing sight reading very specifically. I don't know if that's important, perhaps? I was able to sight read just barely well enough to get the certificates, but I've never been able to do it honestly, or play by ear. And back when I still practiced, I was a fairly decent pianist.
"And while this is somewhat true, it gets the causation backwards. It was obvious to me from a very early age that I was better at sight reading as a singer, so I spent more time doing it."
This is self-refuting really. You admit that you spend a lot more time on one skill and then report that you are better at that skill and are hopeless at the one you tinkered with.
K Anders Ericsson, who is one of the sources of the research on this speculates somewhere (I can't recall of the top of my head where), that there are very likely extremely small marginal differences in initial aptitude, but that these alone are enough to garner praise and tiny edges in performance that are self-rewarding to the practitioner and that these advantages make them more likely to continue with the work required to get better. That's not natural talent, if it's true, that's just a minuscule advantage that may help foster interest and practice and lead to better skill.
> K Anders Ericsson, who is one of the sources of the research on this speculates somewhere (I can't recall of the top of my head where), that there are very likely extremely small marginal differences in initial aptitude
This is incredibly disconnected from reality. This is the sort of theory you come up with when you want reality to reduce down to something simple and elegant.
I understated my experience when I used the word "tinkered." I studied organ at a collegiate level for four years, and gave a senior recital that ended with this piece: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtA_6lIhKWY I've spent plenty of time at the keyboard. And yet I can still barely sight-read four part hymn writing.
Let me give you another side of the equation: someone I sing with frequently has to work really hard to get all the notes right. Every time we sing a concert she has to get the music in advance, practice it for hours beforehand, whereas I just show up at the first rehearsal and sing it. We've both been doing this for a long time, and she is very skilled at actually singing and loves doing it. But she has to work really hard to get the same results that I get by hardly trying.
This idea that it's all about how hard you work is just that: an attractive idea.
agreed. i'm the same way. while i can sightread slowly, it hasn't improved much despite 25 years of trying. my ear on the hand has gotten to the point that i can listen to something once or twice & sound it out quickly with with 95%+ accuracy. basically my brain was 'pre-wired' for processing one type of information efficiently and another, not so much.
there was an episode of startrek TNG where on this planet they'd analyze kids' dna and figure out what particular talents they had & they'd put extra emphasis on developing those. i'm sure we're heading towards such a future and it has interesting ethical implications. i also wonder how many mozarts are regularly born to plumbers and never get a chance to reach their potential.
Totally. I also feel like telling kids that they can do anything with enough work is kind of self-defeating, because then you can get your heart set on something and be disappointed when you just hit the wall of natural talent.
I feel like what we should tell kids is: the things that seem easy to you now are things you'll probably always be good at (though you'll have to work harder the better you get). The things that seem to come hard will probably always be a challenge (though that's no reason to give up if your heart is really set on it).
I actually just the opposite of sight reading. I think it is a very learnable skill in my experience. Most people I know who study can actually get drastically better over the course of a couple of years.
Playing by ear, OTOH, is much more difficult.
Natural talent may help some. But I can't think of many skill related activities where 10,000 hours of deliberate practice won't make you an "expert". Maybe not the best in the world, but good enough that virtually any layperson would call you an expert.
I don't deliberately practice playing by ear. I also don't deliberately practice sight reading as a singer. And yet I am good at both, better than most people.
I absolutely WAS there when it came to sight reading; able to play songs on the piano with a lot of practice, but not able to sight read, despite years of lessons and practice. It largely comes down to studying the songs before you play, looking for the key, patterns, and difficult parts, and keeping your eyes a measure or two ahead as you play
Not sure why articles never get around to mentioning this but you can find the original study and several other relevant ones collected in "The Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise."
From that book I also highly recommend "The Early Progress of Able Young Musicians" which discusses the importance of a progression of increasingly competent teachers in successful musicians lives.
There's even a study there that talks directly to her point "Expertise and Mental Disabilities"
I think this is precisely right. There are many more folks who could be claimed experts, who have not become wealthy like Buffet, or Gates. I treat the 10000-hours/10year milestone as more of an indicator of when you should have sufficiently absorbed a great deal of the subject matter -- indeed it would be hard not to spend so much time and not become intimately familiar with the thing. Of course, those 10000 hours need to be spent practicing and learning, not just screwing around.
I think it's more that some people just aren't wired up that way.
I am great at coding and analytics, but naturally quite bad at music. I tried really hard and put in a tremendous amount of time learning music and I was us mediocre at it, no matter how much I loved it and how hard I tried.
You might be the exception, but I'd wager to bet that over 90% of cases of "I'm bad at X" is caused by self-image, self-sabotage and/or underestimating the amount of time 'naturals' had to put in to get to where they were/are.
When you're told as a kid you're bad at X, most of the time it's because you haven't spent much time doing X. When you're told you're good at Y that's usually because you spent more time doing Y.
a) bad teeny-movies
b) a demotivating school system
he believes that ha has to find his "secret" talent - and after he has found it - life will
I) be easy
II) suddenly make sense.
i try to explain to him that it (life) just does not work like this he should just do what he is interested in - even if it is hard (especially if it is hard). surprise, surprise he does not believe me.
for me the concept of "talent" is just thought-cancer, it might be valid in some edge cases but overall it's just harmfull (not only for teens).
"Thought cancer", perfect! I always wanted a term like this to describe it. Definitely agree, even if there's such thing as raw natural ability, I dont think the lack of it is among the major reasons people fail. Succes is like a fire, there's no "rule", it can result from several different things and it's very complex. Trying to oversimplify it like the author does can only do harm.
He is not too far out. Figuring out your "secret" talent(s) does not make life easier, but it definitely makes easier (and fun) doing the thing you are talented at.
The key, in my opinion, is to figure out how to make money off your talent(s).
By putting such an emphasis on practice, practice, practice at the expense of natural gifts, the popular interpretation of the 10,000-hour rule does a tremendous disservice to the naturally gifted.
Cry me a river. How are "naturally gifted" persons disserved by thorough research on human performance?
This article seems to illustrate the adage that "the adjective is the enemy of the noun," because not once in this excerpt from a longer book is the word "deliberate" used, and yet K. Anders Ericsson (an eminent researcher on the development of expertise)
has long taken care to put the adjective "deliberate" in front of the word "practice" as he writes about how expertise develops. (The article kindly submitted here correctly says, "New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell didn’t invent the rule, but he did popularize it through his best-selling book Outliers.") The 10,000-hour rule, originally formulated as a ten-year rule in studies of musicology a few decades ago, has mostly been researched by Ericsson and other researchers influenced by Ericsson's publications. Ericsson carefully distinguishes "deliberate practice," which ordinarily requires a coach who can monitor the learner's performance, from "playful engagement," which doesn't focus the learner's attention on improved performance in the same way. Many critics of Ericsson's work seem to miss this distinction.
I wonder, as an observer of young people learning programming, how much a dumb computer's literal interpretation of programs input into the computer provides relentless deliberate practice in better programming, even for people who are mostly messing around playfully. Perhaps in learning programming, the inanimate computer can serve as a coach for many learners. I would NOT expect someone devoting 10,000 hours to writing essays for fun, if the essays are never read by any critical readers, to improve as much as a writer as someone devoting 10,000 hours to writing programs (if the learner of programmer pays attention to whether the programs compile and run) would improve as a programmer. People who engage in deliberate practice to improve sports performance routinely have coaches, and also participate routinely in competitions that put their assimilation of the sports skills to the test.
In general, a lot of people misread the tenor of Ericsson's research, which is the subject of an interesting new book, The Complexity of Greatness, edited by Scott Barry Kaufman.
Ericsson is sure that raw talent (whatever that is) alone is NOT sufficient to be an "expert," properly so called, but rather has research-based reasons to believe that deliberate practice is strictly necessary for expert performance in all domains. He thinks it is an open question whether or not something like preexisting talent is even necessary for expertise, or whether sustained deliberate practice by itself might be sufficient to make into an expert someone who initially appeared not to have "talent" for a particular domain. That is an ongoing program of research, as Ericsson's publications
"Don't think that you can't do what other people can. And I agree you shouldn't underestimate your potential. People who've done great things tend to seem as if they were a race apart. And most biographies only exaggerate this illusion, partly due to the worshipful attitude biographers inevitably sink into, and partly because, knowing how the story ends, they can't help streamlining the plot till it seems like the subject's life was a matter of destiny, the mere unfolding of some innate genius. In fact I suspect if you had the sixteen year old Shakespeare or Einstein in school with you, they'd seem impressive, but not totally unlike your other friends.
"Which is an uncomfortable thought. If they were just like us, then they had to work very hard to do what they did. And that's one reason we like to believe in genius. It gives us an excuse for being lazy. If these guys were able to do what they did only because of some magic Shakespeareness or Einsteinness, then it's not our fault if we can't do something as good.
"I'm not saying there's no such thing as genius. But if you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right."
I agree with the first half of your comment - the "deliberate" in "deliberate practice" is definitely necessary to understand what the 10,000 hour rule means.
However, I think you take it too far at the end. To say that the nature half of nurture+nature is unnecessary goes against a significant amount of research. In sports, this becomes pretty clear. What are the odds that short people never work hard enough to become good swimmers, for example? It seems drastically more likely that nature has an enormous impact. 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is necessary, but by no means sufficient, for success at most sports.
It is less obvious in other domains, but there is still research to the effect that some people simply aren't wired for certain things, just like short people are can't swim at world-class levels. In HN's favorite domain, programming, there is reason to believe that some people simply can't think in the right way. Here's a reasonable article on the subject: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/09/is-it-....
PG's lazy rule sounds good, but only in the absence of opposing evidence. It behaves like Occam's razor - it leads in the right direction, but don't take it for truth.
What are the odds that short people never work hard enough to become good swimmers, for example?
I cited K. Anders Ericsson's publication list in my first comment. He specifically mentions physical stature (after growth to adult height is completed) as an exceptional case of a prerequisite to top-level performance in some sports domains that is not malleable to practice. Even at that, I have been impressed during my lifetime, which appears to be longer than yours, at what body types that used to be considered "impossible" for top performance in some sports have since been vindicated as the body types of champions. For example, before Usain Bolt set Olympic records after training very hard, he was believed to be too tall to be a successful sprinter.
The way to find out what body types strictly limit sports performance is to have people of all body types come out for the sport and engage in deliberate practice, and see what happens. The same principle generalizes to performance that mostly relies on brain activity, especially because we have even less information about how brains differ "inherently," and we know the brain is the organ more than any other human organ that responds to its environment.
See also the photograph of the identical twins Otto and Ewald for malleability of body type.
This photograph is often shown to students at the University of Minnesota, a center for studies of identical twins, in their introductory courses on genetics.
But your physical form w/r/t a sport isn't really a matter of controversy since no one thinks a 5'7" person is going to become a basketball great, although it's not totally impossible http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spud_Webb
What I mean is, of course there is "natural talent" in being 6'7" that pushes you towards one sport and away from another, but that's not that interesting I don't think. What's interesting are those things-- chess, music, writing, film making, etc.-- that aren't tied to physical types, and so far the evidence seems to be that talent is largely a myth.
Now, the interesting question you raise is why do some people keep going and others give up.
> What's interesting are those things-- chess, music, writing, film making, etc.-- that aren't tied to physical types, and so far the evidence seems to be that talent is largely a myth.
Its not clear to me that you actually read what I wrote, since I addressed this exactly, albeit in the domain of programming. There is significant reason to believe that, at least in that domain, talent is innately important in the same way that physical structure is in sports - that is, that it can eliminate a majority of people (but doesn't really differentiate between the significant minority that remains).
Oh I read it, but since it was confined to programming only, leaving out the vast domain that is the rest of the world, and with the weight of evidence so far is on the other side, it didn't seem as interesting to me. In addition to the possible methodological problems mentioned in the Ars article. In any case, the state of the evidence, always subject to revision of course, is that innate talent is largely not in play.
> just like short people are can't swim at world-class levels.
This is not immediately obvious to me: world-class training programs favour people of a tall stature[0] in the belief that they're faster. This may just as well be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
You're going to be measuring it against other people. This points to the same significant flaw in the article: conflating "mastery" with "success".
The "10,000" rule is well known in Chinese culture as Gong Fu. Gongfu in any skill, whatever that might be, is accumulated little by little over a lifetime. It's part of the oral tradition that someone with talent and doesn't practice will not be good as someone without talent and does practice. And that someone with both talent and practice will have far greater skill than someone with mere talent or hard practice. There is a balance of both accepting your limitations as well as knowing how your potential greatly exceeds your perceived self limitations.
This is part of the fabric of Chinese culture and no one really questions it too deeply. It's been thrashed out in centuries of folk lore and literature such as Confucius. But I think, this offends American sensibilities in a deep way. So we have lots of discussion about it.
American culture has deep roots in: fairness, equal opportunity, upward mobility, and self-determination. What we're thrashing out here with the "10,000" hours isn't really anything about nurture, or nature at all. Underlying all of that is our deep seated feelings and values about fairness, equal opportunity, upward mobility, and self-determination.
You can have mastery without "success". Success is the outward, social recognition of your upward mobility.
Saying you can achieve "success" with 10,000 hours of practice arises from the self-determination -- that the world is fair, and that we all have an equal opportunity at "success". Which we don't. Because "success" is always defined relative to other people so it is inherently ephemeral and unstable. Mastery, though, is a knowing of yourself, and something anyone can achieve throughout the vicissitudes of outward "success".
Upward mobility give rise to aspirations to grow beyond your limits. The trouble is when you confuse self-perceived limitations and the limitations imposed by reality. You don't argue with gravity (in day-to-day life). You don't argue with a hurricane when it comes to town. We confuse self-perceived limitations and limitations of reality because there's a strong need for self-determination.
It can be argued that many of our technologies have allowed us to exceed our "natural" abilities. We can live anywhere in the world! Medicine extends our lifespan! Agricultural technologies let us feed a much greater population!
The thing is, with many of these technologies, we're creating an illusion of exceeding limitations by deferring its cost. We're like the child with hands on the ears: "La la la la la la la la la la la..."
A little navel-gazing is in order: Who are you? Why are you here? What are you doing here? Where are you in life?
On the one hand there is no substitute for hard work. On the other hand some people don't have to work as hard as others to to reach the same level in a given domain.
So the upshot is you can use this as an excuse or a motivator. If you're an optimist you look at those two sentences and go "Cool!! I can do anything I decide I want to as long as I put in the requisite effort." If you're a pessimist you look at them and say. "I'm going to have to work harder than other people if I want to some things"
And if you're a realist you look at them and go "So, how much effort do I need to put in to reach my any of my goals?" and start prioritizing.
The thing is, one of the best ways to achieve deliberate practice is to thoroughly enjoy what you are doing. Yes, you can force your way through it otherwise, but most people will give up if they don't have a passion for the subject (whether it is playing a music instrument, learning wood carving, or computer programming and math). So personally, I don't think anyone has as much of a natural gift for anything, but more of a highly tuned feedback / reward mechanism in their brain that promotes deliberate practice methods. Unless you want to refer to that extreme enjoyment of a subject matter (and the process of becoming expert) the actual "gift".
Great article. To the extent this references Malcolm Gladwell, isn't 10,000 hours from "Outliers"? If so, the message was nature + nurture + LUCK.
For instance to be a great NHL hockey player, you should have a birthday in Jan or Feb. Because youth hockey leagues group you by age. And when you're the biggest and most coordinated in your group ....
Likewise Gates' situation in high school was extraordinary, and exceptional parents.
So, (1) yeah the 10,000 hours, and (2) yes the genetics/wiring, and also (3) the luck. At least to be a true "outlier". One can be an "expert", and very successful and fulfilled, without being a Bill Gates or Wayne Gretzky.
Ten thousand hours of practice will make you a hell of a lot better at something, no matter what your natural gifts are. I suspect that in most cases, ten thousand hours of practice will make you far better than the group of naturally talented people who haven't put in the work.
Given that, I have a real hard time caring about the nature vs. nurture argument - it's only relevant if you're in one of those narrow fields where only the top 0.01% of people can be successful and happy, and that certainly doesn't include programming or entrepreneurship or any of the other stuff we usually talk about around here.
This is exactly how I feel. It is pointless to worry about the relative degree of nature vs nurture when it's beyond doubt that if you work hard at getting better at something, you will become quite proficient. You may not become a world leader, but really, who cares.
Nobody knows how to identify "talent" other than in retrospect. We say people are talented when they produce results, and then we select little anecdotes about their story to allude that it was destiny.
We can't settle this debate because we just don't know enough about how the mind works and how genetics play a role.
My question is, what's the actionable piece of advice? If you try programming and don't get it, you'll never be a good programmer? At what point do you give up and say that you just aren't talented enough?
It seems to me that the only people asking the nature vs. nurture questions are the ones that want an excuse to give up.
Any word on the testing the 10,000 hours theory by learning golf? (Knew & cared nothing for golf, goal is expert player after 10,000 hours practice, last I heard was well on his way.)
Its sorta obvious this article won't go down well with the HN crowd. This is a site where everybody either believes they can code, or learn to code in a week, or teach somebody else to code via codecademy or what-have-you.
fwiw, I strongly agree with the article. Natural talent & inclination triumphs practice everytime, and while that doesn't mean you shouldn't practice, it does mean that you'd be better off pursuing avenues more closely aligned to your natural talent. Here's how you can convince yourself of the same - lets say you are the typical HN reader - lots of programming experience in one or more languages. How soon can you become an expert in oh I don't know BRST cohomology ? My advisor has a PhD in that, & he can't program his way out of a paper bag. Its easy for me to laugh at him & say, hey he should just try Ruby or JS for a week, but hey, how do I just try BRST cohomology for a week ? Where do I begin ?
Core thesis: 'No...Malcolm Gladwell is wrong. You can't be me. Why? Because I'm cool. Yes, that's right. I'm cool, like Warren Buffet."
This article is a phenomenal example of an intelligent and successful person lacking any rational and logical basis for their core thesis.
There are countless individuals who have become experts in their respective field, yet lack any formal training in logic, argumentation or critical thinking. They naturally believe that because people listen to them in a particular field, their skills of reasoning and grasp of logic must be superior. Often they tend to equally believe that their 'gifts' are 'in-born' because they don't ever remember feeling any different; they have been intelligent their entire life.
There are so many logical fumbles in this short piece, whether it be an excerpt or not, that it could be used as an philosophical exercise in pointing out faulty lines of reasoning. Example => So, how does Warren Buffet disprove the 10,000 hour rule? Author's response: "Because he was involved in business affairs from a young age." I assume that her line of reasoning is as follows: 'Warren was incredibly young when he had successfully started his first business. At that age he could not have possibly invested 10,000 hours in the study of business. Thus, he must have been born with business talent.'
Interestingly enough, Warren Buffet's case may be worth looking into in order to better refine the 10,000 hour rule. That being said, the above line of reasoning is hugely problematic. Nowhere is Warren Buffet's 'expertise' at a young age commented upon or evidence given in support of it. The 10,000 hour rule says that you will become an expert with 10,000 hours of deliberate practice/training at ever increasing levels of complexity. The rule does not come to say that you can't be successful without 10,000 hours of practice. (Look at Mark Zuckerber!) The author has both misunderstood and misapplied the correlation between these concepts and what could be meant by the word 'success'. Beyond a couple of other problems, the second major issue is that invalidating one proposition does not inherently validate an opposing proposition. Thus, just because the 10,000 hour rule may be invalidated by Warren Buffet's experience, we cannot make the logical leap to declare that he, therefore, has in-born/genetic attributes that we would consider 'talent'. These are 2 entirely separate arguments that may be related but are not directly tied to one another. I could go on and on with the problems in this article.
The short of it: Paul Graham was being overly optimistic in thinking that writing helps everyone form better arguments and think more carefully. Somebody should introduce Temple Grandin to a philosophy class on critical thinking and basic reasoning.
Its relieving to think "oh I cant do this or that because my brain is just not designed for it." It frees you to be able to give up and not feel any guilt...
It is more enlightened however to understand that if you have enough desire to be something, you can truly become as great as you want to be at any field in this world...
Its wise to be able to admit that you're not great at x, because you don't have enough motivation or desire to put in the work required to master it.
In my first year at university, my brain was exactly like yours. My brain simply didn't work in a way that allows me to write code.
In December 2012 when I wanted to start a tech company and realised I needed to be able to "build" myself...
... MY BRAIN CHANGED
suddenly it became the kind of brain that was able to code and make simple games in ruby and python?
Why? because in December, I acquired a DESIRE to learn code so I could build my company...
Article title doesn't fit. It's contents state that 10,000 hours MAY not make you an expert. Realistically though, no rule of thumb gives 100% coverage. That doesn't invalidate its accuracy for the majority of cases.
I am pretty sure Gladwell actually said the same thing, you need the 10k hours, but you need a definite measure of talent.
This I realize when I am teaching chess to younger kids, some kids just get it and some do not(just like Ostap Bender said in his famous lecture) The ones who do not get it, they can probably become expert players if they got the resources provided by Polgars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r), but that would be the upper limit.
So I am starting to lean towards the fact that all three Polgar sisters were gifted to some extent.
There needs to be a wider experiment to apply the 10k rule, like maybe 50 kids having the ultimate chess (or math or violin or something else) resource and actually putting in 10k hours of deliberate practice (rememember most kids in special schools do not finish the 10k hours as they simply gravitate to other pursuits, and of course that is natural).
Let's not get started on the 10k hour myth for older people. I am of firm belief that after age of 25 or so, even a gifted one will not be able to get by with 10k hours. At age 40 it is pretty much hopeless, decent expert is all you can hope for.
You can clearly see this "upper limit" on sports: talentless people work and train really hard to compete at elite level.
You can see them sweating, cringing and showing all kinds of emotion. Fans love these players, they identify them as another hard-working "blue collar" guy like them.
Then along comes a guy like Josh Hamilton, a guy so incredibly talented everything looks effortless. He seems to trot when he is running full blast, he seems to flip the bat but hits a homerun, looks like he just lobbed the baseball from the outfield but it's a perfect 90mph strike to a base getting the runner out.
A sport particularly brutal in this sense is Tennis: 10k hrs of practice might get you to the top 100, but from there everybody is so incredibly talented it's discouraging. You might spend 10k hours just perfecting your one-hand backhand, then, when you think you got it, along comes Sampras or Federer hitting it 10 times harder without flinching.
10,000 hours of supervised correct practice makes expert?
Nope.
10,000 hours of progressively more difficult supervised correct practice makes expert?
You got it!
Supervised doesn't mean having a teacher standing behind you watching your work. I think it does mean having some degree of feedback on what you are doing and how you are doing it.
In the case of coding that could mean having your code critiqued in open-source projects (either explicitly or as a side effect of the process).
Then there's the question of what "expert" means in a contextual practical sense. To use a personal example, I was not trained as a machinist. I trained in electronics and software. Yet, I had a need to manufacture parts using various CNC machines, so I learned. Am I an expert? No way. I do, however know I can fabricate nearly any part and, more importantly, in the process developed a great understanding of design for manufacturability.
In my own context yes, I am an expert. This did not take 10,000 hours. If I had to guess I'd say less than 1,000 spread over a number of years with an intense focus during a period if approximately six months.
I think Temple Grandin's point here is that the 10,000 rule needs an adjustment for those in the autism spectrum.
An autistic person is usually good at X at the expense of being bad at Y (or the other way around if you wish). So for an autistic mind X would require 10,000 / k hours while Y would require 10,000 * k hours to become an expert in.
I think people have invested themselves emotionally to this 10000 hours nonsense, so any mention of natural gifted-ness sets them off in a tirade, not because of any analytical opposition, but because their egos are somewhat threatened by the prospect that someone may be naturally better at something than they are.
Unfortunately, 10000 hours yadah yadah is not a "new finding" beyond putting a nice round number on a phenomenon that I'm sure your mommies and daddies told you when you were a kid - PRACTICE. Deliberate practice? Does "try doing the harder stuff" sound familiar? The fact that if you practice areas that you're not very strong at you will get stronger has been known for centuries. "Naturally gifted" people aren't those who are experts, neither are they those who have the best technique. 10000 hours on the piano will not make you Beethoven, neither will 100000 hours. Beethoven was Beethoven for many reasons - well known as a prodigy, highly regarded by the culture of his time, etc - merely playing the piano well didn't make him remarkable. For a less ancient example, take Jimmy Page. Anyone who plays guitar will acknowledge that Page's playing was quite sloppy. It's not technique that I would teach to someone. But he's Jimmy freakin' Page. The genius of Zeppelin was in the innovation. They brought a new sound, at the time - and they were really cool too, but don't tell anyone.
So, to wrap up, practice makes perfect, but perfect isn't genius. Which isn't to disparage anyone, but to see such pettiness automatically raise its head whenever someone brings up this 10000 hours crap as if it's something new - one guy goes boo-hoo people won't think I'm a genius anymore, the other guy goes, yeah I could be a genius too if only I practiced it - is just sad. No one cares about what you could be. I could be a freakin' Navy Seal if I just enlisted and worked hard and blah blah blah; I'm not a Navy Seal, so all that's irrelevant. All that matters is what you are, so if we're reveling in the fact that we could be better at something if we practiced, rather than actually practicing, well that says more about the human ego rather than human talent.
"And that was it. I could do that much — but that was all. I was hopeless. My brain simply doesn’t work in a way that allows me to write code. So saying that if I’d spent ten thousand hours talking to Rax, I would be a successful computer programmer, because anyone can be a successful computer programmer, is crazy."
I find that all too often lack of aptitude is used as an excuse. He didn't put the time in, he doesn't know if he could be a successful computer programmer or not. The only way to know is to try. Everyone who starts something is awful in the beginning. Only through concentrated effort and interest does your potential emerge. Your potential cannot be seen in the first hour, or even ten hours you spend doing something.
I think there is a part of the book that was missed by the author of the article.
Gladwell wasn't trying to say that everyone could become an expect by putting in 10,000 hours, but rather he could explain the "Outliers" in our society because of the intense amount of work (hours) and favorable situations. Bill Gates enjoyed coding yes, but he had an opportunity to code much earlier than others. You look at Gates, Steve Jobs, and Bill Joy, all born in the mid 1950's with the opportunity to capatailze on a new industry. All with their 10,000 hours when they became of age and enough entrepreneurship take advantage of the newly developed market (or in some ways create the market).
It's true that people often use the 10k-rule to downplay nature, but I disagree slightly with the article's thesis.
When I first discovered what programming was, I was obsessed from that moment on. It was all I wanted to do. Did I have a brain that was naturally talented in the kind of abstract reasoning that makes it easy to program? Probably. Did that make it more natural for me to become an expert? Maybe. But to me, what's more important is that I had a disposition that all but guaranteed that I was going to sink 10,000 hours into the practice of programming in record time.
So yes, my nature made it easier, but perhaps not in the way that most people think.
That's weird. The authors are conflating "expert" with "success" and does not adequately distinguish the two terms.
Further, it's not merely 10,000 hours of "practice". It is 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. Your mind has to be on the practice as you are practicing. If you're simply going through the motions, and your mind is checked out, you're not actually getting anything out of it.
And yes, I know "10,000" is a nice round number. Five to seven years, two to three hours of intense, deliberate practice a day is about right.
A successful person was found to have to put 10,000 hours of practice != If you do 10,000 hours of deliberate practice you will be successful.
First thing is don't take the 10,000 hour practice rule too seriously. At best its a metaphor.
In the real world you are likely to see success if you start working of hard problems for 10,000 hours than put 10,000 hours of practice and then start solving problems.
Wow I can't believe how immature this article is. No one should make such negative generalized statements about people who are not naturally gifted that they can't become experts. It may be true for people with mental disabilities but to make the same statement for healthy people is ridiculous especially when very little is known about the brain.
Strawman argument alert: "Talent plus ten years of work equals success? Sure!"
Actually, what the data shows is that becoming a world-class expert requires 10k hours of practice. Not that said practice will magically make you world-class. It's a necessary, but not sufficient condition.
The 10k hour figure is probably inflated, based on self-reports of total practice time.
Once a professional Starcraft player said talent or nature are not mysterious. You got talent in some field means you know how to effectively and efficiently work hard in the field, that is it. So, i think 10000 hours are needed for both the talented and the mediocre. The difference is the talent know how to spent their hours.
My favourite example of what seems like talent actually being a damn lot of work: Derek Silver's 15 years of vocal training that took him from a mediocre singer to a the type of one that people would say 'had a gift' http://sivers.org/15-years
Perhaps the role of "talent" is not so much that it directly contributes to ability, but rather that it makes it that much more likely that you will accumulate 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. After all, if you don't feel like you're good at something, why would you devote so much time to it?
I'm surprised the main point needed elaboration. Of course one needs some basic nature in order to perceive success. I thought the 10k hour rule talked about the hours alone not being enough. It's usually unique opportunity + one grasping it + dedicating x hours = success, in my understanding.
At school, people marvelled at how effortlessly I seemed to achieve good grades. Everyone talked about how academic or talented I was in that regard, how lucky I was.
In truth, I put in more hours for homework and exam revision than anyone else. By a large margin.
Keeping it enjoyable is important too. Some people attach self criticism to their skill, which makes it painful for them to proceed. Enjoying the skill is really the first step.
After that, it's a matter of enjoying to improve. And then doing that every day.
"Scientists" who still thinking in terms of a single cause of it all (especially in social sciences) instead of complex/chaotic multiple causation are doomed to be ridiculed.)
Take Felix Dennis. Idiot at 25... Multi millionaire at 35... Billionaire now. Can anyone do it? Yes. Just like the lottery, anyone can be an outlier. Average people, can do an average job with 10,000 of practice.
For you personally, don't worry about this shit and do whatever you want to do. If you're not good at it, and don't enjoy it you'll know... You will quit on your own and find something else to do.
Dennis's book is interesting for anyone seeking to make a lot of money.
He states that if you want to be really rich you have to sacrifice family and friends because you will have to spend an enormous amount of time focusing on your business.
I found that point interesting. Do you know anyone who is (self made) wealthy that _did not_ spend a lot of time working?
