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Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure you can attain mastery in anything by practicing for 10,000 hours. Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.

The caveat is that you will not be the best. You might not even be world class. Or even national class. But you are going to be better than somebody who practiced only 1,000 hours no matter how talented they are.

What people forget is that at the very high levels of achievement in any field, 20,000 hours is just the price of entry. Everyone who's playing has practiced for 20,000 hours. Difference between 1st, 2nd, and 10th comes down to talent and a bit of luck.

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From the article, "For example, the number of hours of deliberate practice to first reach "master" ranged from 728 hours to 16,120 hours." And given that this excludes everybody who gives up before reaching master, I believe the real gap is much wider.

>Difference between 1st, 2nd, and 10th comes down to talent and a bit of luck.

In a sufficiently competitive field, the difference between 1st and 10,000th comes down to talent and luck.

Chess is incredibly instructive in this respect. Some players soar through the rankings in their teens with remarkably little effort; some battle on for years with little to show for it. Some very promising players just run out of talent and hit a hard ceiling on their rank, while others keep finding room for improvement.

I agree with the broad thrust of the linked article - there's a real cruelty to the 10,000 hour rule.

> Difference between 1st, 2nd, and 10th comes down to talent and a bit of luck.

Or maybe a lot of luck.

How many times have you struggled with a problem, but then someone gives you an explanation from a different point of view, or you think of something that makes you think of the problem in a different way? Then everything clicks and after that it's all easy?

at the same time, it is immensely frustrating to practice a long time to become mediocre, then some kid walks up and just does it, effortlessly.

i like riding motorcycle, been riding for 10+ years. but i don't have the talent, the motor skills to really let if fly. but i know a guy who just has it, put him into/on any vehicle and he is fast.

talent is the best example of how unfair life is :)

>But you are going to be better than somebody who practiced only 1,000 hours no matter how talented they are. //

I disagree. You'll probably be better than the average 1000-hour practicee but not necessarily any particular one. Some people really do have a knack [innate talent] for certain things.

> you (practicing for 10,000 hours) are going to be better than somebody who practiced only 1,000 hours no matter how talented they are.

There's a lot of counter-examples that contradict that statement, at least in areas like sports, chess, probably music as well, were a very "talented" individual achieved in one year what other people haven't in ten.

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