10,000 hours to greatness | Hacker News Reader

10,000 hours to greatness

smallshock.com

12 pointsnetworkjester15 comments

I'm not sure this guy is fully grasping the idea that Gladwell was pushing across. I don't think the point was that 10,000 hours is a magic number to strive for in order to become an expert (although he does say that persistently), rather he was emphasizing the direct correlation between work and ability that we often don't recognize, and that realistically, 10,000 hours will put you far ahead of your friends. I think 10,000 hours is known as the statistical breaking point because leaders of industry are often there at their peak, but they would still be experts if they were at 8000 and everyone else was at 6000. The idea is purely comparative, and the number has no special counterintuitive quality to it. I spend about an hour a day pissing, but that doesn't mean that by 27 ill be THE EXPERT. Ill miss and exercise poor urinal decorum like I always do, and no breaking point will allow the gift of expertise to show up at my doorstep. The point of this idea is to understand that anybody can be the beatles if they've worked effectively harder than the norm, not that they have worked enough to be the beatles. This is still an important point though, and I think this author should attempted to work above and beyond the expected norms, but not so he can hit the magic number. He just needs enough that he's better than everybody else.

I found it funny that after he read that quote, suddenly his wife and friends became 10,000 hour superstars.

I think the point is that 10,000 is necessary to mastering a skill; and some people who master skills will be superstars. Not 'everyone you admire is a 10,000 hour superstar, and nobody but you realizes it'.

Hello. I'm "this guy." Totally surprised by my unknown, abandoned blog getting 1,500 visits all of a sudden. The internet is a wonderful place.

1. Indeed, Gladwell pushes the idea of a 10,000 hour goal quite heavily to the point he seems to want to make it a mantra. 2. I understand Gladwell's point much more so now than when I wrote this piece two years ago (Jan. 6, 2009).

There was a comment last month (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2262619) about using an annual calendar to encourage yourself to work on a task (or whatever). I went out and got one and have been using it as suggested in the Seinfeld article.

After a month, with most of the days "x'ed" out, I realized the important correlation between a dedication to routine to get better (or even the best?) at something. It's not like this is a deep revelation or anything, but the lesson is clear: do the work, and (likely) get better. And I totally agree with you're comment: "He just needs enough that he's better than everybody else."

Heck, even being better than my previous self is good to me.

Thanks for reading. Now I have to restore my database connection ...

See also: http://norvig.com/21-days.html (Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years by Peter Norvig)

I did some napkin math on the 10,000 hour thing.

10,000 hours is N hours daily for M years

3 hours for 10 years.

4 hours 15 min for 7 years

5 hours for 6 years

6 hours for 5 years

7 hours 30 min for 4 years

10 hours a day for 3 years

15 hours a day for 2 years

Just incase somebody wants to pick up a new skill =).

Thanks. And that is "deliberate practice" which is a whole other magnitude of difficulty from just practice or play.

> Perhaps biased, my wife’s pursuit of her undergrad and master’s degrees, coupled with her unbridled passion for learning what we need to do to give our daughter the best education and upbringing possible is surely close to that number. It shows; my daughter has an insatiable curiosity that, according to Gladwell, is a direct result of how we’re raising her.

Having recently devoured a bunch of the works of Steven Pinker, I question this. If their daughter is naturally curious, it could be inherited rather than learned. In "The Blank Slate" Steven Pinker has an entire chapter on children. There he says that all studies that try to figure out what styles of parenting lead to what results, none of them control for heritability. They simply assume that the child's behavior due to styles of parenting. But what if curious parents lead to curious children because of their genes, and not their style of parenting? Pinker goes on to argue that what the evidence shows is that the style of parenting has absolutely no long-term effect on a person's behavior. Instead, what matters is genes, culture (in particular the child's peers), and chance events.

In "The Blank Slate" Steven Pinker has an entire chapter on children.

Do you still have the book at hand? I looked it up the last time there was a big thread about this on HN. Pinker bases most of that chapter on the work of Eric Turkheimer, as his bibliographic references should show. And Eric Turkheimer has substantially revised his opinion about what heritability studies mean after continuing his research and thinking about the data more. I'll recommend here two articles from Turkheimer's faculty web page

http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/vita1_turkheimer.htm

that more readers of Pinker's book ought to know about, to bring their understanding of human behavioral genetics up to date.

http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Articles%20for%20O...

Yes I have the book at hand, but it's on Kindle, and it's somewhat painful to look up the references on a Kindle. Thanks for giving me these articles. I will read them.

The ability to spend 10,000 hours of deliberate practice on something is an inherited talent.

[citation needed]

I really mean that. If you have evidence for that belief, please share it here. The leading world expert on the subject of development of expertise, K. Anders Ericsson,

http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson.dp.html

is decidedly not of that opinion, after having seen many examples of introducing systematic deliberate practice into the environments of people who formerly didn't have opportunities for such practice.

Even if you examine a "deprived" group (the kind professors are always trying to make excuses for) such as inner-city kids, you will find stark differences between talent and drive from one person to another. Why does one boy spend 10,000 hours practicing basketball or music, while the others watch television all day?

Maybe nobody introduced "systematic deliberate practice" to them? Or, you know, maybe some people are just lazier than others.

Why does one boy spend 10,000 hours practicing basketball or music, while the others watch television all day?

Good question. Have you examined any research on the issue? What sources do you recommend?

Sorry I don't have a citation for that. As far as I know it hasn't been researched. I was mostly being flippant but I'm not ready to let go of the concept of Talent. There are people who are no more knowledgeable or experienced than I who are way better than me at stuff.

Being able to spend that much time in that focused of an effort seems like a talent or perhaps a "condition" like Asperger's.

Just out of curiosity, would working 2000 hours a year for five years make you a "superstar" too?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com