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Comment by brandonkm | Hacker News Reader

There isn't a magical threshold of hours one must reach to be a "superstar" or "extremely good". There also isn't much substance in the claim of people bailing even before 5,000 hours. It seems like the crux of this argument is just throwing 'numbers' and 'hours' out there with disregard to other factors that come into play when someone makes a time commitment this large. Things like efficiency, pre-disposition, and teaching others are all factors.

So, even if someone invests 3750 hours they can be just as good. This all seems besides the point though, when you are investing thousands of hours into something your not keeping track of 'hours put in' or 'exactly how good you are', its a passion and you're just into it. If success follows then great, if not then that wouldn't stop someone from continuing on.

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The sad thing is, people want a magical bite sized formula they can cling to. It makes them buy the book. "Ooooh it's as simple as the number 10,000".

All the self help people use the same tactic. Often making the formula something that is counter intuitive - eg "How to work less and get more done".

There is actually some good research behind the number, which is just given as a rule of thumb. The other rule of thumb figure is 10 years, which is much easier to conceptualize. 1000 of productive hours per year.

Basically it encompasses a jumble of things that includes passion, patience, practice, and persistence. The 4 Ps is a coincidence.

Of course it's not a magical threshold, but when you can do something (in a focused and conscious manner) for 10 years, it's not hard to imagine that you have reached mastery.

The crime of fluffy writing (dunno about Gladwell's new book; didn't read it) is taking rule of thumb numbers and citing them as precision numbers as a way to seem exacting and scientific.

or, we could all just continue to say "Practice makes perfect" to each other.

In our TA pedagogy class, I read a study that found international-level performers in chess, tennis, and violin all put in somewhere around 10,000 hours of deliberate practice in childhood. It stated that this requirement didn't necessarily apply to new fields, as Seth proposed. However, it was fairly consistent for well-established endeavors.

In other words, this isn't exactly something Gladwell made up. Practice does matter.

>"So, even if someone invests 3750 hours they can be just as good."

There is no evidence of this.

I wish I had a link, but it was in a non-free journal. I can look up the citation if anybody cares enough.

I think Seth's main point here, is that the 10,000 hours is BS for new fields. If you are inventing and creating markets, you don't even have 10,000 hours to do it. It's not about being just as good, in an absolute sense, with less practice, it's just that if no one else has done something before, you don't need 10,000 hours to be the best, in a relative sense. Since the Dip is about figuring out what you can be the best at (narrowing the market), it shortcuts the whole idea of needing 10,000 hours.

It seems to me that the reviewer read the first 50 pages of the book then put it down and wrote the review. On the whole, I think Gladwell did a decent job arguing that it is a confluence of factors -- base intelligence, hard work, opportunity and savviness, which contribute to success. The 10,000 hour "rule" is just one point among many to basically illustrate that hard work is part of the equation which is sometimes overlooked.

the question I would ask you is who are these phenoms who achieved great success without a 10,000 time investment. I agree it is somewhat arbitrary, but it seems like a huge number of non-fluke successes have hit that and there aren't many stories of those who haven't.

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