The Great Practice Myth: Debunking the 10,000 Hour Rule
What does it take to become an expert or master performer in a given field? 10,000 hours of practice. It’s a common rule of thumb, popularized by Malcom Gladwell in his bestseller Outliers: The Story of Success. It’s catchy, easy to remember, and more or less completely false.
We’re debunking the 10,000 hour rule and taking a look at proven ways to practice, learn and achieve mastery.
by Michael Miller
“A provocative generalization,” is what Anders Ericsson calls the 10,000 hour rule. And it was Ericsson’s research on expert musicians that Gladwell cites as a basis for the rule. Ericsson says the rule is an oversimplification, and in many ways, an incorrect interpretation of his research. The 10,000 Hour Rule: Catchy and easy to remember, but on some pretty shaky scientific footing.
Busting the Myth of the 10,000 Hour Rule
Gladwell uses several examples in Outliers when introducing this rule: one is the research done by Ericsson that focused on violin students at a music academy in Berlin. The study found that the most accomplished of the students had put in 10,000 hours by the time they turned 20. Gladwell also estimates that the Beatles put in 10,000 hours of practice playing in Hamburg in the early 1960s, and that Bill Gates put in 10,000 hours of programming work before founding Microsoft. Hence the 10,000 hour rule was born: put in your 10,000 hours of practice, and become an expert in a given field. Pretty easy, right?
But upon closer examination, problems start to emerge.
First of all, Ericsson says, the number 10,000 is totally arbitrary. It’s catchy and easy to remember, but not really based on anything substantial. It’s the number of hours these promising violinists had put in by the time they were 20 years old. By the age of 18, they had put in an average of 7,400 hours. And even at 20, they were very good at playing the violin, and probably headed to the top of their field, but they were not yet experts.
On top of that, Gladwell misunderstood that 10,000 hours was an average, and not all the best violinists had put in this number by age 20. In fact, half of the best hadn’t put in 10,000 hours.
Since the 10,000 hour rule isn’t based on solid science, what do we know about practice and how to master a craft? A few things we know for sure are that not all learning or practice is equally helpful – and not everyone starts from the same place.
Top Resources on Learning & Practice
1 Learn how the brain learns best, with a world renowned neuroscientist:
2 Is is possible to practice emotional intelligence – and does that support other forms of practice?
3 Join the free Practice Project mini-course to help kick start a new practice or help you stay on track with your current practice:
10,000 Hours of What? All Practice Isn’t Equal
If you wanted to get better at shooting a bow and arrow, would it be the same thing to experiment on your own for 3 hours as it would be to practice with an expert for 3 hours, who is giving you tips on form and technique and getting better? The answer is self-evident. And this is the first flaw of the 10,000 Hour Rule: It focuses on the quantity of time practicing, not the quality of the practice – and not all practice is equally helpful.
Gladwell doesn’t differentiate between types of practice, even though it’s a really important distinction. The best way to get better at something is through something known as deliberate practice, which basically means practicing in order to get better: doing activities recommended by experts to develop specific abilities, identifying weaknesses and working to correct them, and intentionally pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. “This distinction between deliberate practice aimed at a particular goal and generic practice is crucial,” Ericsson says, “because not every type of practice leads to improved ability. You don’t get benefits from mechanical repetition, but by adjusting your execution over and over to get closer to your goal.”
Deliberate practice is often guided by an expert, skilled coach, or mentor, “someone with an expert eye,” according to bestselling author Daniel Goleman. These coaches and mentors are offering feedback on specific ways to improve, and “without such feedback, you don’t get to the top ranks. The feedback matters and the concentration does, too – not just the hours.”
So does the 10,000 rule hold up if it’s 10,000 hours of deliberate, focused practice with experts? No, it still doesn’t.
Practice Makes Perfect… or 25% Perfect
A recent meta-analysis by Case Western Reserve University psychologist Brooke Macnamara and her colleagues found that deliberate practice and skill are related – but far from perfectly related. Deliberate practice hours predicted 26% of the skill variation in games such as chess, 21% for music, and 18% for sports. This is the second biggest flaw of the 10,000 Rule: It leads to a misconception that anyone can become an expert in a given area by putting in the time. But clearly, since deliberate practice hours predicted only 20-25% of skill levels, there are other factors at play. Researchers have been able to pinpoint a few of them, including age and genetics.
The age at which someone gets involved in an activity seems to play a role in their ability to achieve mastery. As with language learning, there may be a window during childhood when specific, complex skills are most easily acquired. Cognitive psychologists Fernand Gobet and Guillermo Campitelli found that chess players who started early reached higher skills levels as adults than those who started later, even after taking into account differences in deliberate practice hours.
Of course, genetics play a role as well. A lot of the best research on the role of genetics in acquiring certain abilities comes from studying – you guessed it – twins. Psychologist Robert Plomin led research at King’s College London that found more than 15,000 twins in the United Kingdom and had them perform a series of tests and fill out questionnaires – and some of the findings are quite remarkable. Identical twins’ drawing ability was much more highly correlated than fraternal twins’ drawing ability. Since identical twins share 100% of their genes, whereas fraternal twins share only 50%, these findings indicate that differences between people in basic artistic ability is at least in part due to genetics. Using the same data set, over half the variation between skilled and less skilled readers was found to be due to genetics. Another series of studies, led by psychologist Miriam Mosing of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, tested more than 10,000 twins on their basic music abilities, like whether two melodies carry the same rhythm, in relation to how much they have practiced music. What they found is that while genes influenced 38% of the musical abilities they measured, no evidence was found that the amount of practice influenced those abilities. That is to say, an identical twin who practiced music regularly was not any more likely to be good at these abilities than the identical twin who did not practice. This doesn’t mean there’s no point in practicing music. There are certainly music skills that you can improve with practice, like reading music and playing a keyboard. But it does indicate that there are limits to the power of practice. Not everyone could become an expert violinist even with 10,000 hours of practice – and I think I am one of those. There is some innate ability necessary to become a master in a field.
Malcolm Gladwell got one thing right, without a doubt: it takes many years of concerted effort and practice to become a true expert in a field. But while the time spent practicing is important, it is far from the only factor. Your genetic makeup, when you start, and how you learn all combine to determine how many hours it would take you to master a specific craft – or if “mastery” is possible at all.
Consider the research of master chess players by those cognitive psychologists, Fernand Gobet and Guillermo Campitelli. They found that there were actually huge differences in the number of hours of practice it took chess players to reach a specific skill level. The number of hours to reach “master” status ranged from 728 hours to 16,120 – meaning some players needed 22x more practice hours than others to reach the same skill level. The 10,000 hour rule is a myth.
Let’s rename it the 728 to 16,120 Hour Rule.
Beyond the 10,000 Hour Rule: 3 Research-Backed Principles of Practice
If you want to go deeper and learn more about practice, here are some recommended articles:
1 Contrary to decades of bad advice to “leave emotions out of it,” research has made it abundantly clear: Emotions play a critical role in learning. In order to practice and improve most effectively, you must set the ideal biological conditions for learning. Learn why keeping emotions out of it is actually a disaster, and what learning looks like at the neurological level.
2 Mental practice is surprisingly powerful. Whether you’re learning and practicing a new skill, or preparing for a performance, studies have found mental practice to be remarkably effective. To learn more, read Envisioning Success: the Power of Mental Practice.
3 What’s the single biggest factor required to practice, and practice, and keep practicing? Motivation. Without sustainable motivation, the practice loses focus, or we drop it entirely. Practice takes on meaning and relevance when the goal is connected to purpose and long-term values. To learn more about sustaining motivation for yourself and others, check out these articles:
Theories evolve and may become myth over time as we look into it more rationally, research, and gather evidences. Hypothesis are build and destroyed. I like the article in the sense… what is right today may be questioned tomorrow. Change is constant. And we must manage change proactively and look at it with renewed vision.
As a guitar player and teacher, I have seen an overwhelming amount of evidence that the above is true.
I actually used to count the hours when I learned this “rule”. While this motivated me to binge practice up to 8 hours a day, it kept me away from thinking and planning how to reach my real goals, rather than just a number.
When teaching I notice that levels of improvement are only partially relared to how much the student practices.
Their practicing mindset, how they practice and to a lesser extent, their genetic make up influence improvement as much as the quantity of practicing.
One individual student, reached unbelievable levels in just three months. He practiced just 1 hour a day.
I thought about this and apart from genetic make up, I suspect reason for his impressive improvement, was that he was already an outlier in a different area (technology).
He’s been through the whole process of mastery before.
There are too many subjective factors 10,000 rule doesn’t take into account.
Hi Robert! Thanks for sharing your experience. This further adds to the evidence that the 10,000 hour rule is an oversimplification. There are many factors at play in terms of reaching mastery. I have had a similar experience as a basketball coach – you can practice shooting for 1 million hours, but if you never learn proper form, there is a limit to how successful you will be. And of course genetic makeup and other factors come into play, too. Once again, thanks for sharing!
would the 10,000 hour rule not work if goals are set within your practice and by going to experts to get coaching etc. I totally agree that blindly doing something for set amount of time would be like “pissing in to the wind”.
Hi Micheal,
Nice article, I totally agree with you. It is not only true in sports, but it is also true in other areas too.
Hi Muren, thanks for the kind words. I’m glad you enjoyed the article!
This article is bogus. The actual paper never stated that 10K hours can make you an expert. It states that SOME people whom have mastered their craft did so with an estimate Xhrs per day x Xdays per week x Xweeks per yr x Xyears ALONG WITH CONSTANT FEEDBACK, ADJUSTMENT, and deliberate practice.
No where in the actual paper is there a single line that states ,for example, practicing free throws without proper form, for 10K hours, will make you an excellent FT shooter, etc and so on. Stop it!
Great click bait though.
Did you read Marcus Buckinham’s book which this article is refuting?
I agree with the view that the 10,000 hour rule is an oversimplification. Getting better or reaching mastery in any field depends on several factors. In sport and in music, two very key factors in reaching mastery are motor skills and gross motor skills. In sport, the gross motor skills are the most important factor and they do not require 10,000 hours to master. On the other hand, learning string instruments such as guitar, violin requires requires not only motor skills but muscle memory. Motor skills in learning the guitar for instance, require consistent and organized practice over a considerable period of time. The period of time is however subjective. The time that muscle memory sets cannot be determined. It all depends on learners’ approach.
Therefore, an athlete or a writer is not concerned with the 10,000 hour rule, however, music instrumentalists certainly need to put in innumerable number of hours to achieve mastery.
Thanks for these interesting insights, Raymond!
I’ve always found the 10,000 hour to be as discouraging as it is oversimplifying. Now, as I attempt to teach myself to code, the idea of 10,000 hours frequently comes back to haunt me with the mantra of “too late! give up now!” Though I’ve read Carol Dweck and Barbara Oakley, and consciously knew I shouldn’t listen — it wasn’t until I searched for “10,000 hour rule debunked” and found this that I was able to finally ‘exorcise’ Gladwell’s demonic ‘raison to quit before you get started’.
I think next time someone makes the assertion that it takes 10,000 hours to ‘master’ something… I’ll ask if they’re still practicing Tic Tac Toe, or how to operate a microwave.
The 10,000 hours schtick is just a load of nonsense – you are too kind about it! The basic idea – that the more you practice a skill (under trained guidance), the better you will get, is true but so banal that it is hardly worth discussing except when teaching or motivating people.
When applied to prodigies and geniuses, the whole concept is upside down, as their ‘thousands of hours’ are motivated by creative drives, which in some cases (but by no means all) will include extensive practice of motor skills in order to realise the ideas which they have imagined. Some do hardly any rote practice at all, because their gifts arise more or less fully formed. No-one can become a genius without having a natural endowment, however many hours they slave away. John Coltrane endlessly and obsessively explored new musical worlds through a mixture of experimentation and targeted practice, whilst Chet Baker (a genius also, though not at Trane’s level) allegedly never practiced at all. Ivan Lendl was a perfectly drilled tennis machine, but film of him playing golf reveals a basic stiffness and lack of co-ordination that meant he could never become one of the true greats in tennis.
Thank you for your share. I feel like finally I am understood. I agree with you, my recent experiences now make so much sense!
Keep well!
I found the 10,000 hour rule to be very motivating to practice guitar.
After doing the math, I started to practice 8 to 12 hours a day for a couple years straight. The improvement was steady.
When I ran out of ways to improve on something, I would naturally find something else to work on. After I hit a total of 10,000 hours, I reduced my practice to an hour or two a day, and I have continued to improve.
I believe that everyone progresses at their own rate, just like the original violin study showed with the total hours being an average. However, if the 10,000 hour meme motivates some people to practice, then why not continue to spread the idea?
Hi Sean, thanks for sharing. That’s awesome that you have put in so much effort and steadily improved on the guitar- congratulations! I would love to learn to play the guitar myself and I know I will have to put in many hours to learn!
In terms of why not to continue spreading the idea, I would say this: People could waste a lot of time and effort if they think that the number of hours is the only, or primary, measure of skill – “I just have to keep practicing for x number of hours and I will be an expert!” When in reality, it is a number of factors including genetics, timing, and type of instruction that determines if someone reaches true mastery. The other consideration is that the 10,000 hour rule is really a misinterpretation of academic research. But if the 10,000 hour rule motivates people, as in your case, great! It’s a great target to work toward – as long as people understand that number of hours is far from the only factor determining ultimate success.
Stating that Emotional Intelligence is essential to mastering a craft is just as wrong as the arbitrary number of 10,000 hours.
Michael Phelps, Bobby Fischer, Ayrton Senna, Pelé, Diego Maradona, Glenn Gould, Beethoven, Albert Einstein, Van Gogh, Fernando Pessoa… all of these brilliant guys were close to zero in terms of Emotional Intelligence.
Nah….. next article.
I just listened to a great podcast related to this article. It’s RANGE: Why Generalists Succeed in a Specialists’ World by The Next Big Idea: https://open.spotify.com/show/2aoNkInl8NmE2X2xT1DOQQ. Malcolm Gladwell and David Epstein (author of The Sports Gene, which criticized Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule) have an animated, thought provoking conversation about the merits of the 10,000 hour rule, and how to reconcile what they call the Roger vs. Tiger debate. I highly recommend it!
You need tons of hours to become really good, and 10x that to become the best… It’s a competition with the rest of humanity. Don’t fool yourself thinking you’re going to find some short cut that bypasses the experience of other people. I’d say more like 100,000 hours.
100,000 hours is 11.4 years straight, no food, no water, no sleep, just practicing for 11.4 years. If you do it for 8 hours a day it will take 34.24 YEARS. That’s a very long time and while you will be very good at it by then, you will probably have mastered it before that, unless you don’t bother to look up how to do it or have a mentor. While it depends on the person, today with all the materials and articles at the tips of our fingers, it would take much much less time than 100,000 hours. I’m sure it sounds impressive though.
Malcolm wrote a piece of literature to inspire people. Who cares if 10,000 is correct or not? The point is, we need to start somewhere, grow, challenge ourselves, and just to learn something new. I believe in learning to work towards something of interest or something that comes naturally first, and then spend your life doing it. When you get older help children advance and be better than you. That is evolution.
Yes, there is more involved in becoming a master than just the hours spent. Time is not the only element, but time is a concept idea most can grasp. Life is not information life is turning human capability into ability, and to do that, it requires practice and then commits to doing ongoing work to achieve success. My question is_, Why not spend 10,000 hours? If you spend 2 hours a day practicing, something, and progress each year, you will gain close to fourteen years of experience. The rewards will be great whether or not to achieve mastery. One thing I would guarantee, is anyway who applies themselves to 10,000 hours of progressive practice will become GOOD at whatever they choose to do. Work to produce results. If you have an interest, pursue it. You may not reach your goal, but you will gain the experience attaining results that will demonstrate something more than where you will end up if you do nothing.
Ultimately, one should ask him/herself how much that activity is important for happiness. If it is, it’s stupid to give up because you need 10,000 hours… Every hour more you’ll be grateful to yourself for allowing yourself to be just what you need to be, no matter where you end up.
Great article. There are probably still other factors that can change practice time: sleep quality is important to consolidate what you learnt during the day. And probably physical activity has also an influence on how your brain retains skills, though I am not certain about the scientific evidence out there. Then there is of course if you feel good emotionally about what you are doing, is it you who wants to play chess or is it your parents who pushed you into this?
I think this article is not worth the time as it misses the point the Gladwell trying to propose by quoting 10000 hours.
“until by the age of twenty they were practicing — that is, purposefully and single-mindedly playing their instruments with the intent to get better” you omitted this part and just from this statement one can assume that it covered the training school and the instructors and so on..
after reading book and this article I found other point this article choose to omit to mention just to debunk the 10000 hours.
why?
While not disagreeing that 10,000 hour rule is an oversimplification, it was cited by Gladwell to make a different point other than what this article is suggesting. It’s a shame how this is information is always attributed to in a way as if it’s Gladwell that’s pushing this rule to be a standard of some sort when it’s obviously not what Outliers was emphasizing.
While there is truth in your review, I cannot help but sense a bit of jealousy and bitterness in trying so hard to debunk the 10,000 hours rule. For me the rules simply say one thing – it takes a long time and lots of effort to become accomplished in anything worthy. “Three easy steps to greatness” or “Six minutes per day to perfect abs” is even a bigger lie than 10,000 hours .
hey, you can go after the 10,000 hour rule, but don’t EVER go after 8-minute abs :((((((
Regarding the twins study:
We should be hesitant to accept any study that suggests a biological connection between performance and genetics. There are plenty of known criticisms regarding studies involving twins, not the least of which is that parents can, have, and will continue to mix up their identical twin children. This muddies the water when trying to separate out a nature/nurture argument.
I could just as easily come to the conclusion that because identical twins are treated more equally than fraternal twins, their learning outcomes will be more similar than the outcomes of fraternal twins.
If you’re going to rename it then it should be the 10,000 hour guide line: A rough estimate of the average amount of time, it could take, for an average person to sufficiently master a specific skill using deliberate practice.
With this new name and definition it clarifies that it is 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, just a rough estimate to use as a guideline, and it could take you more or less time to sufficiently master a skill.
Or just throw out the whole 10,000 hour thing all together.
10,000 hours of deliberate practice. Jay Sea: You said it all. Deliberate practice involves being smart about it; learning from mentors and coaches. This makes each hour a huge difference from someone waisting the hours doing what he can be taught in minutes.
That was an insightful article! However, I feel that the 10,000 experiment rule falls under the 10,000 hour rule. I don’t see them as mutually exclusive things. In fact, they overlap! I am sure that if you practice 20 hours a week and don’t see yourself getting anywhere, you would automatically experiment and explore different ways to improve as part of your practice. Thus i feel that they fall under the same category.
While reading the article and formulating an opinion of partial agreeance, we do need to consider some of the conclusions are not equal. In life our individualism is a key to the ability of mastering any set task. There are natural abilities and trained abilities. I believe that someone that has a natural ability to complete tasks that involve motor skills have a far greater chance to master tasks that involve physical activities, assembly, and controlled dis-assembly tasks. That same skill set my not be as adapt to complete intellectual or formulated tasks. On the flip side someone that has the natural ability to perform intellectual and/or formulated tasks may not be as adaptive to manual tasks. In either case training is a key propulsion factor that needs to be entered into the equation. As a individual learns based on the experience of another the time that the trainer has established to master any given task must be added to the overall time that it takes the training individual to absorb those skill sets. If we look at natural skill sets, time with a master of that skill set to train, and the skill set in practice, I believe the number of hours will be much more true and closer to the 10,000 hours of the rule. Or maybe the 10,000 hour rule needs to be changed to the 10,000 hour average. 10,000 experiments will lend itself to inconclusive hard results but establish itself to the law of averages. In individualism, passion, training, self-motivation and drive, or the lack there/of must be taken into consideration and be clocked. An individual that is passionate about something will not resist learning the skill to mastery but embrace it, on the other hand an individual that is not as passionate about something and resists the work that it takes to master a skill will under most circumstances take longer to acquire the desired end result. In this case as well as any other case where a RULE is established there will always be individuals that thrive on the challenge to prove the RULE wrong, inconclusive, or remove merit from the rule.
Critically studying the 10,000 hour Rule, I have realised that Gladwell only wanted to emphasize on the importance of putting in the Time, ‘showing up’ in order to achieve our set goals. Understandably, there are other variables at play, particularly NATURE is at play, (genetic blue-print, and environmental factors), toward reaching our goals, but, without NURTURE as per practice in the midst of all the variables… coaching, mentoring, or personal-intensive-practice (immersion training), NATURE will predominantly remain dormant, and of little, or no consequence, remember ‘Practice makes Perfect’. One of the philosophies of EQ is 1,2,3 Pasta, which encourages ‘taking Action’ agrees with practice, hence, the 10,000 hour Rule. The Lander Brothers, tried and failed several times, without any Coach, before they could achieve flying; which gave rise to the assorted aero crafts we have today. It is pertinent to recognize that one must put the Time and Effort to accomplish tasks even when other variables are given. The ADDIE Model ( Analysis, Designing, Developing, Implementation, Evaluation) is very instructive on the need to be strategic, to put quality time in training.
For me, even when I’m writing a Paper, I devote time and energy; sometimes during a session I just read through over and over again without adding anything new. It requires time and energy to learn, and to perfect whatever we are working at. So, I don’t agree that the 10,000 hour Rule by Malcolm Gladwell is a provocative generalization, or over-simplification, but, rather an intuitive tool that guide us on the importance of putting in the time to achieve the skill.
There was a freshman girl on my daughter’s track team who learned to triple jump and then two weeks later won the state sectionals. She had it in the genes. It didn’t matter how much the other girls practiced. They were going to lose.
Thank you for your share. I feel like finally I am understood. I agree with you, my recent experiences now make so much sense!
Keep well!
Thanks for sharing the article. Amazing article. Very helpful
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