Ten Thousand Hours

[EarthySun]

Recently, I read the book 'Outliers' by Malcolm Gladwell. The book talks about successes, situations, and the extraordinary amount of blood, sweat and tears that you put into success.

 

 

 

A particular thing caught my eye in the second chapter: the 'Ten Thousand Hour Rule'. It states that it takes ten thousand hours of practice to achieve mastery of one subject, be it playing a musical instrument, a sport, or programming a computer. Multiple successful people were interviewed, and results of the interviews (and of much testing) has shown that the Ten Thousand Hour Rule is true.

 

 

 

It was shown that was shown that everyone learned a skill at the same pace. There weren't any people who practiced more but weren't as good as everyone else or people with fewer hours of practice who got better than everyone else.

 

 

 

My question is this: If you could immediately gain those ten thousand hours practice (and enormous amount of time) in one particular subject instantly, what would you choose?

 

 

 

Personally, I would choose either violin, the cello, or piano for my skill. Those instruments sound beautiful to me, and after all, Classical music is my first love.

 

 

 

Edit: [hide=]

No one would dispute that practice is an important component of achieving exceptional levels of performance in music, chess, sports and so on. After all, even the chess prodigy Bobby Fisher spent many years immersed in chess strategy and tactics before becoming world champion. But it is commonly assumed that both talent and practice are needed to achieve renown, where talent refers to some innate predisposition to make rapid advances in a particular field.

 

 

 

Yet evidence for the contribution of talent over and above practice has proved extremely elusive. In another recent study, Ericsson and his colleagues studied young pianists and violinists in their early 20s at the Music Academy of West Berlin, Germany. They asked the music professors to nominate the best young musicians, those who they thought had the potential for careers as international soloists, as well as others whose potential they regarded as not quite so great, and a third group who were most likely to become music teachers. Hence, in terms of achievement, the first group comprises the most exceptional musicians, the second group the next most outstanding, and the last group the least exceptional.

 

 

 

If "talent" is the primary factor, we might assume that these three groups differ in their innate giftedness for music and that this explains their different levels of achievement. If a person is innately gifted, then he or she can very rapidly attain an outstanding level of performance once the basic skills and knowledge required have been mastered. Yet Ericsson and his colleagues obtained a surprising finding: the best musicians had simply practiced more across their lives than the next best ones, who in turn had practiced more than the ones likely to become music teachers. Each of the musicians was asked to estimate approximately how many hours a week they had practiced each year since the outset of their musical training, and these estimates yielded cumulative totals of about 10,000 hours for the best musicians, followed by 8,000 for the next best ones and 5,000 for the least accomplished. The musicians also kept diaries for a week, recording their exact amounts of practice, and these yielded comparable differences, suggesting that the retrospective estimates were roughly accurate.

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3: Musical Mozarts, 1763, after Carmontelle. Leopold Mozart (1719 - 1787) playing the violin, accompanied by his seven-year-old son Wolfgang Amadeus (1756 - 1791), while his daughter Marie Anne sings. Mozart is often regarded as the quintessential child prodigy, whose achievements are attributable to natural giftedness, yet his early environment was hardly normal. His father was himself an outstanding musician and exerted great pressure on the young Wolfgang to develop his musical abilities.

 

 

 

The estimate of 10,000 hours from this study is interesting because there is now abundant evidence across a range of abilities that roughly this much practice is needed to achieve international levels of performance. For instance, it has been estimated that about this many hours of practice is usually completed between the time of first learning the rules of chess and becoming an international master. Ericsson has argued that similar amounts of practice are seen in first-rate sportspeople, writers and scientists.

 

 

 

Two other lines of evidence converge on the conclusion that innate talents play a minimal role in the development of exceptional performance. First, if giftedness is important, then it ought to be the case that children identified at an early age as having high ability in a particular domain are exactly those children who go on later to achieve high levels of accomplishment. If a child learning the violin possesses an innate musical talent, this should be fairly evident as soon as the child begins playing the instrument. In contrast, if later ability is simply dependent on amount of accumulated practice, there should be little or no relationship between early signs of ability and later achievement.

 

 

 

To test these predictions, John Sloboda, Michael Howe and their colleagues at the Unit for the Study of Musical Skill and Development at the University of Keele, England, studied a large number of children between 8 and 18, some of whom were sufficiently good musicians to have won places at a selective music school. The remainder were divided into further groups of differing musical ability, with the least musical group comprising children who had been relatively unsuccessful in learning an instrument, most giving up after less than a year.

 

 

 

Sloboda, Howe and their colleagues then interviewed the parents of these young musicians and tried to find evidence for early signs of musical talent in those who later went to music school. Despite the range of musical ability in the three groups, almost no differences between them were found. Thus the most musically gifted young people were reported to have first shown a liking for musical sounds at around 1.9 years of age, but this was no younger than in any of the other groups: for example, the children who went on to be unsuccessful in learning an instrument first showed signs of liking musical sounds at around 1.7 years of age. Similarly, there were no differences in age of first making rhythmic or dance movements to music or of first requesting involvement in musical activity. Only one characteristic, the age at which the children first sang, appeared significantly earlier in the most able group. However, even this is probably not evidence of innate musical ability, since these children experienced a greater degree of early musical input from their parents.

 

 

 

The second line of evidence suggesting that innate talents play a minimal role in the development of exceptional performance concerns the rate of improvement with practice. If talent or giftedness plays a significant role over and above practice, then we would predict that a talented individual would make more progress from a given amount of practice than a less talented one. Surely the young Garry Kasparov learned the complexities of a new chess opening in far less time than it would take an average chess player? On the other hand, if practice is essentially the only ingredient in the development of outstanding ability, then talented and less talented individuals will require the same amount of practice to progress by equal amounts.

 

 

 

The available evidence suggests that the latter of these predictions is closer to the truth. Thus in a further study of their young musicians, Sloboda, Howe and their colleagues asked them to estimate how many hours of practice per day they had engaged in each year since taking up their instrument, just as Ericsson and his colleagues had done in their study. Since the musicians were regularly taking musical grade exams, Sloboda, Howe and their colleagues were able to use this as a measure of musical progress and could therefore calculate the amount of practice that took place between successive grades. The surprising result was that the most gifted children required just as much practice as the less gifted ones: in fact, if anything, there was a tendency for them to require more. For instance, the most gifted group required on average 971 hours of cumulated practice to reach Grade 4, while a less talented group took 656 hours. The high figure in the former group is boosted by a small number of young people who practiced for exceptionally long periods of time, but even when these individuals are excluded, there is still no evidence that more gifted people can get by on less practice.

 

 

 

Overall, then, there is little evidence that talent contributes to the achievement of exceptional levels of performance over and above practice. Maybe we should dispense with the notion of talent altogether?

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http://www.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/david.shan ... rtise.html

[PastyGangsta]

RuneScape.

 

 

 

 

 

:lol:

 

 

 

OT: But really I'd love to keep up with playing the trumpet. I love it and I'm not bad, but I'll certainly be better after 10,000 hours. I'll even have time to play other things like the trombone, tuba, french horn, piccolo trumpet, and the saxaphone.

[BlindBaker]

Either flirting or beer pong.

[myshadow7]

inb4runescape

 

edit: darn.

 

 

 

 

 

To be honest, I would pick a stringed instrument like violin or cello. I already play the violin, and I love to do it, but I kind of dislike orderly practicing. For this reason, I'm pretty out of it this summer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps in other instruments like guitar/bass guitar.

[Maleficus1055]

Rofl, my math teacher reccomended the book to our class last year! he also asked us this same question!

 

 

 

I'd choose playing the guitar.

[warri0r45]

I don't believe that there's some magical point where you suddenly become good at something. Obviously it would be gradual, and some people learn at different paces, but having said that 10,000 hours should be enough to master a particular skill.

 

 

 

As for the topic, I would choose the guitar.

[Racheya]

I would chose either charisma or computer programming.

 

 

 

Being charismatic will get you far, and being a computer programmer would be awesome :thumbup:

[jimmy_jim]

I would choose Music. Music has always interested me and I play a few instruments. (Though, not very well #-o ). I would love to be able to sight-read whatever I saw on any instrument. Don't know if I could handle practising for 10,000 hours though! :

[Wongtong]

Science, especially biology. It's such a fascinating topic imo and I want to be a doctor. Durp.

[EarthySun]

I don't believe that there's some magical point where you suddenly become good at something. Obviously it would be gradual, and some people learn at different paces, but having said that 10,000 hours should be enough to master a particular skill.

 

 

 

As for the topic, I would choose the guitar.

 

 

 

It was shown that was shown that everyone learned a skill at the same pace. There weren't any people who practiced more but weren't as good as everyone else or people with fewer hours of practice who got better than everyone else.

[Skully]

Photoshop.

[Lemeja]

World domination.

 

 

 

OT: I've always wanted to play the drums :(

[Chicken102]

either the abilty to be self-content and appreciative of my lot in life for once, or the ability to ride a pogo stick while juggling. Either way, my life is bound to be pure happiness then :thumbup:

[Nero]

Piloting.

[mlclm]

Money laundering/embezzlement. :thumbup:

 

 

 

Once I'm insanely rich, I'll learn the guitar.

[Zierro]

I don't believe that. Everyone is different. Some people suck at guitar after thousands of hours, and some are really good despite only picking it up here and there.

 

 

 

If I were to pick though, I would probably choose boxing as my field of expertise.

[EarthySun]

I don't believe that. Everyone is different. Some people suck at guitar after thousands of hours, and some are really good despite only picking it up here and there.

 

 

 

Actually, that's just not true. Read the book, and you'll understand. :\ I tried to explain it the best I could.

[Wisp]

I don't believe that. Everyone is different. Some people suck at guitar after thousands of hours, and some are really good despite only picking it up here and there.

 

 

 

Actually, that's just not true. Read the book, and you'll understand. :\ I tried to explain it the best I could.

 

I think, despite what the book says, that is true. I know people who simply can't learn guitar no matter how long they spend practicing, and they actually do try, and then I picked it up almost immediately. People's brains are different.

[Lenin64]

I don't believe that. Everyone is different. Some people suck at guitar after thousands of hours, and some are really good despite only picking it up here and there.

 

 

 

Actually, that's just not true. Read the book, and you'll understand. :\ I tried to explain it the best I could.

 

I think, despite what the book says, that is true. I know people who simply can't learn guitar no matter how long they spend practicing, and they actually do try, and then I picked it up almost immediately. People's brains are different.

 

I'm picking up bass at an exceedingly quick rate- I'm only about 3 days in and I can read pretty well and have almost completely stopped plucking the wrong string.

 

 

 

So for me, either balisong or bass. But part of the fun of the balisong is the actual road to mastery, for me at least, so I'd say bass. It seems cliched already, though.

[forestfrolic]

Paleontology.

[michel555555]

I don't believe that. Everyone is different. Some people suck at guitar after thousands of hours, and some are really good despite only picking it up here and there.

 

 

 

Actually, that's just not true. Read the book, and you'll understand. :\ I tried to explain it the best I could.

 

 

 

Everyone learns at a different pace no matter what that book says. I'm a swimming instructor and i get kids who can swim like a fish after the first day of lessons, and others who won't actually even get in the water.

 

 

 

If a subject interests them it might take them 10k hours to master it. but if you try to teach someone who loves the arctic to love the desert you are probably not going to suceed in a million hours.

 

 

 

and mastery over the elements seems like a great trade off for 10k hours :twisted:

 

 

 

probably competitive swimming or triathalon if it was true though.

[Wongtong]

I don't believe that. Everyone is different. Some people suck at guitar after thousands of hours, and some are really good despite only picking it up here and there.

 

 

 

Actually, that's just not true. Read the book, and you'll understand. :\ I tried to explain it the best I could.

 

I think, despite what the book says, that is true. I know people who simply can't learn guitar no matter how long they spend practicing, and they actually do try, and then I picked it up almost immediately. People's brains are different.

 

Agreed, I've seen people who try so hard and practise guitar a lot but somehow they don't play very well.

[Wisp]

Also, I've slept for more that 10,000 hours, and I sure as hell haven't mastered sleeping. Half the time I can never fall asleep.

[MisterGreen]

The ability to turn my right arm, right leg and left eye into super cybernetic parts and strengthen my skeleton to effectively make me superhuman.

 

 

 

If that is too complicated, I'd like the 10k hours to go to psychology.

[michel555555]

Multiple successful people were interviewed, and results of the interviews (and of much testing) has shown that the Ten Thousand Hour Rule is true.

 

 

 

Without actually reading the book this statement pops out.

 

 

 

If they only interviewed people for who the 10k hour rule worked and did not take a random sample of people then the book is completly biased and not scientific at all.