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The Complete Guide to Deliberate Practice
We are capable of incredible feats, but they won’t come without focused effort, consistent feedback, and expert guidance.
In 2008, Malcolm Gladwell published his third nonfiction book, Outliers: The Story of Success. The book is perhaps best known for introducing the world to the concept of “10,000 hours to mastery”:
The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a critical minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.
And a few paragraphs later:
Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness.
These ideas took hold, inspiring everyone from Dan McLaughlin, who tried to put in 10,000 hours of golf training to play in the PGA Tour, to Tony Hsieh, who believes that great entrepreneurs are made from 10,000 hours of practice.
Today, Gladwell says that “no one is more surprised than me that [10,000 hours] was the average takeaway” and claims his emphasis on the number was meant to serve an “argumentative function” about the support and resources needed to reach the highest levels of performance.
