The 10,000-Hour Rule is a Myth
Few ideas about learning are as well-known as the 10,000-hour rule, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his 2008 bestseller, Outliers, where he argued that it takes roughly that long to master a skill.
The basis for Gladwell’s rule was Anders Ericsson’s 1993 paper arguing that large quantities of deliberate practice could explain world-class skill levels. Before that, psychologist John Hayes’s research on elite composers, artists and poets found roughly ten years were necessary to produce master-level works.
As with many popularizations of academic research, the public understanding of the rule is at odds with the actual research used to generate it.
What the 10,000-Hour Rule Gets Wrong About the Research
The most common misunderstanding of the 10,000-hour rule was the assumption that time spent simply using the skill was what ultimately mattered.
Clearly, this is absurd. Anyone who performs a skill as their full-time job will eventually accumulate ten thousand hours of sustained use. Yet very few musicians, artists, athletes or chess players perform at a truly world-class level. Consider an example from classical music: Tens of thousands of violinists play full-time in professional orchestras, yet there is only a handful of violin virtuosos. The rarity…
