10,000 hours has got to be the least interesting concept in the body of work around deliberate practice. But it is somehow the concept that is most widely known.
I would love to know the psychology behind why that concept was so sticky given that it seems self-evidently worthless to know where the theoretical cap on self-improvement lies. I mean, how many things do we put 10k hours of practice in to?
The much better concepts from this world are:
* The deliberate part of deliberate practice. There are very different qualities of practice. Tim Ferriss is making a living on hunting down concepts around minimum effective doses of practice and his third book (Chef) is very good for this. These are all essentially finding more effective ways to practice so that you get more out of each hour.
* The experienced non-expert as an explanation (and pejorative) for everyone who has 10,000 hours of experience but isn't very good.
* Difficulty: the ideal practice difficulty is uncomfortable, falling between trivial and demoralizing.
It's also politically correct and fits in with the current generation's thinking of "you can be anything you want." This comes up now and again on HN as well about whether everyone should/can learn to program.
Will practice make someone better than the average person? Definitely. But to be the best in the world, you have to have some genetic advantage - be it your body composition or the way your mind works.
I always like to point out the ice hockey player Ed Jovanovski. He didn't start playing hockey until he was 11 (which is pretty late) but was drafted 1st overall into the NHL just 7 years later. However, his dad was a semi-professional soccer player so his genes probably gave him an advantage over others who started playing much earlier but didn't make it.
I would love to know the psychology behind why that concept was so sticky given that it seems self-evidently worthless to know where the theoretical cap on self-improvement lies. I mean, how many things do we put 10k hours of practice in to?
The much better concepts from this world are:
* The deliberate part of deliberate practice. There are very different qualities of practice. Tim Ferriss is making a living on hunting down concepts around minimum effective doses of practice and his third book (Chef) is very good for this. These are all essentially finding more effective ways to practice so that you get more out of each hour.
* The experienced non-expert as an explanation (and pejorative) for everyone who has 10,000 hours of experience but isn't very good.
* Difficulty: the ideal practice difficulty is uncomfortable, falling between trivial and demoralizing.