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The Myth of 10,000 hours

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Re: The Myth of 10,000 hours

#21

Post by hirundo »

latencyloser wrote: post #14
hirundo wrote: post #2

I haven't read the book, but what I heard about it second hand is that 10k hours is about mastery, not success. You can be a master without being successful and visa versa. But mastery sure improves your odds of success. Of course 10k hours doesn't guarantee mastery either. I've put in that much on the golf course and still suck at it.

I've heard it's also important to distinguish _practice_ as separate form of _doing_. Without knowing anything about your golf habits, so not intending to criticize, but to use as an example: 10k hours of _playing_ golf is quite different from 10k hours of _practicing_ golf and the latter would, from what I understand of the distinction, have a more appreciable outcome. As you said though, mastery and success are not…

I've probably also spent almost that many hours on the driving range. Some people just don't have the talent for some things, and as far as golf, I seem to be one of them. But I always hit at least one good shot that has me coming back for more. Like an addiction.

I have a friend who hardly ever plays, but still beats the snot out of me on the course. So in my humble opinion, trying to eliminate natural ability from the equation is misguided.

Re: The Myth of 10,000 hours

#22

Post by ohduran »

slowhand09 wrote: post #7

I think the author of the article is missing the point of the book. And assuming everyone else is missing the point of 10,000 hours of intentional practice.

Agreed. So 10'000 hours of practice isn't just doing it, it's actually becoming obsessed with doing it BETTER. I can make sandwiches all day long, but only if I focus on how precise I am in the dose of mayonnaise, how seamless my spreading it over the bread, and how exact is the time the sandwich spends on which part of the refrigerator, then I'll improve.

Sorry I'm tremendously eager to eat a sandwich right now. A good follow up book after reading Outliers is James P Catse's "Finite and Infinite Games": https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1476731713/ref=as_li_tl?ie...

Re: The Myth of 10,000 hours

#23

Post by Takizawa »

What I think is interesting is how much emotion the 10k hour rule rouses in general. The Freakonomics podcast mentioned the 10k rule as well. They posit that given equally talented individuals, the person who puts in the requisite hours of hard work through deliberate practice would obtain the higher level of mastery.

Re: The Myth of 10,000 hours

#24

Post by brodouevencode »

I think there's an unaddressed point in the book that should include "for the average person with average physical/emotional/intellectual capacity 10k hours - give or take - of _deliberate_ practice should make you a master". This intuitively makes sense to me, and what I took away from the book. I guess others took away other things and if you want to fault the author for that I'm not going to stop you. It's also fashionable to over-analyze everything these days so some won't be satisfied unless there are exact data points involved it should warrant throwing out the whole book and to which I would say to them sometimes it's about the notion rather than it's exactness. In any way the book is interesting and still worth a read.

Re: The Myth of 10,000 hours

#25

Post by imgabe »

hirundo wrote: post #21
latencyloser wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard it's also important to distinguish _practice_ as separate form of _doing_. Without knowing anything about your golf habits, so not intending to criticize, but to use as an example: 10k hours of _playing_ golf is quite different from 10k hours of _practicing_ golf and the latter would, from what I understand of the distinction, have a more appreciable outcome. As you said though, mastery and success are not…

I've probably also spent almost that many hours on the driving range. Some people just don't have the talent for some things, and as far as golf, I seem to be one of them. But I always hit at least one good shot that has me coming back for more. Like an addiction. I have a friend who hardly ever plays, but still beats the snot out of me on the course. So in my humble opinion, trying to eliminate natural ability from…

Another requirement is focused practice, which means having a coach who can evaluate what you're doing and tell you where to improve.

Going to the driving range and hitting a bucket of balls isn't as helpful if you don't know what you're doing wrong and how to fix it. You'll just keep doing the same wrong thing.

Re: The Myth of 10,000 hours

#26

Post by imgabe »

> Unfortunately “Work hard to succeed” is the message the world took away from it.

Is this unfortunate? Yeah, there are lots of random factors that might affect your outcome. The only one you can reliably influence is how hard you work. While you're lamenting about how you weren't born in the right time or the right place or so and so had the lucky opportunity to get a break and the right time, your competitors are working.

Re: The Myth of 10,000 hours

#27

Post by brantonb »

latencyloser wrote: post #14
hirundo wrote: post #2

I haven't read the book, but what I heard about it second hand is that 10k hours is about mastery, not success. You can be a master without being successful and visa versa. But mastery sure improves your odds of success. Of course 10k hours doesn't guarantee mastery either. I've put in that much on the golf course and still suck at it.

I've heard it's also important to distinguish _practice_ as separate form of _doing_. Without knowing anything about your golf habits, so not intending to criticize, but to use as an example: 10k hours of _playing_ golf is quite different from 10k hours of _practicing_ golf and the latter would, from what I understand of the distinction, have a more appreciable outcome. As you said though, mastery and success are not…

It’s even more specific than that: it’s deliberate practice. Going to the driving range, getting a bucket, and hitting a bunch of balls likely doesn’t count. You need to be focusing on improving a specific thing. Are you working on your swing path, club face angle, hip rotation, etc? Or are you just hitting balls?

I was fascinated by The Dan Plan. He went from having never played golf to a 3.1 handicap, but ultimately injury appears to have stopped him after ~6000 hours.

>On April 5th, 2010, Dan quit his day job as a commercial photographer and began The Dan Plan. Having never played 18 holes of golf in his life, Dan started the 10,000 hour journey with just a putter. After five months of putting, he received his second club, a pitching wedge. Just before the first anniversary of The Dan Plan dan took his first full-swing lesson. After 18 months he swung a driver for the first time. On December 28, 2011 he played his first full round with a full set of clubs. Since then it has been off to the races.

http://thedanplan.com/about/

Re: The Myth of 10,000 hours

#30

Post by rapfaria »

hirundo wrote: post #2

I haven't read the book, but what I heard about it second hand is that 10k hours is about mastery, not success. You can be a master without being successful and visa versa. But mastery sure improves your odds of success. Of course 10k hours doesn't guarantee mastery either. I've put in that much on the golf course and still suck at it.

Actually someone did try to apply the 10k rule to learn golf from scratch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_McLaughlin_(golfer)

I remember seeing his blog post about his first hole in one. Even if I don't really believe the 10k rule, I was rooting for him to enter the PGA, just to prove that it was possible.

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