Will 10,000 Hours of Practice Make You World-Class?
By: Erik Hamre
Tags: Self Improvement, Learning, Psychology, Education, Inspiration

Image by Jorge Guillen from Pixabay

Will 10,000 Hours of Practice Make You World-Class?

The 10,000 Hour Rule Explained and Revisited

Malcolm Gladwell popularised the idea that 10 000 hours of practice can make you world-class. The 10 000 hour rule states that it takes a minimum of ten years and approximately ten thousand hours of deliberate practice to become world-class in any complex skill.

But ‘the rule’ is often misunderstood and misapplied. One such misconception is that 10 000 hours of practice is the ‘magical number of greatness’, and that if you just put in the hours you will become world-class.

The basis of the rule

In a study of chess masters and grandmasters, Simon and Chase drew one of the most famous conclusions in expertise research. There are no naturals that achieve mastery in a short time. They estimated that all the masters in their study had spent between ten and fifty thousand hours practising chess.

Since then, researchers have arrived at the same conclusion time after time in all types of domains. It takes at least ten years to master any complex skill.

The key study that the 10 000 hour rule is based upon involved violinists at the Music Academy of West Berlin. Anders Ericsson, a world-leading researcher in expertise development, found that the best players in the orchestra had spent an average of 10 000 hours of deliberate practice to reach their expert level.

In the study group, Ericsson included those who had the potential to become international violin soloists. Ericsson compared them with groups of ‘good violinists’ and ‘music teachers’. The main contributing factor to the expertise level between the groups was the amount of deliberate practice they had achieved. Deliberate practice is well-designed and means intense practice on essential aspects of the task being mastered.

When they were 18 years-old, the ‘international soloists’ had an average of 7410 hours of practice, the ‘good players’ had an average of 5301 hours and the ‘music teachers’ had an average of 3420 hours. It was estimated that the ‘international soloists’ would reach approximately 10 000 hours of deliberate practice by the age of 20. This is where the number for the 10 000 hour rule comes from.

At this point, the talented violinists were destined to become world-class, but they were not there yet. It’s estimated that they needed at least 10 000 more hours before they would reach the peak of their careers, which for violinists typically occurs in their early thirties.

Overall, the most common finding in expertise research is that there are no naturals and that you can’t reach a world-class level in complex skills without a lot of practice. It’s the amount of deliberate practice that has the greatest influence on whether you get there or not.

Ten thousand hours is just the average

There’s nothing magical about the number 10 000 however. Some people improve faster, and some people barely improve at all. In another study of chess players by Campitelli and Gobet, they found that the average time to become a master was 11 000 hours, but some did it in 3000 hours, and some still hadn’t managed to become a master after 25 000 hours of practice. They concluded that deliberate practice is necessary, but not sufficient.

Rather than just counting the hours, it’s how you practice that makes the largest difference. Some people learn and improve a lot faster than others. How you design your practice and how focused you stay during practice are two factors that significantly affect how quickly you learn.

Responsiveness to practice is one of the main attributes that influence whether someone has the potential to reach world-class levels. A person who can improve their skills to the same level in 3 000 hours that others need 10 000 hours to achieve has a considerable advantage.

In psychological research, it’s common to measure and discuss averages. But to understand what’s possible it can be much more revealing to study those that become very good in a shorter amount of time. By studying the way they practice, we can start to understand what they’re doing differently and why they’re so good. And by implementing their ways of learning, anyone can dramatically improve their rate of learning.

The competition

How fast you become world-class depends a lot upon the level of the competition. If there are thousands of people who have put in 10 000 hours of practice in a domain, you’re not guaranteed to be among the best just because you do it as well.

In domains such as music, chess and sports, it’s common to put in thousands of hours of practice. The higher the level in a given skill, the more hours of quality practice is required to become world-class.

But how do we compare domains, and where is it easiest to become world-class? How do you compare the expertise of a chess player, violinist and a chef? Maybe there are 2000 chess players who have reached the same level of expertise as the top five chefs in the world. Or perhaps it’s the other way around.

If you want to become the best in the world at something, the easiest way to do it is to start practising an uncommon skill with great determination. Paper plane building, potato speed peeling or a new card game where only you know the rules.

In between the extremely competitive domains and the obscure new game where only you know the rules — and are therefore the best in the world — we find everything else. Exactly how many hours it takes to master and become world-class at these skills is hard to say, but it’s usually way less. Just keep in mind that it’s always possible to become better, even when you’re the best in the world, and if you don’t keep practising, someone may overtake you.

Ten thousand hours is not necessary to become skilled

The 10 000 hour rule may have had some undesirable consequences. As people heard about this research, some gave up on their goals as they seemed so far away.

You don’t need to practice 10 000 hours to become very good at a skill. The expertise research only suggests that it takes a long time to become world-class in very complex skills. From my personal experience, you can achieve a lot of improvement by putting in 100 hours of practice in any skill. You can reach a level where you enjoy what you’re doing in a meaningful way. After you have reached 100 hours of practice, you can decide if that’s enough and move on to other skills or you may get hooked and start down the path towards world-class levels.

Take home message

To master any complex skill requires an enormous amount of time, practice and effort. In most fields where the level of competition is high, it will take a minimum of 10 years and 10 000 hours of quality practice.

There is nothing magical about the number 10 000 however. Sometimes it requires less practice to become world-class, and sometimes it requires a lot more. The main point, perhaps not so surprisingly, is that it takes a lot of time to become the best in the world at anything.

The amount of practice it takes depends a lot upon the level of competition and the complexity of the skill. The more complex the skill is, the more situations you need to train yourself to see and the longer it takes to master.

To become very good at any skill can be done a lot faster, however. In my 100-hour challenge projects, I’ve experienced that you can see a significant improvement in only 100 hours, in any skill you choose to learn.

Whether you want to enjoy a skill as a hobby or compete at the highest level, the improvement always happens one hour at a time.

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