The problem with the 10,000-hour rule...
How much practice does it take to become an expert?
You might have heard this before; it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become good at something (e.g., playing a musical instrument). Or does it?
What’s the deal with 10,000 hours?
This idea was popularised in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers. “Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness,” he wrote. By that, he meant that by practicing for 10,000 hours we could all achieve a level of expertise and excel in our field of choice. The claim was based on a highly influential 1993 paper by Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer, who found that on average, top-ranked musicians (pianists and violists) had spent up to 10,000 hours of deliberate practice by the age of 20, while less accomplished ones had between 2,000 and 5,000 hours. The authors concluded that “many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 years”. This stressed the importance of learning and deliberate practice in skill acquisition. Gladwell built upon this idea by providing a number of examples from the world of the arts and entrepreneurship.
Debunking the 10,000-hour rule
The role of practice is undeniably important. However, its interaction with talent and the exact amount of time it takes to reach expert status has been challenged by more recent studies. Gobet and Campitelli (2007) investigated the role of talent and practice on expert performance in 104 chess players. They found that even though deliberate practice was important, chess players differed greatly in the amount of practice needed in order to reach a specific level. For example, some players with a few hours of total practice (as few as 3,016 hours) achieved master level (highest level in chess), while others needed more time (up to 23,608 hours). In some cases, players with a huge amount of practice (more than 25,000 hours) had not reached master level. This suggests that practice alone is not enough and that the exact amount of hours depends on a variety of factors such as the age at which people start learning a skill. In Gobet and Campitelli’s study, the earlier the players started practicing chess, the more skillful they were.
More criticism for the 10,000-hour rule came from a meta-analysis on the relationship between deliberate practice and performance in sport by Macnamara et al. (2016) They looked at 33 relevant studies and a total sample size of 2,765 participants involved in various sports. The amount of time participants practiced to reach a high level of skill varied wildly from study to study (ranged from 4k to 12,839 hours). As expected there was a positive correlation between deliberate practice and performance; high levels of deliberate practice were related to high levels of performance. However, deliberate practice predicted only about 18% of the difference in sports performance. The contribution of practice among elite performers was even lower and it accounted for only 1% of the difference. This suggests that even though deliberate practice is important, it is not enough. Success depends on a combination of factors such as genetics, personality, and other social factors.
More recently, Macnamara and Maitra (2019) attempted to replicate Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer's study using stricter methodology and a larger sample. They did not replicate the main finding of the 1993 study. Even though deliberate practice was related to skill level, with more accomplished musicians having spent more time practicing, there was no statistically significant difference in practice times between good and the best musicians. Interestingly, most top musicians in the sample had practiced less than the average good musician. Practice alone explained 26% of the variance, suggesting that practice is only one of the factors leading to expertise.
Why is it a problem?
The 10,000-hour rule perpetuates the exhausting idea that we all can excel at something if we put our minds to it. This leads to the belief that people can rise up through society based on merit and leaves many feeling inadequate.
It is important to understand the limits of practice. According to Macnamara: “Practice makes you better than you were yesterday, most of the time but it might not make you better than your neighbour. Or the other kid in your violin class.”
References
Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363–406. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.100.3.363
Macnamara, B. N., Moreau, D., & Hambrick, D. Z. (2016). The relationship between deliberate practice and performance in sports: A meta-analysis. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(3), 333-350.
Macnamara, B. N., & Maitra, M. (2019). The role of deliberate practice in expert performance: revisiting Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer (1993). Royal Society open science, 6(8), 190327.