The Mystery of the Ten Thousand Hours

In Malcolm Gladwell’s important book “Outliers”, we are introduced to the notion of “ten thousand hours to success”. In example after example, Gladwell demonstrates that for almost any discipline, roughly ten thousand hours of focused practice is required to gain mastery. He uses the Beatles’ grinding years playing the clubs of Hamburg, Germany, among many other examples, to make his point.

Gladwell gleaned this notion from the work of Anders Ericsson, a Swedish psychologist and scholar, who interestingly enough later took issue with Gladwell on his interpretation of the findings. Nevertheless, the Ericsson/Gladwell proposition that it takes at least ten thousand hours of purposeful and intentional practice or work to get good at your game seems empirically “about right”. Ericsson actually said that the ten thousand hours just got you into the club, and many more were needed to stand at the top.

Jascha Heifetz, the great violinist, is reported to have said, “If I don’t practice for a day, I notice. If I don’t practice for two days, my critics notice. And if I don’t practice for three days, my public notices.” Heifetz’ ten thousand hours never ended.

I’ve written earlier about Larry King who just began to do his interviewing with no training, no practice, and no worries. “Work is the easiest thing I do,” he said. But excepting Larry and perhaps a few others, high-level proficiency in your game, whatever it may be, rarely “just happens” but rather is hard-earned no matter your innate ability. Even (or perhaps especially) for those who like comedians just seem utterly spontaneous, the truth is that behind the scenes there is a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. The inimitable Robin Williams without doubt ad libbed and improvised on stage and on screen, but off stage he worked very, very hard at his craft.

Professional success is best attained by building the best reputation, and the best reputation never arrives on a silver platter. It’s a hard-earned and grudging business where practice never ends even when the ten thousand hour mark is reached and passed. In every craft, the masters never stop refining and polishing, growing their reputations.

This ties in precisely with the notion of Giftings which are, after all, “your innate attributes shaped by experience and perfected by training”. The “ten thousand hours” concept is simply a quantification of the training aspect of Giftings.

Given this, it’s also important to caution that you spend your ten thousand hours on areas squarely within your Giftings. A Jersey cow, even with ten thousand hours, will never win the Kentucky Derby, nor will a turtle learn to fly. Speaking personally, given my complete lack of any sense of rhythm, ten, or even twenty thousand hours of guitar lessons and practice would elevate me at best to jamming with a garage band that took pity on me. Would anybody suggest that would be a good use of my time?

With a nod to Gladwell, then, it would seem that there is much truth in his ten thousand hour thesis, but with the caveat that it would be wasted if you don’t centre on your innate attributes. But if you pay the ten thousand hour price focusing on your Giftings, well then, “look out world!”