10,000 Hour Rule

Popularized term by Malcolm Gladwell in is book Outliers is the idea that to be a world class performer at anything, it requires 10,000 hours of practice. Gladwell cited a research of world class violinist that indicated that the world class violinist have over 10,000 hours of practice. The research showed that the violinist with less than 10,000 hours of practice have not attained the skills of a world class performers. Gladwell points how Bill Gates had the rare opportunity to obtain access to the very first computer at a very young age, allowing Gates to put in 10,000 hours of practice while he was still in his teens. By the time computers became commercially available, Bill Gates had all the skills necessary to build his Microsoft empire.

Although this seems like valid logical argument, I believe it requires further analysis to label this as true. There are still many areas of to be debated that I feel Gladwell decided to omit. Simply slapping a 10,000 hour rule on a phenomena that psychologist have questioned for hundreds of years isn't going to cut it.

Interesting point raised by many is that simply practicing for 10,000 hours isn't enough, it must be 10,000 hours of dedicated practice. It must be 10,000 hours of deliberate improvements. For example, many people play chess regularly every single day for decades but there are only a few people at the world class level. Just because the average Joe has 10 years of 3 hours a day of friendly games it doesn't mean he has a chance to be a world champion. The level of concentration in every in each and every practice plays an important role in the development of a skill. Often times deliberate steady improvements are painful so most people opt for the easy low concentration practice to feel like they have put in the practice necessary to improve.

Another interesting point raised is that the 10,000 hour research is simply an average. Some may take 20,000 and some may take 5000 to obtain world class skill. Overall average however falls at about the number 10,000.
Area that I feel wasn't covered is the level of complexity of the task. Some task are easier to master than others. Cup Stacking and Rubik's Cube world tournaments for example have world champions who have only 3-5 years of being in the sport. Most competitors have not even reached the age 20. It's next to impossible to put in 10,000 hours of full dedicated practice in 3-5 years so why are there so many teens braking world records each year in these areas. The only viable reason for this is because sports like Cup Stacking and Rubik's Cube are one dimensional task with one dimensional goal therefore complete mastery of the sport requires much less time on average than the 10,000 hour rule.

Anyhow, whichever way you slice it the point is that to be really good at something, it takes a lot of hours of practice. Many of us are not willing to put in our focus in one single area. So for many of us we'll never achieve outstanding results. So it all boils down to a single idea, you really have to love what you are doing to spend an enormous time and effort on it.