10,000 Hours of Work

[mikeralls]

Find this rather poignant;

www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sex_news_sports_funny_grok/why_you_suck

In the 1990's, psychologist K. Anders Ericsson conducted an experiment with the Berlin Academy of Music. He divided the school's violinists into three groups: the elite, the good, and those that were unlikely to ever play professionally.

All of the kids had started playing when they were 5 years old, but what divided them, aside from ability, was simply how many hours each had spent practicing. The really good ones had totaled 10,000 hours of practice, while the good ones had only managed to squeak away on the catgut for 8,000 hours or so.

The underachievers? Just 4,000 hours of practice.

The most surprising thing was that they really couldn't find any "naturals." Nor could they find any grinders, people who just worked harder than everybody else but just didn't have the talent to become elite.

The thing that distinguished one from another was simply hard work, nothing else.

But the weird thing is that 10,000 hours — roughly the amount of practice a truly committed devotee could accrue over 10 year — keeps popping up in different fields. Whether you're a writer, a concert pianist, a basketball player, computer programmer, or chess master, true greatness seems to pivot on that magic number.

Gladwell notes only one exception: Chess player Bobby Fisher, who took only nine years to achieve Chess Master status.

The Beatles are an old-fogey rock band anachronism to most modern music lovers, but few would probably deny their influence on the world's music. Interestingly, the Beatles were afforded certain circumstances that allowed them to become great.

Early in their career, before anybody had heard of them, they got the opportunity to fly from their England homes to Hamburg, Germany, where a strip club owner had gotten the idea to have bands play non-stop music while sexy Sadie did a little helter skelter on stage.

And play non-stop the Beatles did, for seven days a week, eight hours a night. They made five trips to Hamburg between 1960 and 1962. By the time they had their initial taste of success, they'd performed live approximately 1200 times, which is extraordinary in that most bands never play live 1200 times over their entire careers.

Writer Philip Norman, who wrote the Beatles' biography Shout, explained in this way:

"They learned not only stamina. They had to learn an enormous amount of numbers — cover versions of everything you can think of, not just rock and roll, a bit of jazz too. But when they came back, they sounded like no one else. It was the making of them."

There it was again, hours of practice accrued equates to success. Nothing magical. The more psychologists in Gladwell's book looked at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play.

-

So . . . Lifewriters; How many of you have logged 10,000 hours yet? I know I haven't.

[nancylebovitz]

That's interesting. I'd heard that it wasn't just the hours, it was "directed practice"-- constantly finding sub-goals to get better at.

[Steven Barnes]

I love this. Quantifying it like this makes things very clear: are you, or are you not willing to spend 10,000 hours in ten years...1000 hours a year...20 hours a week for ten years, to develop your skill. If you are, you probably WILL become world class. Makes the mark a lot easier to hit...and excludes the dilettante.

[baubosboy]

It's pretty interesting, alright. Years and years ago I'd heard that "5 hours a day for 5 years can make almost anyone a virtuoso at almost anything" - which was an idea I always liked and often spouted - and that comes to about 9100 hours, which is pretty close. But as Nancy said, it's also how you practise for those 10,000 hours. 10,000 hours of lousy practise can make you worse at whatever it is you're doing; look at all the terrible and yet veteran drivers out there. Their thousands of hours have just resulted in complacency and entrenched bad habits. I guess it depends on how one defines "practise". Still, it's interesting. Interesting too, to try to figure up how many hours one has put into the things one really wants to be good at, and compare that to how many hours one has put into less important (and less arduous) things. I would guess that lots of us have gotten in our 10,000 hours of remote control clicking!

[baubosboy]

It also reminds me of (kyokushinkai karate founder) Mas Oyama's adage: "One thousand days of training, a beginner; ten thousand days of training, a master."

[baubosboy]

It also brings to mind something coach Dan Gable used to tell his wrestlers: "If it's important, do it every day. If it's not important, don't do it all."

[Argent'horn]

I am still a bit skeptical. I was a world class mathematician in my particular field long before I had spent 10,000 hours on mathematics. I would never have been a world class ballet dancer, or even a very good one, no matter how much time I had spent on it. Mathematics was so easy for me that as a teenager I felt it could not really be important; I believed that anyone who claimed s/he could not do it just was not paying attention. Ballet was so difficult that no matter how hard I worked on it, I was barely competent, if that. I estimate that I spent about 4500 hours on ballet altogether. This kind of impossible challenge I needed, as a teenager. But I have made a much bigger difference in the world as a topologist than I ever could have as a dancer, mostly just because of natural ability. Of course, one difference is that I could not have ever gotten as much enjoyment from dancing as from mathematics, so it eventually became easier to spend time on mathematics. It is difficult, maybe impossible, to spend time on something which leads always only to frustration and never to any success. This likely confounds the research, since only people with natural ability are likely to actually put in the "required" 10,000 hours.

Another example is the following: When I was a senior in high school, I was given an aptitude test. One of the areas where I scored very high, at least one standard deviation above the 99th percentile, I don't recall the number exactly, was finger dexterity. This was a complete surprise; I had never spent any time at all on any kind of activity involving finger dexterity. Since then, I have indeed observed that many people seem, from my viewpoint, to be just deliberately clumsy with fine motor activities. One such would be picking the correct key from a keyring, with one hand (either hand) and within a second or two, for example. But, apparently this also is something where I just naturally excel. Other areas, I just naturally am slow at. It took me more than 40 hours of flight instruction to be ready to solo. Most student pilots do so after at most 15 hours, for example. I was not ready for my Private Pilot checkride until I had over 200 hours flying time; many people were ready for an instrument rating by that time.

[baubosboy]

Well, one definitely doesn't want to take a number like "10,000" and try to turn it into some kind of immutable law; some people will need less, some will need more. And in terms of the natural ability vs hard work debate, one can argue that the capacity for putting in 10,000 hours might in and of itself be an intrinsic ability, a gift.

But the gist of the 10,000 hours idea holds, I think. People tend to underestimate how big a role stubborn persistence and sheer effort plays in success, and we tend to underestimate how long it should take to gain a certain level of excellence at something. And we tend to overestimate how limiting our natural limitations might be. If a shinless kid can excel at sprinting, and a legless kid can excel at football, and a limbless kid can excel at wrestling, most of us could probably excel at any given physical sport or art. World-class, groundbreaking brilliance? Maybe not. But excellence? I'd say so.

As for the frustration thing; what you say is true for most of us, though there are some who actually seem to get more determined with failure. But frustration tends to be the result of narrow focus, IMO. If my only goal in weight-lifting, for example, is to become the world's strongest man, then yes, I'd be pretty frustrated; in fact, when I focus entirely on that, I do get frustrated and disheartened. But I try to be mindful of, and to gain motivation from three things: where I want to be, where I used to be, and and where I am right now. So I don't just compare myself to the Ed Coans of the world, but also to where I was when I started. And I don't just look at it terms of results, but also in terms of the process itself: getting what I can - physically, emotionally, intellectually - out of every workout, every set, every rep. When I widen my focus a little, my frustration tends to diminish.

I've told people who are starting out in some type of weightlifting, and talking about how they are going to suck at it - and it's amazing how many people start out assuming they're going to suck at it: Are you going to be a world-class powerlifter? Maybe not. Though you may surprise yourself. But will you be somewhere around three times stronger a year from now than you are now? Definitely. And if you actually enjoy the process as well, if you embrace the actual feeling of the movement, well...two out of three ain't bad.

Finally, I would wonder whether there isn't a tendency to overestimate the work we've put into the things that we dislike and find frustrating, and to underestimate the work we've put into the things we find easy and pleasurable. As the saying goes, if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. Or, for that matter: time flies when you're having fun. 15 minutes on the exercise bike can seem like hours to me; several hours of writing poetry can seem like a moment.

But anyway, your point is well taken; certainly there are natural gifts and obstacles, and they are relevant, and 10,000 hours isn't some magical rule, some divinely drawn boundary. But I think that 10,000 hours is a good rough guide, something to measure one's journey against; and persistence and effort can overcome most innate obstacles, and outperform most innate gifts.

Enjoying this thread; thanks everybody!

Geoff

[Steven Barnes]

Here's my thought: the average person will probably max out their basic capacity in about 10,000 hours. Let's say you want to be the world's strongest man. At what? Dead lift? Squat? Bending iron? Strength-endurance? Heck, I've had people say in all seriousness that YOGA is the ultimate strengthening technique, which is using a very different set of definitions. Most successful people I know don't measure themselves just by some specific linear, narrow definition: they give themselves room to find something that is uniquely theirs. Ballet? It would be hard to find something with narrower, more externally-determined standards. Unless you are SO tall, and SO skinny, and your body line is just SO, then it literally doesn't matter how good you are: the aesthetics just won't work. Compare this to a sport where someone can still be awkward, but knock your butt out and be "the best." I love the 10,000 hour standard, and yes, I think that the basic skill is the ability to keep your attention focused for 10,000 hours--almost everything is secondary to that.

[bmoonroe]

This makes some sense to me. When I was learning to play bagpipes, the accepted wisdom was that it takes 7 years to make a piper. Figure a minimum of 2 hours a day of practicing, but get involved with a pipe band or competing, and that time expenditure goes way up, and I wouldn't be surprised if that comes to pretty close to 10000 hours.

I wonder how age factors into this. Most of the serious pipe bands, like the Scots Guards, won't take students who are much past age 15 and it really seems like the older you get, you are fighting both mental and physical barriers.

My main fitness outlet at the moment is Bikram Yoga, and I've been thinking about this concept of the 10000 hours a lot, as well as Steve's details of the Hero's Journey in the Lifewriting course. I wonder how finely you'd break down the 10000 hours to achieve mastery--10000 hours in a Bikram studio, or say, 10000 hours learning "Standing Bow". That pose is particularly interesting in this context because everybody falls out of it from time to time, seems like this is true if you're at hour 1 or hour 9999. I'm at day 56 in our local studio's 60 day challenge--yes, I am going to yoga on Christmas day. Prior to the challenge, I was going 4 times a week, so it's 15 weeks of classes crammed into 8 weeks for me. I've really noticed a difference in my practice as a result of the challenge, not just physically, but mentally. Of course, relating where I am with each pose in relation to the Hero's Journey has offered a slightly different perspective on it lately.

[Steven Barnes]

"Mastering" yoga is an interesting challenge. It's a road, not a destination. However, if you mean "I want to have perfect poses" then you would probably attend five classes a week would take you almost twenty years to amass 10,000 hours. I would suggest that anyone with that much dedication would get 80% of what Bikram has to offer in the first two years. Then..? Get a teaching credential, and make it a lifestyle. Add serious meditation, dietary modifications, and visit other yoga schools, to see the strengths and limitations of any one approach. An hour and a half of physical practice 6 days a week...but not necessarily the exact same set of movements. This is a life-path, and a fine one.

[bmoonroe]

Steve,
It's interesting how often I read something by you that expresses something that I've been thinking. At the yoga studio, everyone was asking if I'd continue past the end of the 60-day challenge, and the more they asked that, the more I would think, it's not the destination, it's the journey. One of the instructors said last night that to be certified to teach Bikram yoga, the training involved doing the class something like 90 times, but that's doing it twice a day. I'm definitely going to stick with it for the duration, as I can see by looking at my parents' health, from a genetic point of view, my future challenges will most likely involve the respiratory system and joint strength, and yoga, particularly Bikram yoga seems like my best chance at overcoming that.

I suppose any skill has its component parts, each of which could easily a good chunk of that 10,000 hours. Playing the pipes, one of the early exercises is to spend the first 10 minutes of your practice time blowing--not trying to play anything, but simply working on coordinating your breath, and the pressure of your arm against the bag. 10,000 hours spent in that way would be a great step in producing something that sounds like music, as opposed to a cat being slammed against a wall.

[Steven Barnes]

Bikram yoga is good, solid stuff. It is a fine launching point.