How To Become An Expert
April 13th, 2009
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The secret to success is very simple: practice. Although most people think that world class performance requires huge talent, research shows that 10 years (or 10,000 hours) of practice can make anyone a top performer in pretty much any field, from sports to music to business.
The talent myth is very easy to believe when you look at people at their peak. People forget that Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, or that Abraham Lincoln lost numerous elections, or that Barbara Blackburn failed typing in high school (she went on to become the world’s fastest typist, with a peak of 212 wpm).
The good news is that practice makes perfect, so anyone has a chance. Just put in your 10,000 hours, and you’ll make it. But I’ve heard a lot of people citing this statistic lately, and they tend to miss one critical point: not all practice counts. Fortune Magazine reveals what it takes to be great:
“So greatness isn’t handed to anyone; it requires a lot of hard work. Yet that isn’t enough, since many people work hard for decades without approaching greatness or even getting significantly better. What’s missing?
The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to what the researchers call ‘deliberate practice.’ It’s activity that’s explicitly intended to improve performance, that reaches for objectives just beyond one’s level of competence, provides feedback on results and involves high levels of repetition.
For example: Simply hitting a bucket of balls is not deliberate practice, which is why most golfers don’t get better. Hitting an eight-iron 300 times with a goal of leaving the ball within 20 feet of the pin 80 percent of the time, continually observing results and making appropriate adjustments, and doing that for hours every day – that’s deliberate practice.”
So before punching your time card and starting to count your 10,000 hours, make sure you’re doing the right kind of practice. Undeliberate practice doesn’t count, which is why it’s possible to work in the same office for 30 years without becoming good at anything.
At my high school graduation, one of the speakers told us what it takes to become an expert. Just read about your topic of choice for an hour a day. After a year, you’ll be a national expert. After five years, you’ll be an international expert. And I heard someone say that reading six books on any subject will make you an expert.
These feats take far less time than the 10 years or 10,000 hours mentioned about, but I guess we’re talking about different levels of expertise.
The 10,000 hour rule comes from Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success
To be a great blogger, do you really need to blog for 10,000 hours? Or do you just need 10,000 hours of writing experience? Or 10,000 hours of experience in your subject matter? To be a great programmer, do you need 10,000 hours of experience with one particular language, or does all experience count? Does 10,000 hours of reading the news make you an expert of world events, or is that too broad?
Do you know? Do you have 10,000 hours of experience in anything?
April 13th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
As someone who has played basketball competitively, I would make the argument that those who go beyond the level of college require a certain level of natural ability. I’m sure many will disagree with me on this.
This natural ability needed is in hand eye coordination mostly. You need to be born with a requisite amount of it to really reach the highest levels in basketball and probably most sports.
The only thing up to debate, in my mind, is exactly how much you need.
That being said, you can be born with a great deal of athleticism that caters to your sport, but if you do not practice hard your skill will never develop to the point of going places.
It’s true Michael Jordan didn’t make the varsity team when he tried out as a sophomore I believe it was – but that doesn’t paint the whole picture as it’s more complicated than that.
For starters – not all coaches see the talent that is being exhibited. Moreover, you can’t really know someones potential all of the time, but that doesn’t mean the potential isn’t there. That also doesn’t mean that the potential that is there doesn’t comes from thousands of hours of practice. Much of it probably does.
Finally… some people who have a really good game just haven’t figured out how to express it completely yet, while what they have may be better than what someone else has who is performing better.
The potential someone has sometimes doesn’t show itself immediately in the most obvious ways.
That’s just my opinion.
Bamboo Forest – PunIntended´s last blog post..How to Make the Choices You Really Want to Make in Life
April 14th, 2009 at 12:41 am
10,000 hours of practice will definitely make you an expert; but an expert in ‘what’ is the question. If I code at beginners level for 10,000 hours I will become an expert at beginner level coding. If I code at expert level for 10,000 hours, I will be an expert at expert level coding.
Surely, those 10,000 hours would mean experience + learning/growth.
Avani-Mehta´s last blog post..Adam Sicinski’s MasterMind Matrix Chart
April 14th, 2009 at 11:40 am
After 14 months of blogging, I am considering myself as a blogging and social media expert. Others agree: they are paying me for my services.
Do I have 10,000 hours of practice? Not even close. I work about 4 hours per day, which means I have about 1500 hours of practice. Which also means I am going to get even better at what I do over the next few years.
Vered – MomGrind´s last blog post..Patient Parenting: Five Tried And Tested Tips
April 14th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Overall, I agree with the importance of practice. The talent myth is a lazy people’s logic, crediting talent for success. However, I don’t agree with the cookie-cutter number of 10,000 hours, either. This is another myth: the older the wiser, the more the better. Some learn quickly. And success is yet another deal.
10,000 hours = 10 years, so 1000 hours per year, 2.7 plus hours a day average. I’m sure I’ve put in far more than this much of time in two areas of my life: learning English and writing.
I started learning English at age 13 like most kids in Japan. I did put on extra effort and by the time I was in college, I could speak better than the teachers (which was a problem). Today I write in my second language as part of my business. But then I still make singular/plural and some preposition errors. So am I an expert? And what is an expert in foreign language?
I was always writing, first in Japanese and then in English, so definitely have put in far more than 10,000 hours. And at least in my adulthood, I’ve been writing deliberately — to educate and persuade readers. I always think about the audience and the objective of any writing. Am I an expert writer? I guess I write pretty well. But I guess expert writer is not necessarily a big popular blogger
Akemi – Yes to Me´s last blog post..Review: The Biology Of Belief By Bruce Lipton
April 14th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Hi Hunter: I think it’s a combination of talent and work. That is, if you don’t have musical talent it doesn’t matter how much you practice, you’ll never be world class. However, once the talent is there–and it doesn’t have to be genius level talent–it does come down to who puts in the hours.
April 14th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Although natural gifts and abilities are very important, especially in specialized things like basketball or engineering, the point about deliberate practice was something we should all take home for that >80% of life that’s “other stuff.” I’ve seen this happen over and over. One guy I worked with made a point to fill each and every work day with challenges and to become more and more expert over time. He set goals for himself and even did informal studies and surveys on what IT specialty would be the most rewarding. Some folks sitting in the same cubicle area, starting at exactly the same point at the same time, just got through each day looking forward to 5 pm. Five years (which happens to be about 10,000 work hours) later? He’s a much in-demand database administrator and the others are still doing exactly the same things they did in the beginning. When it’s time to send out resumes or ask for a salary review, they may wonder where those five years went!
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April 14th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
@ Bamboo Forest, that’s interesting. I’d like to hear from Michael Jordan’s high school coach about why he didn’t see potential. Maybe we look for the wrong things.
@ Avani-Mehta, “expert in what” is the question I’m wondering too.
@ Vered, I would tend to agree, but check out this. Even though you haven’t worked on blogging and social media for 10,000 hours, I think you carry over experience from other things.
@ Akemi, I don’t think the 10,000 hour rule says the older the wiser, because it depends on how you use those 10,000 hours. Not sure what an expert in writing or foreign language is, but you certainly make great use of your second language.
@ Marelisa, it could be that people without the talent don’t put in 10,000 hours, which makes it look like the hours are all that matter. I’m curious about that book now!
@ Chris, that’s a great example of deliberate practice! Maybe I’ll become a DBA…
April 16th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
You reminded me of another dimension (not the 4th dimension) …
There’s 3 levels of mastery … intellectual, emotional, and physical. When you read something, you learn it at the intellectual level. When you get experience with it, you learn it at the emotional level … you have feelings about the information (for example, there’s certain practices that make me cringe just thinking about them). Finally, you bake something into your body.
I didn’t know this when I took my Saxophone lessons. I figured once I hit a note, it was good enough. I figured if I proved I could hit it once, why be repetitive. I didn’t realize repetition was the foundation for skill.
April 17th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
@ J.D., thanks for sharing those dimensions. And yeah, repetition is hugely important. Think about basketball players practicing their free throws over and over.
April 18th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
I read Malcolm Gladwell’s book. Basically, you can have a natural talent and not put in the hours and you’ll never be great. If you don’t have a natural talent and you put in the hours you won’t be great. But if you have a natural talent (which I think is close to the same thing as a love and passion for whatever it is) and you put in the hours, that’s when you become great.
Read the book. It’s absorbing. All his books are.
April 21st, 2009 at 8:15 pm
@ Carol, I guess for some things you need some actual talent, but for most things, I’d think that love and passion + hours would be enough. I think I’m going to read the book, because I’ve seen a few people recommend it highly.
July 11th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
I have been self employed for thirty Four years, I work six days a week *,10,12,14,sometimes 16hrs a day, six days a week. Does this make me an expert business person. My business is cleaning carpets and upholstery. I have been doing this longer then any one I know. Does this make me an expert? I am probably one of the first to be certified master cleaner in my area, I became one of the first certified inspectors in my area, I was a certified instructor, To train others in the field. Does this make me an expert? I have probably forgotten most of the terms and definitions I learned in all the books that I have read and courses I’v taken. Do I need to refresh my memory to be recognized as an expert?
This first thing I do automatically when I enter a room with carpet is look at the carpet, I can not help it. The carpet starts talking to me from the time I start a job until the time I finish, some times by the time I finish a job I can give you a life history about it or close to it. Does this make me an expert? I could Probably go on an on but I have to go. I would be interested in hearing what you think. What an expert is. Who would you like to have your carpets cleaned someone who could recite every word in the training manual and never cleaned a carpet before or some who has been there done that . OVER an OVER an Over.
July 12th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
@ Chuck, based on this, I don’t think anyone would doubt that you’re an expert at cleaning carpets!
January 3rd, 2010 at 4:49 am
10,000 hours – interesting that this has been the guidline. I believe it comes from Malcolm Gladwell. And it makes a lot of sense – 10 years or about 10,000 hours would position someone as an expert as long as they don’t spin their wheels learning and doing the same thing over and over and continue learning new things to perfect their craft. What I would love to see more about is the importance of updating what you master once you get there. To be an expert one must stay current with their area of expertise as well. So an SEO expert might have to work a bit harder than say a foot specialist.
January 3rd, 2010 at 8:26 pm
@ Heather, yeah, I heard about the 10,000 hour rule from Malcolm Gladwell (“Outliers”), though I don’t know if he invented it. And yeah, those have to be 10,000 good hours, not just punching a time clock. I don’t know about foot specialists per se, but I’ve actually heard that doctors in general have to put a lot of effort into staying current. 10,000 hours is just the beginning!
January 11th, 2010 at 4:08 am
[...] Deliberate practice – “Research shows that 10 years (or 10,000 hours) of practice can make anyone a top performer in pretty much any field, from sports to music to business.” – Hunter Nutall [...]
January 21st, 2010 at 12:38 am
[...] in 45 years, and said he could visualize 150 moves in advance. (He’s also an example of the 10,000 hour rule, having studied checkers for about 10,000 hours in grad [...]
January 31st, 2010 at 8:40 pm
There doesn’t seem to be any scientific evidence to support the 10 000 hour rule.
First of all, I should point out that Malcolm Gladwell is not the one who came out with the 10 000 hour rule. It was K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer who did the research and came to that conclusion. This is probably the only study of its kind as search engines made no mention of any other.
I encourage people to read the original journal on this topic. It is titled The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance by K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer. The research methodology they used to lead to this 10 000 hour rule conclusion is not very concrete.
The research was done at Music Academy of West Berlin where only musicians were studied.
To cut a long story short, students varying in skill were interviewed and asked to fill out information in order to obtain data. For instance, much of this included estimating (yes, estimating) the amount of time spent on music and other activities they have done in a week. This also included the music students (not researchers) rating (from 1-10) how relevant other activities such as cleaning or sports were to music practice. Statistical methods were then used to calculate these raw numbers eventually leading to them to conclude that the most skilled musicians put in at least 10 000 hours of practice.
Only music students were involved in the research. No other activities such as sports, writing, fine arts, languages and so on were studied.
The researchers did not actually track their subjects for 10 000 hours over a number of years. Thus, there was nobody to even evaluate their progress from start to finish. It seems like they did not observe the quality of practice or how much was practice was done in a given time. Who knows? What if the students did not accurately recall their practice time from the past? What if some exaggerate or underestimate the amount of practice they put in. What if some of them did not tell the truth about the age they started playing music? This leaves a lot of room for error and inaccuracies.
From a less than convincing study involving just musicians, people are already generalising that 10 000 hours are needed in order to have expertise in any area. Different subject areas vary in difficulty and so does what is considered “expert”. How can one just place a magic number of 10 000 hours needed to become proficient in anything?
All this is an example of bad science.
Malcolm Gladwell is a good writer but he is not a researcher. Yet, he oversteps his boundaries when he discusses matters related to expertise. He can craft together a well written piece of work that sounds convincing but is based at best on anecdotes and not hard facts (this reminds me of Professor Phillippe Rushton and his poorly researched work Race, Evolution and Behaviour). This, combined with bad science can be dangerous. If Google is any indication, look at how many people are just blindly accepting the 10 000 hour rule as gospel. Many of them have no idea where all this started nor do they further research the topic.
Gladwell used The Beatles to illustrate the 10 000 hour rule. A lousy example as they did not demonstrate exceptional musical skill. There are bands out there that have far greater skill than The Beatles do but are far less known.
Yes, one needs practice to become skilled. But to say one needs 10 000 hours in any area? Furthermore, I don’t think there is good evidence to disprove talent being a factor. Well, I could go on about this but before any of this can be accurate and conclusive, a lot more research is needed.
February 2nd, 2010 at 12:57 am
@ Dan, I agree that plenty of details were missing. Aside from evidence for the 10,000 hour rule, my biggest question was exactly where it applies and what it does for you.
For example, a chess player with 10,000 hours of practice will make far less money than a moderately good copywriter, making me wonder whether reaching that level of expertise is all it’s cracked up to be.