Becoming an expert: is 10,000 hours still the mark?

Becoming an expert: is 10,000 hours still the mark?  

The notion has been circulating for decades: to become an expert, you need to practice for 10,000 hours (and in case you’re wondering just how long that is - and I was – if you practiced two hours a day for nearly 14 years, that would equal 10,000 hours). 

But the notion, like so many, has come under fire, leading to these poignant questions: does this theory apply equally to skills which are physical (e.g., tennis, violin), cognitive (e.g., chess) and social? And how do you account for the fact that some athletes, and chess players, become proficient in far less than 10,000 hours?  Further, is it any type of practice? Or something more specific?

The most recent challenge was logged by a group of psychologists from five universities (Michigan State, Rice, Southern Illinois, the University of Liverpool and Edith Cowman University in Australia). They rebuffed the 10,000-hour claim made popular by Malcolm Gladwell in his 1993 book Outliers. Said the researchers, as quoted by Shaunacy Ferro in a piece for fastcodesign.com:

"The evidence is quite clear that some people do reach an elite level of performance without copious practice, while other people fail to do so despite copious practice."

Both Gladwell and Andrew Ericsson (the Florida State University psychologist whose work generated the 10,000-hour finding) have taken issue with their critiques – Gladwell maintains that the rule applies to “cognitively demanding tasks” (e.g., chess, violin) “and not physical attributes,” according to a Forbes.com article. And Ericsson argues that “his critics had examined too many beginners rather than expert performers,” according to Ferro’s piece.

Practice, these critiques maintain, can only explain one-third of the variation in performance, according to Ferro, who concludes: “. . . practice alone won't make you Yo Yo Ma. It could also have to do with personality, the age you started, intelligence, or something else entirely.”

So what does it take, to become an expert?

Apparently, it’s something called “deliberate practice,” which its author maintains is neither work nor play: 

“Deliberate practice is . . . not just business as usual. . . . Deliberate practice is not work and it is not play. Those activities are important, but they don’t count toward your 10,000 hours. 

Work is where we exercise the skills we already have. . . . [The] performance improvement from time spent at work is minimal compared to time spent in deliberate practice. That fact that you’ve managed a team for 10 years doesn’t automatically make you a world-class manager. Work isn’t deliberate practice.”

So what is deliberate practice? According to expertenough.com: "Deliberate practice is a highly structured activity engaged in with the specific goal of improving performance. Deliberate practice is different from work, play and simple repetition of a task. It requires effort, it has no monetary reward, and it is not inherently enjoyable. When you engage in deliberate practice, improving your performance over time is your goal and motivation."

Daniel Goleman, in his book Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, quoted Ericsson as saying:

“You don’t get benefits from mechanical repetition, but by adjusting your execution over and over to get closer to your goal.”

So, the question is, in your bid to become more proficient (say, at tennis, golf, or as a performer), how much “deliberate practice” are you putting in?  In other words, is your practice focused on improving?  Or is it more repetitious in nature? 

Think now, for a moment, about the world-class tennis athletes who took the world stage the last two weeks at the French Open in Paris. How many hours have they put in? And how many of those, do you think, involved deliberate practice?

The bottom line: it now seems a touch obvious that proficiency, in any realm, is more a matter of concentration and focus than mere hours.  In his book, Goleman noted:

“After about 50 hours of training – whether in skiing or driving – people get to that ‘good-enough’ performance level, where they can go through the motions more or less effortlessly. They no longer feel the need for concentrated practice, but are content to coast on what they’ve learned. No matter how much more they practice in this bottom-up mode, their improvement will be negligible.”

Or, perhaps, expertise is connected to love. Here’s what wisdomgroup.com had to say:

“The elite don’t just work harder than everybody else. At some point the elites fall in love with practice to the point where they want to do little else.”

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