The “10,000 Hours” Meme
17 Nov
In case you haven’t heard, Malcolm Gladwell has a new book out. It’s called Outliers and it’s about genius, success, and giving the world a new conversation starter. (The Guardian has a nice excerpt that will help you keep up with the intellectual Joneses . . . those f*cking Joneses.)
I haven’t read the Outliers yet, but I’ve already come across four or five reviews/excerpts/interviews that touch one of the book’s main ideas: time in the saddle is a best predictor of success. Mastery takes about 10,000 hours. Start young. Work hard. Reap rewards.
Is this idea true or merely true enough? Again, I haven’t read the book so I can’t judge. But I am curious to see if MG describes the nature of the work done during those 10,000 hours. Is the definition of work broad (research, daydreaming, procrastinating) or does the prize go to the Iron Butt who simply grinds it out?
In any case, watch for the number 10,000 to enter the national conversation. Personally, I was rooting for this guy:
Tags: books, creativity, life
I reviewed Outliers here and received an interesting comment from a group with a different perspective. You might want to check it out.
Thanks for the link and pointing out the different perspective. I haven’t read the book yet, but I admit I am biased about Gladwell, who I think is the best translator of ideas out there, but who makes things a little too tidy for my liking.
I think the one thing he barely touches on in that excerpt, but is so important, is DESIRE. You have to actually like doing the thing you’re good at more than doing anything else. At all.
In fiction, it’s the 1,000,000 words theory: that you must write 1,000,000 words to become competent–though I tend to call it “earning sustainable competence.”
That is where that 10K hours or 1 Mil words come in. Some bands are pretty good. The Great Ones have sustainable competence.
@bets: I agree about the sustainable competence. If your 1,000,000 words are “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy” then you are in trouble.
But I’m not so sure about your first point about desire. Desire can be wonderful and sustaining, but it can also be crippling and blinding.
More on this in another post.
Just finished the excerpt and I’m going to call preliminary bullsh*t on this 10,000 hours idea. Two points:
1. Innate ability leads to immersion. If you have innate ability, of course you are going to immerse yourself in practice. Because the practice is rewarding. It brings pleasure and affirmation and confidence. Yes, it is hard work, but it’s not ditch-digging. One’s ability increases the odds of practicing more obsessively. There was a meme a while back about “flow.” If you’re in the flow, those 10K hours fly by.
2. Immersion creates the special opportunities Gladwell mentions. If you make hockey or computers or music your life, you will recognize and take advantage of unique opportunities to feed your obsession, opportunities that others (such as casual, non-obsessive practitioners of whatever you’re into) will miss.
I’ve actually been living under a rock lately so the Gladwell maelstorm has escaped me, but I’ve actually been really interested in this 10,000 hour thing for a long time (it merits a whole paragraph in a book I’m working on) but more in terms of how those 10,000 hours basically lead you to build a new section of your brain for said-task. Child prodigies, for instance, be they Mozart or baseball people whose names I don’t know, I imagine have a big “music” or “baseball” part of their brains that I don’t have.
As to talent being a chicken-and-egg thing with immersion, I sometimes think of all the innately talented tennis-players and fractal-crystography experts who roamed the earth in the middle-ages; talent just does so much.