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Comment by mcguire | Hacker News Reader

He didn't oversimplify it, he simply misstated it.

10,000 hours will make you an advanced student in a very competitive field, if you are the kind of person who will put in long practice into that field. It might still be a question of musical talent; the students in question would certainly be the ones born with talent.

Further, it's dedicated practice, not noodling around and not performing.

Finally, 10,000 hours isn't any kind of magic number. It wasn't enough to make those students masters, and I would bet that you haven't put in anywhere near that many to achieve a level of skill that satisfies you.

About the only thing that comes out right is that to develop a skill, you need to practice. Which, to quote my own least favorite phrase, we already knew.

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> About the only thing that comes out right is that to develop a skill, you need to practice. Which, to quote my own least favorite phrase, we already knew.

Everybody knows they need to practice. But at least for me, the 10,000 rule set my expectations properly. Knowing that "practice" means 20 hours a week for 10 years helped me get past the temptation to quit when things aren't so easy in the beginning.

Or it could have convinced you not to try: 20 hours a week for 10 years? Are you crazy?

When I read Outliers, I never took the 10,000 hour rule literally and I don't think Gladwell wanted us to. It put in perspective what we all knew and that's what contributed to it's popularity -- it gave us a common vocabulary to refer to when talking about "lot of practice". To quote from the article "The rule is irresistibly appealing".

So, he misappropriated and abused some research, but it's ok because everyone knows it's just a metaphor?

Music isn't a single skill, it's a big collection of skills, many of which build on others. 10,000 hours may get you to a point where you can play the instrument you've been practising but you might still be a total beginner at music theory, composition, conducting, recording, etc.

When we describe someone as a master or a professional, it's assumed that they've mastered more than just the mechanics of playing an instrument, since all of the most well known names in music have multiple skills developed at a high level.

Everyone seems to get hung up on "mastery" or being a professional. Well guess what? You know what made me more receptive to music theory lessons? Thousands of hours of guitar practice. Practice feeds on itself. Once I was proficient with the physical basics of the guitar, I naturally reached out to all of the YouTube lessons on theory. The theory that now seems very straightforward would have been lost on me as a beginner.

> Which, to quote my own least favorite phrase, we already knew.

There's a bunch of people who say they can't math, or paint, or play instruments, or learn a foreign language, etc etc. They don't seem to know that all they need is better lessons and lots of practice.

And when the (now withdrawn) "Sheep and goats" programmer study gets quoted here it feels right to some people, because we've all seen people who just can't fizzbuzz.

We may have known it, but lots of us don't seem to have taken it to heart.

I think the kicker here is that if you are a born musical genius (and there are such things) those 10K hours will get you on a world stage.

Otherwise, as you say:

> advanced student in a very competitive field...

That's an unfalsifiable claim. The corollary is "well you didn't make it on the world stage, that proves you aren't a born musical genius".

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