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Comment by jamesbritt | Hacker News Reader

"It takes 10,000 hours of directed practice (directed practice means "working smarter") to become an expert at something."

Any links to solid research (i.e., not Malcolm Gladwell) regarding that number?

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Yes, Anders Ericsson is the authority on the subject: http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson.dp.html

Here's the paper "The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expertise": http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracti...

Thank you!

Peter Norvig refers to research showing 10 years of work required to hit expert level in his essay "Teach Yourself Programming in 10 years" (http://norvig.com/21-days.html).

No references to "10,000hours" other than Gladwell I think.

I've never read the Gladwell you refer to, although I know who he is. Over the last several years, I believe several studies have come out claiming it takes 10 years to build up expertise. Just a couple years ago there was a survey study that purported to review the literature and found the consensus to be 10 years/10,000 hours, although I can't find it with a cursory search and don't make a habit of tracking citations of things I read.

A quick Google search did find published papers referring to this phenomenon, though, e.g.: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118000156/abstrac...

Not being a specialist I'm not qualified to evaluate whether it's "solid" or not.

Did Gladwell not cite sources? That seems crazy.

Edit: I believe I was thinking of the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance.

> I believe I was thinking of the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance.

Yes, you are. That's the canonical source for the 10k hours figure.

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