10,000 hour rule?

A few days back I talked about the “10,000 Hour Rule.” It says that to be an expert in anything, you have to put 10,000 hours into it. For those math-minded among you, that works out to 20 hours a week for 50 weeks for 10 years. Yikes. I started wondering about that so-called rule and what science was actually behind it.

The rule was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his 2008 bestseller Outliers: The Story of Success. He based this ubiquitous rule of thumb on a 1993 study conducted by Anders Ericsson, Ralf Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Römer. That study looked at students at a music academy in Berlin and found that the most accomplished students had put in approximately 10,000 hours practicing by the time they were 20 years old. Gladwell took that idea further by estimating the Beatles had put in 10,000 hours of practice before hitting it big and that Bill Gates did 10,000 hours of programming before he founded Microsoft. Gladwell’s point was that you could do 10,000 hours of practice and become an expert in a given field.

Well, not exactly. Gladwell’s point was that people who wanted to excel needed to practice a lot, but the 10,000 Hour Rule was catchy and easy to understand. And he referred to it often in his book. Other authors picked up the hour rule and applied it to all sorts of activities.

However, Anders Ericsson, one of the authors of the study in an interview with the website Six Seconds, says that Gladwell misinterpreted the study and that the 10,000 hours was an estimate at best. Some music students achieved mastery with fewer hours while others needed more. In fact, nearly half of the higher achieving students had not put in 10,000 hours.

The other thing that Ericsson says Gladwell didn’t pay attention to was that the students who received direction from a talented teacher did better and achieved mastery faster than those who did not.

My curiosity was itching so I looked up the study, which carries the exciting title of “The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance.” I could see why Gladwell thought what he did about the study when I saw this statement from the abstract: “Many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 years.” However, the study did make a point that “deliberate practice” was required to optimize improvement.

In the Six Seconds interview, Ericsson said, “This distinction between deliberate practice aimed at a particular goal and generic practice is crucial because not every type of practice leads to improved ability. You don’t get benefits from mechanical repetition, but by adjusting your execution over and over to get closer to your goal.” In other words, practice by itself won't lead to improvement. If you practice a poor habit, you'll only get better at being bad. You need to work at mastering your craft with each word you write.

Ericsson says natural talent, environmental factors, and good teaching also play a huge role in determining success in a field. While the first one is not under a person’s control, the other two can be. Seek out environments conducive to your purpose, and seek out teachers who can direct you.

For writers, this means we need to learn from experienced successful writers. We have many to choose from. For instance, best-selling author Holly Lisle runs an online writing school as does Writer’s Digest. We can also attend writing conferences and retreats. Oklahoma’s own best-selling author William Bernhardt has several writing events each year, and he has a whole series of writing craft books that are short and pithy and should be in your library. Staci Mauney has a series of videos on YouTube covering various aspects of writing. We can seek out expert writing instructors and books with little effort. Perhaps you have writing instructors and books you can recommend in the comments. I would love to see them.

And, of course, we need to write, write, write, all with the purpose of improving our skills with words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and books. It might not take us 10,000 hours, but it will take effort and commitment. Fortunately, we’re overflowing with both of those, aren’t we? Yes, we are.