Excellence At Performance = 10,000 Hours

The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a critical minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise.  In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise:  ten thousand hours.
“The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert — in anything,” writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin.  “In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again.  Of course, this doesn’t address why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others do.  But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time.  It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.“
—    Malcolm Gladwell
From his book:  “Outliers“
[In other words, if you have some talent in anything, practice 8 hours per day, 5 days per week, 52 weeks per year, FOR 5 YEARS (!!!) and you will be great at it – for the rest of your life.   You have got to LOVE something (whatever “it” is) in order to commit that amount of your life to doing it.    —   kmab]
.

Read Full Post »