The 10,000-Hour Challenge

If you are an expert, then you have practiced at least 10,000 hours.

You’ve practiced at least 10,000 hours.

Therefore, you’re an expert.

Sound fishy? I hope so; it’s a basic fallacy. So it’s a fascinating thing when people read Outliers and conclude that success is a mere 10,000 automatous hours away. As Ryan said, it’s a sticky number. I got carried away enough to host a challenge based on the premise–actually that was the original intent of this post. Really, here it is:

The Challenge: Commit 10,000 hours to something you want to excel at, and track your progress. You can log the hours at the end of each post, scribble hash marks in a notebook, whatever. Share your progress with everybody, and invite them to do the same. Or keep it to yourself if you want, then casually inform your friends that you’re a chess grandmaster or world-class kickboxer. If you’ve already made serious headway, start wherever you honestly feel is appropriate. There’s no background check, your involvement is your business. But if you’re going to participate, leave me a comment and tell me about it. Or blog about it. (And if you still don’t have a blog, I would spend the first thousandth of my time setting one up.)

As daunting as that figure might be, it’s just as reassuring in its meritocracy. The research shows that talent can be supplanted by hard work. The biggest opportunity of my life came when I tested those boundaries just a little. But something happened afterward. I let them rebound back. I started waiting for things to happen again, to be perpetually assigned. How about you? And are you even close to that number, in anything? I’m not. That’s why I’m issuing, and taking part in, this challenge.

Then I realized that’s just another easy way out, veiled in hard. Umair said that communities need love, not math, and I think the same holds true for success. While there is a lot to be gained from trying to deconstruct successful behavior, there will always be variables difficult to quantify. Like practice, which Gladwell kind of glosses over in the book, but is critical when qualifying the research.

This notion of deliberate practice is to me far more substantive and less arbitrary than the 10,000-hour rule. I mean, if you just accumulate hours, you’ll eventually hit the target–assuming you don’t get bored and give up. But if you want that number to actually quantify your effort, to be more than some worthless binary, that’s up to you. Deliberate practice, perfect practice–call it whatever you want, but I’d spend the first of those hours understanding the distinction.

People have also used the book to affirm their belief that success is a matter of luck and circumstance. Obviously it plays a role; I mean, here you are, alive. Relatively healthy and hopefully free. You’re reading this, so you have access to the internet. But anyone who would argue that success today requires more than that is, on a historical scale, preposterously selfish. I didn’t really think that view would be seriously held, but in a discussion we had recently, about a guy who uncovered AP23 “for fun,” people were still pulling the luck card.

You just can’t say that anymore. You can learn anything you want for free. Become a post-graduate level expert in the field of your choice. You can produce almost anything for nearly nothing, and get funding for the exceptions.

Hell, even looking at the examples in the book: Bill Gates may have had the opportunity to program more often than many of his peers at the time. Remember though, that University of Washington mainframe was free at night–Gates was just the one who snuck out of his house to use it. That’s what it means to have success ensue.

So, I’ve revised the challenge, and while it might not be as sticky and formulaic, I think it’ll help you, and me, a lot more:

Find something you like doing so much that you won’t even realize 10,000 hours have gone by.