10,000 Hours to Mastery

10,000 hours refers to a study conducted by Anders Ericsson. Basically it takes 10,000 hours of practice or just deliberately doing something until you can consider the task mastered. If I look at some professions, the mastery of the job of accounting kicks in by year 5 and the accountant is usually promoted to manager. In the legal profession, some of my friends would mention that they had to make partner in 4 years or leave. It was an up or out policy. When I look at how many work hours it takes to get 10,000 hours, its about right. Lawyers work much more time than accountants and thereby master their craft earlier. The 10,000 hours rule applies to sports, music and art as well. The author Anders Ericsson in "Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance" proposes that there is no such thing as a child prodigy or an innately gifted person. If you really look into the background you will find that child started music or sports at an early age and practiced more often than his/her peers. To obtain a standing that is higher than your peers requires deliberate practice. To push the envelop in your practice and try doing something you cant do or cant do well is called deliberate practice. After all the author says" sitting in a cave does not make you a geologist".

In my experience with kids bicycle racing. We would put them on fixed gear bikes and make them practice sprints. No falling asleep on long boring rides. When the athlete practiced these wind sprints they invariably reached a new level and a new plateau of performance. Deliberate performance of something that they did not do well pushed them to be faster.

My daughter draws an awful lot. She draws on everything. If no paper is around she draws on her sneakers. She actually started a sneaker graffiti fad at Kenwood Academy. Now in a university studying studio arts, she finds herself stumbling in painting. This came unexpectedly to her. I starting thinking about how 10,000 hours applies to her gap in art skills. When I explained that her constant drawing put in more than 10,000 hours compared to 2,000 hours she had with painting, it became clear to her she needed to practice painting and catch up on hours. The talent was still up there in her brain.

In the "Outliers" Malcom Gladwell has more examples of how famous people really had 10,000 hours before becoming experts. The Beatles had 1,600 music sessions performed in small venues in London before hitting America. Bill Gates had unfettered access to computer lab in his youth. Mozart ( my fav) was not really a child prodigy, he began his music lessons from his father, a composer, at age 4.

There are plenty of examples in real life of 10,000 hours. What do you have 10,000 hour doing that has given you an expert level mastery? What will you put 10,000 hours of deliberate practice on for your future?

http://www.coachingmanagement.nl/The%20Making%20of%20an%20Expert.pdf