10,000 Hours of Work to Succeed, 10,000 Hours of Work...

- by Jaime Willis

One of the main premises of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, “Outliers,” is that success has much less to do with our innate skills and abilities and much more to do with hard work and practice. Gladwell goes so far as to quantify the amount of hard work required to be successful: 10,000 hours.

“The emerging picture from [research on expertise and talent] is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything.” Daniel Levitin, quoted on page 40 of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.

Gladwell illustrates this principle with a 1990’s study by psychologist K. Anders Ericsson. Ericsson asked two colleagues at Berlin’s elite Academy of Music to divide the school’s violinists into three groups – the students with the potential to become world-class soloists, students who were deemed to be just “good,” and finally students who would likely never play professionally. Ericsson then asked all three groups the same question: over the course of your entire career, how many hours have you practiced? By the age of twenty, the students in the elite group had each totaled ten-thousand hours of practice. The good students had totaled about eight-thousand hours, while the poorest students had practiced just over four-thousand hours.

Think about the level of perseverance and determination that the world-class experts displayed to get ten thousand hours of practice time in. The violinists in the elite group began at age 5 (as did most students in the other two groups) practicing two or three hours per week. But by age nine, they were practicing six hours each week, eight hours a week by age twelve, sixteen hours a week by age fourteen and so on.

For a middle or high school student to spend one to two work days a week on their violin practice means they had to be dedicated. I’m sure that if we interviewed those students today, they would tell us the all the stuff they missed out on because they were focused on playing violin.

What is also interesting to note is that the study found no “naturals;” students who were elite violinists without putting in the ten thousand hours of practice.

What lessons can we learn from this?

1. There is literally NO substitute for hard work. If you want to succeed, you’d better get started logging in the time now.

2. Getting to 10,000 hours (over 3.5 years of 8-hour work days) requires determination and perseverance. You need to set your mind on the goal and attend to it with a laser-like focus. In a race 10,000 hours long, there are bound to be obstacles and challenges, set-backs and disappointments. Don’t let these be more than a temporary stumbling block in your path to success.

3. There is no doubt in my mind that world-class experts on any subject—folks who have put in the 10,000 hours of work to become successful—had help. The elite violinists likely had supportive parents, music tutors, band directors, teachers, mentors, and others all helping them along the way. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to run a marathon if no one was allowed to cheer on the runners? In your success marathon, you must build your support group – a mentor, a coach, teachers and tutors, cheerleaders—whoever you need to have the resources and assistance to make it to the finish line.

I’ll leave you with Albert Einstein’s insight on the issue: “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

Believe it! Achieve It!

---

Please feel free to comment on our posts, email us and ask questions, or forward blog posts on to your friends. We'd love to hear from you! Thanks for reading.