by 1 person |
Practice Makes Perfect with the 10000 Hour Rule
I first came across the 10000 hour rule or ten year rule a few years ago when I read Learning from Wonderful Lives by Nick Baylis and immediately it made sense. I just wish that I had discovered this when I was younger!
I've put this lens together to act as a comprehensive reference tool for anyone interested in the 10000 Hour Rule. Hopefully it will help you to fulfill your dreams.
What Is the 10000 Hour Rule?
The 10000 Hour Rule is just that. This is the idea that it takes approximately 10000 Hours of deliberate practice to master a skill.
For instance, it would take 10 years of practicing 3 hours a day to become a master in your subject. It would take approximately 5 years of full-time employment to become proficient in your field. Simply work out how many hours you have already achieved and calculate how far you need to go. You should be aiming for 10000 hours.
The Man Behind the 10000 Hour Rule
The 10000 Hour Rule is usually attributed to the research done by Anders Ericsson in the early 1990s. He and his team divided students into three groups ranked by excellence at the Berlin Academy of Music and then correlated achievement with hours of practice. They discovered that the elite all had put in about 10000 hours of practice, the good 8000 and the average 4000 hours. No one had fast-tracked. This rule was then applied to other disciplines and Ericsson found that it proved valid.
Dr. K. Anders Ericsson is Conradi Eminent Scholar and Professor of Psychology at Florida State University who is widely recognized as one of the world's leading theoretical and experimental researchers on expertise. Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt (2006) FREAKONOMICS. A Star Is Made New York Times, May 7, 2006
He is the co-editor of The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, a volume released in 2006 .
Dr. Ericsson's research with Herbert Simon on verbal reports of thinking is summarized in a book Protocol Analysis: Verbal Reports as Data, which was revised in 1993. With Bill Chase he developed the Theory of Skilled Memory based on detailed analyses of acquired exceptional memory performance (Chase, W. G., & Ericsson, K. A. (1982). Skill and working memory. In G. H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation, (Vol. 16). New York: Academic Press). With Walter Kintsch he extended this theory into long-term memory to account also for the superior working memory of expert performers and memory experts
Currently he studies the cognitive structure of expert performance in domains such as music, chess and sports, and how expert performers acquire their superior performance by extended deliberate practice. He published an edited book with Jacqui Smith Toward a General Theory of Expertise in 1991 and edited a book The Road to Excellence: The Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts and Sciences, Sports and Games that appeared in 1996 as well as a collection edited with Janet Starkes Expert Performance in Sports: Recent Advances in Research on Sport Expertise in 2003.
He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association.
Links that Discuss the 10000 Hour Rule
- Expert Performance and Deliberate Practice
- An updated excerpt from Ericsson (2000). Some notes on the original research.
- Secrets of Greatness - CNN
- What makes Tiger Woods great? What made Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett the world's premier investor? We think we know: Each was a natural who came into the world with a gift for doing exactly what he ended up doing. As Buffett told Fortune not long ago, he was "wired at birth to all
- Outstanding Performers: Created, Not Born?
- NEW RESULTS ON NATURE VS. NURTURE BY DAVID R. SHANKS from Science Spectra, 1999, Number 18.Outstanding levels of performance in areas such as memory, chess,sports or music are commonly ascribed to innate talent. Dr. David Shanks of University College, London
- The Guardian Newspaper - Outliers
- In an extract from Outliers: The Story Of Success, Malcolm Gladwell questions the idea of natural genius
The Man Who Has Made the 10000 Hour Rule Famous
Malcolm Gladwell is the man who has brought new attention to the 10000 Hour Rule in his new book Outliers: The Story of Success.
Malcolm Gladwell (born September 3, 1963) is a British-born Canadian journalist, author, and pop sociologist, based in New York City. He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. He is best known as the author of the books The Tipping Point (2000), Blink (2005), and Outliers (2008).
The 10000 Hour Rule - where do I find out more?
Outliers: The Story of Success
Malcolm Gladwell's latest release has sparked off a lot of interest and debate about the 10000 hour rule. This is a great starting point and reveals many surprising examples of the rule at work.
Avg. Customer Rating: 
Amazon Price: $11.75 (as of 11/23/2009) 
List Price: $27.99
Used Price: $11.03
Learning from Wonderful Lives: Lessons from the Study of Well-being Brought to Life by the Personal Stories of Some Much Admired Individuals
This is a fantastic reference book for anyone interested in the art of success and wellbeing. Pricey, but worth it and with a chapter on the 10000 hour rule.
Avg. Customer Rating: 
Amazon Price: (as of 11/23/2009)
List Price:
Used Price: $48.81
Squidoo Hour Poll
by Meloramus
Meloramus is a bit of an information junkie, which you can see from her Melography.
Her current ambition is to build 100 lenses and see what happens....
(more)
