Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner It is often said that 10,000 hours in a certain profession..

For those who may not have read this previously regarding 10000 hours and the role of deliberate practice, one of the key papers is here

Great paper Elwyn!

I'm not sure anyone has mentioned interest. 10,000 hours of forced drudgery won't produce much except memories of being bored. 10,000 hours devoted to something you're interested in will produce results, although having good mentoring will save much trouble (you don't have to re-invent the wheel!) Menachem Pressler pointed this out once in a master class, telling the students that they'd be able to discover the things he was teaching them by themselves, but that his job was to save them time. Perhaps he was a bit too modest, but there is some truth there.

I suspect that the theorists in the field would say a minimum level of talent and a stratospheric level of hard work. But the tautologist in me wants to define "minimum level of talent" as that level which makes a kid able to make sounds that he or she is happy to listen to for 8 hours a day. The sounds I made as a kid, for instance, did not invite much repetition.

"10,000 hours is five years of 40 hour weeks. There's folks in every profession with five years of full time experience who are not world class."

Yes but it's not possible for most people to study seriously and concentrated 40 hours per week. "Full time experience" does not equal serious study.

Maybe...

"Talent" = the ability to do the 10,000 hours of deliberate practice by which you acquire expert performance. That is, you can't put a square peg into a round hole.

Another figure in a similar vein, and perhaps more achievable is 1500 hours to become "competent".

I was watching the Christopher Nupen's Evgenny Kissin documentary again recently in which he describes being able to 'play' piano all day but only 'practice' for 1hour when he started, then after several years this increased to up to 4hours of practice. I think this illustrates that practice is very hard work, even when talented.

I take offense to this, Mr. Horowitzian.

I think we might agree with "necessary BUT NOT sufficient" as a matter of common sense.

Gladwell suggested that it might very well be necessary AND sufficient. That's a comforting thought - it might be that most of us possess that minimal level of talent that allows success. He couldn't find anyone who put in the 10,000 hours and failed. Of course as pointed out he was dealing with a truncated distribution. But the same distribution did not produce success with the 3,000 to 5,000 hour students.

If there is anything to the efficiency of practice idea, then the true number is smaller. There is no way all those 10,000 hour students were 100% efficient at practice. Perhaps the real efficiency number for them was 60%, in which case 6,000 hours is the true number. The 3,000 - 5,000 hour students who were in a clearly separated category must have a similar efficiency number, or there wouldn't be a clean cutoff.

I suggest there is also a natural decline in efficiency with age. A ten year old practicing 10,000 hours at 60% effort will succeed where a 50 year old will not. So the true number is 10,000 x (efficiency percentage)x (age correction factor, such that 0 < AGC < 1).

I would also add that Gladwell's birthday analysis is supportive of his "practice trumps talent" thesis.

The hockey and other sports players born early in the year succeeded where the rest did not. That can't be talent - there is no evidence to support talent being affected by the birthday factor. But clearly the exposure to practice and coaching was strongly influenced by the birthdates.

My feeling is that whenever people mention the 10,000 hour thing, people usually don't take into account the other important factors that people like Gladwell mentions in his book. Practicing 10,000 alone won't do it.

I am reading a book by Joshua Waitzkin called "The Art of Learning", It's interesting how he attribute his success in chess and tachi not on his talent , but his enviroment and his overall attitude in life. I am kind of seeing a common theme between Gladwell and Watizkin... for them successful people have the following things going for them.

1-They happen to have great teacher who taught very strong fundamentals at the beggining stages of their development.

2-They had an enviroment that allowed them to test what they learned on a regular basis, and learn from peers who were better than they are

3-The intensity in which they practiced(and was able to) their craft

4-the ability to detach themselves from their expectations and their need to produce results when they were developing, and not rush through things like most of us do.

5-And most importantly, their willingness to fail and learn from their mistake.

I would say that one's circumstance (and whehter one practices 10,000 hours or not have) a lot to do with your success. If you grow up in a family that focused too much on getting results, it may make it that much harder for you to improve, because you might not know how to cope with and learn from your failures.

I remember reading about how Victor Wooten was playing bass when he was like 3 years old and how music was just a natural part of his life because everyone in his family played music. I think hard work is important, but having the right work ethic, right attitude, and being in the right place at the right time, all these things contribute to one's success.. in some ways whether you practice 10,000 hrs or not is just a natural bi-product of these circumstance. They already had the passion for it when they were young, and they had everything going for them to feed that fire.

For me the bottom line is that the line between talent/enviroment does seem very obscure. do some people have better learning curve than others because they were born into it, or does it have more to do with having the right attitude and support at an earlier age?

It's funny, I just remembered Julia Cameron's saying similar things book "the artist's way".. she talks about how successful people get there because they had the "audacity" to take center stage (regardless of whehter they deserve it or not at that time) and how important it is to practice and create free from expectations and immediate results.

Don't have time at the moment to agree or disagree but I saw the word "chess" .

Horizon - What Makes a Genius?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROBU2TJxUzk#t=2m43s

People should watch the whole thing. Its pretty balanced. I tend to be more interested on whats going on in your head.
There is another documentary on Susan Polgar the Chess player and her brain scan was very interesting too.

It a bank-holiday weekend and it sunny here

Aha.....exactly.

Deliberate Practice= a certain "je ne sais quoi" aka aptitude/talent.

How does one force this state of mind? And why does some do it naturally? Can you catch up to someone who brain is wired for maths or music when yours isn't?


I have only scanned through that paper yet but what caught my attention was the minimum 10 years seems to have jumped up the 22 years. The old minimum 10,000/21,500 hour rule. 22 years or infinity seems to be a more accurate anthem.

Unfortunately, I am not part of the target audience for papers of that sort, and therefore don't understand parts of it. However, I did get as far as page 4, and was somewhat flummoxed by this paragraph, for various reasons -

J. R. Hayes (1981) confirmed that 10 years' experience is necessary in another domain, musical composition. He calculated an average of about 20 years from the time individuals started to study music until they first composed an outstanding piece of music. According to Hayes, this long preparation period is necessary because "the composer must know the timbres of the various instruments and the sound, look, and feel of chords and key structures" (p. 209). Most important, Hayes showed that the 10 or more years of necessary experience was not an artifact. Because musicians start very early, insufficient development may restrict their ability to compose before attaining adulthood. Those who started at ages younger than 6 years did not write their first eminent composition until 16.5 years later; those who started between ages 6 and 9 and older than 10 years of age required 22 and 21.5 years, respectively to compose their first distinguished work. Simon and Chase's (1973) "10-year rule" is supported by data from a wide range of domains: music (Sosniak, 1985), mathematics (Gustin, 1985), tennis (Monsaas, 1985), swimming (Kalinowski, 1985), and long-distance running (Wallingford, 1975).


So, it is 20 years or 10 years? And who decides what an "outstanding piece of music" is? Or "distinguished work"? And does this mean that Mendelssohn was studying music several years before he was born?

I also think it is somewhat weird that there is no particular distinction made between musicians who are composers and musicians who are performers. In other words, between experts who acquire highly refined physical skills along with more abstract musical knowledge, and those who don't necessarily acquire much physical skill at all, but presumably do acquire a different and more refined sort of abstract musical knowledge. I just have a lot of trouble believing that these two very different types of artistry can be lumped together that easily.

This whole 10-year discussion reminds me that some great pianist (Lhevinne, maybe?) said it took him the now-proverbial 10 years to get the Chopin Etude in thirds near to where he wanted it. So maybe there's also a 10-year rule that applies to each individual piece!!!

1) Mr. Hayes was obviously writing about something he knew absolutely nothing about.

2) I don't think the 10,000 hour or 10-20 year rule applies to the world's "oldest profession".......

Like any other proffesion, some people excel more than others.. "The world's old profession" is no exception. I am sure the ones who are successful got their edge from hard work, whehter it's maintaining their physical attributes/skills.. etc. So while the 10,000 hr rule may not apply exactly, the principles of hard work=success still have merit

Chuck Norris was studying martial arts SO hard, that he bended time itself and the 10,000 hours passed like... in a minute!



I think that this study is just mentioning that talent alone won't cut it. You also need to work, sweat, etc to make anything happen. I can imagine that being 32 and a musician I have played more than 10,000 hours of piano, but I find that daily my ability diminishes little by little. and I've not lost touch with music, but with piano playing itself... A pity really, but there's no time any more.

Well, obviously, the study didn't study failure, so I am not sure how you can be so sure. It may very well be that there are an equal number of people who have worked just as hard, but didn't succeed. Or it may even a larger number of people. Who knows? That isn't what they studied.