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Is 10,000 hours of “deliberate practice” the magic bullet that can allow, say, a nongolfer to take up golf at age 30 and make the pro tour? Here’s the abstract of a new meta-analysis:
Deliberate Practice and Performance in Music, Games, Sports, Education, and Professions
A Meta-Analysis
Brooke N. Macnamara
David Z. Hambrick
Frederick L. OswaldMore than 20 years ago, researchers proposed that individual differences in performance in such domains as music, sports, and games largely reflect individual differences in amount of deliberate practice, which was defined as engagement in structured activities created specifically to improve performance in a domain. This view is a frequent topic of popular-science writing—but is it supported by empirical evidence? To answer this question, we conducted a meta-analysis covering all major domains in which deliberate practice has been investigated. We found that deliberate practice explained 26% of the variance in performance for games, 21% for music, 18% for sports, 4% for education, and less than 1% for professions. We conclude that deliberate practice is important, but not as important as has been argued.
Benedict Carey writes in the NYT:
The value-of-practice debate has reached a stalemate. In a landmark 1993 study of musicians, a research team led by K. Anders Ericsson, a psychologist now at Florida State University, found that practice time explained almost all the difference (about 80 percent) between elite performers and committed amateurs. The finding rippled quickly through the popular culture, perhaps most visibly as the apparent inspiration for the “10,000-hour rule” in Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling “Outliers” — a rough average of the amount of practice time required for expert performance.
The new paper, the most comprehensive review of relevant research to date, comes to a different conclusion. Compiling results from 88 studies across a wide range of skills, it estimates that practice time explains about 20 percent to 25 percent of the difference in performance in music, sports and games like chess. In academics, the number is much lower — 4 percent — in part because it’s hard to assess the effect of previous knowledge, the authors wrote.
“We found that, yes, practice is important, and of course it’s absolutely necessary to achieve expertise,” said Zach Hambrick, a psychologist at Michigan State University and a co-author of the paper, with Brooke Macnamara, now at Case Western Reserve University, and Frederick Oswald of Rice University. “But it’s not as important as many people have been saying” compared to inborn gifts.
One of those people, Dr. Ericsson, had by last week already written his critique of the new review.
A general problem with the human sciences is the urge to find hard and fast answers for all time to imitate the triumphs of Newton and Einstein in physics.
But, in the endeavours studied by the human sciences, some of the people being studied are striving to come up with a new breakthrough in either nature or nurture or both to give them competitive edges. So, what’s true today might not be true in a generation.
For example, Qatar, which somehow got to host the 2022 World Cup, despairs of training its own few and unathletic youth to make the World Cup. So, it is trawling all over the back roads of black Africa for naturally athletic youths to train as soccer players in Belgium. Will it try to slip some ringers on to the Qatari team in 2022?
In the U.S. it was widely accepted that test prepping would have only modest effects on SAT scores — and that was reasonably true by the dazed and confused standards of test prepping among 1970s American high school students. Is that still true, however, by the standards of 2010s Tiger Families?
So, just Because Science doesn’t mean scientific discoveries in the social realm are likely as long lasting as discoveries about the solar system.
Bo Jackson didn’t care for practice.
Neither did Allen Iverson.
So, once again Malcolm Gladwell is back in the news even when he isn’t? Did his books really sell that well at the popular level? Seriously?
Re: the Tiger Mothers of the ’10s. No matter the decade, era, or generation they will do whatever it takes to ensure their precious cubs gain admission into…..whatever institutions the privileged classes say is all important.
Darwin in physics? Steve, you need more practice writing.
Neither did Allen Iverson.
http://youtu.be/d29VsG35DQM
The “Dan Plan” is all the proof needed that this idea is gibberish. He is a 3.3 handicap and half way through! I know plus two handicap golfers that know they stand no chance on tour. If he gets from 3.3 to zero in the next 5,000 hours that will be a huge achievement.
“Bo Jackson didn’t care for practice.”
Neither did Allen Iverson.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=eGDBR2L5kzI
We talkin’ bout practice man
Re: the Tiger Mothers of the '10s. No matter the decade, era, or generation they will do whatever it takes to ensure their precious cubs gain admission into.....whatever institutions the privileged classes say is all important.
“Did his books really sell that well at the popular level? Seriously?”
Yes — they pop up on the Top Ten Selling shelf at my local bookstore for up to a half decade after they are published.
Btw, the 10k hour point was right about when I started to get really good at World of Warcraft.
I repeat myself, but the 10k hour meme was popular only because it fed the ego of the current so called intellectuals, who liked convincing themselves that they could have been as brilliant as Mozart or Einstein or Monet if only they had found the time to practice.
There is also an analog to this - attractive people like to tell unattractive people that they just need to be "more confident" to be successful at getting dates.
I usually judge information based on its value in my own life. The idea that if you practice something for ten thousand hours you’ll probably be good at it was never worth the 11 bucks the book cost, in my opinion. Isn’t that obvious? More useful would be book that told you how to actually compel yourself to practice the same thing for ten thousand hours. That ain’t been published yet, to my knowledge
What the SWPLs haven’t thought through is that Gladwell’s favorite theory is a very meritocratic view of success in life.
All these minorities that aren’t doing so hot in life by this logic must only lack practice in the skills they need to succeed. If they had only studied for 10,000 hours things like reading, spelling, doing math, practicing delayed gratification, saving etc., they’d be as successful as anybody. Therefore, it’s their fault.
Oh, but wait… “Our society” and “culture” surely has prevented them from doing these things somehow, and only allowed (forced?) them to practice basketball, football, sprinting etc.
So, in the end, it’s massa’s fault regardless.
So, just Because Science doesn’t mean scientific discoveries in the social realm are likely as long lasting as discoveries about the solar system.
What?
[…] Source: Steve Sailer […]
Guys, it’s not 10,000 hours of practice, it’s 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. If you haven’t become an expert after 10,000 hours, you just weren’t deliberate enough.
“Did his books really sell that well at the popular level? Seriously?”
Gladwell’s books are among the only ones I hear regularly referenced by colleagues and acquaintances. A lot of people think that mentioning Gladwell’s books makes them sound intelligent, I’m sorry to say. Just like some people have to tell you how important the New York Times, the New Yorker, and NPR are to them. (The Holy Trinity of the SWPLs.)
“For example, Qatar, which somehow got to host the 2022 World Cup, despairs of training its own few and unathletic youth to make the World Cup. So, it is trawling all over the back roads of black Africa for naturally athletic youths to train as soccer players in Belgium. Will it try to slip some ringers on to the Qatari team in 2022?”
They could just buy the Brazilian Select from this past World Cup. Brazil certainly doesen’t want them. But then, after the complete destruction they suffered at the hands of Germany and the further humiliation by Holland, methinks Qatar won’t want them either.
And Neymar has got to be the dumbest guy in the World. I just saw an interview with him where he states that Brazil could have prevented having taken so many goals from Germany if they had an extra player on the mid field. This despite the fact that Germany was clearly just avoiding the mid field entirely by high kicking the ball straight to Brazil’s side of the field. It is a good thing that Neymar is not a general, or he would get all his men killed. The guy is a classic dumb jock.
OT but of interest. Žižek is trying to explain it all away:
http://gawker.com/slavoj-zizek-sorta-kinda-admits-plagiarizing-white-supr-1604590014
It made me read his original article. A bunch of mental diarrhea – can’t understand why anyone would even be willing to read this sort of incoherent drivel.
Dagnabbit! Now they tell me, just when I’ve put in 9,988 hours. Twelve more hours and I coulda been somebody, I coulda beena contenda! Say it ain’t so, Steve!
How many hours of practice would it take the other Unz cilumnists before they could get 10% as many comments as you? It must be embarrassing for them.
what 10000 hrs is good for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jINuX_Hort8
Shouldn’t they be wearing shakos and playing Louie Louie on brass instruments while they precision walk?
“In the U.S. it was widely accepted that test prepping would have only modest effects on SAT scores — and that was reasonably true by the dazed and confused standards of test prepping among 1970s American high school students. Is that still true, however, by the standards of 2010s Tiger Families?”
I also have to wonder if you can prep for IQ tests. There are only so many tests in wide use, and so many types of questions. If you have never seen a complete the square thing, it can be a surprise. If you know about this kind of question, the test maker has to metagame to make it challenging.
Just saying IQ testers depend on testees not… prepping.
You might say why bother? But you never know, you have to do what it takes to get into an elite college. Let’s face it, we have a whole generation of a certain kind of kid that volunteers for activities and learns an instrument just so they can appear “well rounded” to the kind of person that hold the keys to paradise. Just one more hoop to jump through and get ready for.
Otherwise in this Brave New World you might as well apply for food stamps and book your appearance on the Springer show.
I’m tempted to call this off-topic, but really Steve… is Galton ever off-topic here?
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/528941/forget-the-wisdom-of-crowds-neurobiologists-reveal-the-wisdom-of-the-confident/
As high school football coaches say, “practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.”
Despite the many claims to the contrary actual research suggests test prep doesn’t really affect SAT scores, try Steve HSU’s blog if you are interested. From memory test prep is equivalent to taking the test twice or about 30 points.
My wife claims she boosted her score 100 points by test prepping, back in the 80s. Who knows. Could she be was just more relaxed the second time around, had gotten used to the format, whatever. Intuitively a smart person should be able to do better on any test if they take the time to prepare themselves.
“as brilliant as Mozart or Einstein or Monet if only they had found the time to practice.” Nah, they’re more conceited than that: Shakespeare, Newton and Rembrandt.
Eddy Merckx, the great cyclist of the 60′s and 70′s and arguably the most dominant athlete of any sport in modern times said this; “Ride every day”.
Note that he didn’t say ride 4 or 6 or 8 hours every day, just every day.
The myth is that to become great at something one needs to play or practice to exhaustion, putting in grueling hours. The evidence seems to be that you only need to “keep your hand in” which the Brits define as “to practise a skill often enough so that you do not lose the skill”.
From my own experience with whatever skill I’m trying to master, this rings true. How about yours (to all readers)?
Stephen Hawking spent about an hour per day studying before entering a Cambridge PhD program.
My observations, from programming and mathematics, are that you either have the skill/talent/insight/mental abilities or you don’t. No amount of effort makes up for lack of native ability but native ability often trumps extraordinary amounts of effort. I skated through four years of an arduous undergraduate mathematics program that was regarded as one of the best in the country at the time. Meanwhile, classmates who spent every spare minute on study and homework were falling back into economics because they just couldn’t get the material. The big divide seemed to be linear algebra. Of course, I’m only talking about learning math. Doing math requires enormous amounts of effort for even the most gifted. Only the most driven become good mathematicians.
I taught myself computer programming and have taught many courses in the field. Some people get it and some don’t. It has a very imperfect correlation with general intelligence. On a very abstract level being able to program involves the ability to map from one domain (the problem one is trying to model) to another utterly different domain (the objects and processes available in whatever programming resources one has available and, less importantly, the related syntaxes). Some people (I’d say about 5% of the population) seem to have a natural ability to do this that is utterly lacking in other persons
I have a friend who’s a scratch golfer and 4-time club champion. When he won his first club title it qualified him to play in the statewide tournament of champions, organized by the Massachusetts Golf Association., on a lovely course set up along the lines of a pro track: slick greens, high rough, etc.
He shot a 93.
The layman has NO clue as to the talent it takes to compete as a touring pro.
Golf Digest sends 3 celebrity golfers and a Make-a-Wish-type reader dying slowly of something out on the U.S. Open course a week before the tournament. The scores aren’t pretty.
What?
He was saying that discoveries in the social sciences aren’t necessarily as concrete as discoveries in “hard” science because people can change their behavior.
Bo Jackson didn’t care for practice.
Neither did Allen Iverson.
Right after undergrad, I scored a 550 on my first attempt at the GMAT. Ten years later, I independently studied GMAT prep books and took timed practice tests for about 3 to 4 hours per day for four months and upped my score to 720! That score didn’t get me accepted into Stanford, but it did get me a half tuition scholarship to a large nationally-ranked southern university.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/upshot/more-evidence-that-thad-cochran-owes-runoff-win-to-black-voters.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
http://mindweaponsinragnarok.com/2014/07/14/new-york-times-publishes-a-surprisingly-evenhanded-article-about-stormfront/
Eh?
Seems that at least one critic of Wade’s book doesn’t know what he is talking about:
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2014/07/k-means-and-structure.html
OT and Sailerbait:
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-07-14/what-will-crooks-do-when-crime-doesn-t-pay
What about the age of the person starting out to practice? Starting young seems to be one of the key elements in someone being able to attain a higher level of capability. Not all ten thousand hours are equal.
John Wooden understood “perfect practice and the law of diminishing returns.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/07/21/140721fa_fact_aviv?currentPage=all&mobify=0
Standardized testing and George Bush blamed for low test scores in 90% black Atlanta schools, talented tenth administrators try to “fix” the scores and “close the gap.”
OT, but couldn’t help noticing–CDC reports that less than 3% of Americans self-identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/health-survey-gives-government-its-first-large-scale-data-on-gay-bisexual-population/2014/07/14/2db9f4b0-092f-11e4-bbf1-cc51275e7f8f_story.html
Friends Are the Family You Choose: Genome-Wide Analysis Reveals Genetic Similarities Among Friends
If you consider your friends family, you may be on to something. A study from the University of California, San Diego, and Yale University finds that friends who are not biologically related still resemble each other genetically.
Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study is coauthored by James Fowler, professor of medical genetics and political science at UC San Diego, and Nicholas Christakis, professor of sociology, evolutionary biology, and medicine at Yale.
“Looking across the whole genome,” Fowler said, “we find that, on average, we are genetically similar to our friends. We have more DNA in common with the people we pick as friends than we do with strangers in the same population.”
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/friends_are_the_family_you_choose
Of course practice is important, but the myth is that practice can make up for dearth of natural talent.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/29/americans-have-never-loved-poetry-more-but-they-call-it-rap.html
Using such logic, aren’t all songs poetry since they have lyrics in stanzas that mostly rhyme?
Should Barney the Dinosaur be our poet laureate?
But how would most songs sound without the music and if read as poems?
How would most rap songs sound if read as poetry without the rhythm and beat?
Like this maybe?
John McWhorter is supposed to be a good clean-cut black spokesman against the pathology of the black community, but now he’s telling us that rap deserves the respect of poetry.
(But then, what passes for poetry today isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, so maybe he has a point. Surely, eve 50 cents is a better ‘poet’ than Nikki Giovanni.)
“Is that still true, however, by the standards of 2010s Tiger Families?”
There is a difference I think these days. Back in the day Mommy insisted that Daddy pay for Kaplan test prep which was like 3 months before the SAT. Today’s Tiger Mommy puts her kid in Kumon as soon as the child is toilet trained and it goes on until there is a divorce, the child completes the linear algebra packet, or the child is accepted into an Ivy league university.
I can testify that SAT test prep is mostly BS. Kumon may be the thing that drives a stake through the heart of public school.
@ countenance –
In her “What Will Crooks Do When Crime Doesn’t Pay?” piece Megan McArdle isn’t really keeping up with trends. A lot of street crime nowadays is non-economic. The guys who beat up Matt Yglesias didn’t take his wallet, did they? They just hit him for the fun of it. Knockout is a game, not a business. In a well-managed welfare state, underclass blacks don’t need to depend on crime for their sustenance; they can practice crime out of sheer exuberance, just like those artists and musicians Nancy Pelosi told us would be free to pursue their passion after Obamacare relieved them of the necessity of making a living.
I think its the opposite. Intellectuals like to convince themselves that they are successful because they worked so much harder than everyone else.
There is also an analog to this – attractive people like to tell unattractive people that they just need to be “more confident” to be successful at getting dates.
“Darwin in physics? Steve, you need more practice writing.”
No. YOU are the idiot. Darwinian natural selection operates on genes. Genes can do what they do because of biochemistry. Biochemistry is a subset of the larger field of chemistry. Chemical reactions are ultimately determined by the underlying physical properties of atoms. ALL is physics.
“Guys, it’s not 10,000 hours of practice, it’s 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. If you haven’t become an expert after 10,000 hours, you just weren’t deliberate enough.”
Right. And,
The bible teaches, if you need a miracle, you just pray to God, because God answers prayer if you truly have faith. Oh, you didn’t get your miracle? Well, then, you just didn’t truly have faith, and such like that.
Geeyah, leftists are as fundamentalist as the biggest bible-thumping Baptist I ever met.
I still think in spite of that, the main factor was the fact that Mississippi has an incumbent-happy political culture, even more so than most places, and the Deep South has a lingering elder-deferential culture, many older white voters weren’t pleased with the young whippersnapper trying to jump in line in front of the old man with silver hair.
This despite the fact that Germany was clearly just avoiding the mid field entirely by high kicking the ball straight to Brazil’s side of the field.
All right, this is just painful. Please, no more comments on soccer from people who don’t even watch it.
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-07-14/what-will-crooks-do-when-crime-doesn-t-pay
“Teenagers”
Sorry for making the same comment every time the subject of Gladwell comes up, but better treatments of “deliberate practice” and the like have come from Geoff Colvin (Shawn’s brother), Daniel Coyle, Charles Duhigg and Frans Johansson. Gladwell is not just not the best writer in the field, he’s not even the best foreign-born mulatto– Johansson leaves him in the dust.
Oh, and at the opposite extreme, there’s Josh Kaufman, offering not mastery in 10,000 hours, but mere adequacy in 20.
Gladwell is not a better thinker or reporter. What he is is a better salesman.
Tranny tyranny is here.
I think if you had decent athletic ability, you could probably become highly proficient at something like shooting free throws, maybe even a 90 percent shooter, which is a great percentage. Would that translate to being able to hit two in a row under pressure with something of great value on the line? I somehow doubt it. You could also probably get really good at foosball with 10,000 hours of practice and win quite a few games at the local tavern (pretend it’s the late ’70s pre-Donkey Kong era), but Tony Spredeman would still kick your ass and you’d likely never even get the ball up front even once, save for a fluke.
Exactly. I’m reminded of the scene from the movie Glory, where the young black Soldier is proud of himself for hitting the target with his musket during rifle training. Then Matthew Broderick orders him to reload and do it again. As he starts to do so, Broderick draws his revolver and starts firing it next to the Soldier’s head while he’s trying to reload; the Soldier flinches and is visibly panicked as he tries to perform. Point is, its great to hit your target in practice, but an entirely different task when in battle and the men all around you are yelling, screaming bloody horror, with 50 Rebel cannon blasting solid and grapeshot at you, and 1000 hollering Rebel infantry are blazing away at you with their muskets. Its performing under pressure that counts.
When we were 15, my best friend, a half Scotch-Irish, half Sioux girl, saw a belly dancer on day time television. A light went on in her head and she decided she had been a dancer in a past life or had been born in this life to dance.
My friend decided that we should take belly dance lessons. We found a teacher a few cities away. We took the bus there and entered classes. On the first day of class my friend was waaaayyy, waaaayyyy better than the teacher. The teacher, and everyone else in the class were amazed. My friend was a natural dancer and her body could move in ways that few others’ could and she had an instinctive understanding of Arabic music. She rarely practiced, she just danced. When we both got jobs at an Arab night club, a male dancer from the San Francisco ballet would bring all his dancer buddies to watch my friend dance. He quit ballet and moved to Germany to become a famous belly dancer. He actually copied my friend’s every move. You can watch him on youtube, Horacio Cifuentes is his name. My friend had some mental issues which prevented her from becoming famous, but she could have stormed Egypt. I could practice for years and only become mediocre, which is what I was, she never had to practice and she danced beautifully.
Someone who put in his 10,000 hours at a young age was Joe Pass: “…I started when I was nine, and by the time I was nine and a half or ten, I was doing seven or eight hours’ practice every day. …I did that until I was fourteen or fifteen.” He certainly developed an amazing talent though he also developed a devastating heroin addiction.
@ threecranes->7:48
Interesting to mention Eddy Merckx. I’ve always thought of him as being almost supernatural. In addition to his phenotypical advantages he had such an aggressive and unrelenting mindset. I always remember that one scene in the Paris-Roubaix documentary A Sunday in Hell when the narrator says: “Only Merckx would attack now” or something similar
Steel, brazed lug frames, Campy and tubulares forever
No. YOU are the idiot. Darwinian natural selection operates on genes. Genes can do what they do because of biochemistry. Biochemistry is a subset of the larger field of chemistry. Chemical reactions are ultimately determined by the underlying physical properties of atoms. ALL is physics.
"Guys, it’s not 10,000 hours of practice, it’s 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. If you haven’t become an expert after 10,000 hours, you just weren’t deliberate enough."
Right. And,
The bible teaches, if you need a miracle, you just pray to God, because God answers prayer if you truly have faith. Oh, you didn't get your miracle? Well, then, you just didn't truly have faith, and such like that.
Geeyah, leftists are as fundamentalist as the biggest bible-thumping Baptist I ever met.
Geeyah, leftists are as fundamentalist as the biggest bible-thumping Baptist I ever met.
Creationists only deny the theory of evolution. They don’t have a problem with the results. Everyone else seems to, though.
You write fairly coherent English. That’s entirely due to your English genes. The number of hours you spent practicing it is irrelevant. Conrad, Nabokov, Stoppard– could any of them hold a candle to Stephen King?
I was a juvenile delinquent, pretty much checked out of school by eighth grade. Finally pitched in the towel, dropped out in what would have been eleventh grade except that I had failed tenth grade.
For the next few years I pursued decidedly unintellectual pursuits. Then, right after I turned 21, I decided it was time to go to college, took the SAT cold, got a 1420 (pre-norming, so impressive as that is, it seems to be a comfortable 1600 by todays grading).
Got a degree in physics, advanced degree in comp. fluids without ever letting studies get too much in the way of my still present, but somewhat moderated, enjoyment of the baser pleasures of life. Over the years, I’ve gravitated towards the internet software startup sector, got some patents, made some dough, written/designed some very cool software.
None of that, whether being the delinquent or the techno-geek, ever seemed very hard.
Just did a little reading on Kumon. Would it be appropriate to say that it’s quite the opposite of Common Core? I’d be curious to know more about Kumon vs. Public Schools in the sense of exposing truths about rote learning that are currently poo-poo’d.
“No. YOU are the idiot. Darwinian natural selection operates on genes. Genes can do what they do because of biochemistry. Biochemistry is a subset of the larger field of chemistry. Chemical reactions are ultimately determined by the underlying physical properties of atoms. ALL is physics.”
This is true, but completely irrelevant. Physics, chemistry and biology are quite different, and are studied as different subjects. Putting physics and biology in the same category because genes and oganic molecules are made of atoms makes as much sense as putting trial lawyers and stage actors in the same category because both pofessions involve enunciating words to a live audience. It is just a ridiculously general and encompassing category. …