Is the 10,000 hour rule even true? I know this was popularized by Gladwell's book 'Outliers' but I had heard the study referred to in the book might not be accurate. Is it that 10,000 of practice is common to experts or that there are no experts without 10,000 hours of practice?
I take it as similar to the rule of thumb that you should walk 10,000 steps per day. It was made up for marketing a pedometer, and most experts I've heard from say it's not based on any facts, but it's close enough that merely striving for 10,000 steps per day is a good goal to set.
It might not be accurate, but it's not bad in terms of setting a goal for yourself. It helps you to focus on the right thing (get more practice, take more steps, etc).
Being an expert means being noticeably better than non-experts.
This will depend on how much you practice, how well you practice, and whatever relevant innate abilities you have (appropriate personality, IQ, extra-sensitive hearing, tetrachromacy or color-blindness, etc). And also, on how well/much other people practice.
Apparently if you fudge things just right, you get most people either not practicing well or losing interest shortly before 10k hours.
Many people miss that the rule is supposed to predict world-class expertise, the kind that wins Olympic events.
Raising yourself into, say, the top 5-10% requires an order of magnitude less effort. It's the difference between "The fastest possible version of this real-time algorithm" and "No longer doing it by hand."
The original study by K. Anders Ericsson involved how top athletes became the very best in their highly specific field. Since then it has been diluted to say that you need 10000 hours to become an 'expert' (definition required); then that you need 10000 hrs to become proficient.
