>And the "10,000 hour rule" is worse than just a trivial factoid. It is a recipe for disappointment. If you tell someone that, despite their initial lack of talent, they can be "superb" at anything they want, and 10,000 hours later they are still mediocre at best, don't you think it would be frustrating to have wasted that much time?
Are there any real-world examples that we can point at of people who actually did spend 10,000 hours at something and did not become superb at it?
In Malcolm Gladwell's book, he tried to find piano players who had spent 10,000 hours practicing and then given up (having never made it to the professional scene) but he couldn't find any.
> Are there any real-world examples that we can point at of people who actually did spend 10,000 hours at something and did not become superb at it?
Are there any real-world examples that we can point at of people who actually completed 10,000 hours of deliberative practice that weren't already far ahead of the of their equally-practicing peers in terms of skill with, say, 2,000 hours of practice? Even if we assume that Malcolm Gladwell's inability to find people in one domain that had done 10,000 hours of deliberate practice but not become superb is accurate and generalizable [1], what evidence is there to suggest that the relation involved isn't "People who don't excel in a domain before long before 10,000 hours of deliberate practice tend to stop pushing themselves before reaching 10,000 hours of deliberate practice"?
> Are there any real-world examples that we can point at of people who actually did spend 10,000 hours at something and did not become superb at it?
This is confirmation bias. If people plateau in their skill at 1k hours and then stop such serious pursuit, the burden of proof is on you to say that their gains would have resumed as they approached 10k hours.
I observe as a musician that most people plateau at some point.
> This is confirmation bias. If people plateau in their skill at 1k hours and then stop such serious pursuit, the burden of proof is on you to say that their gains would have resumed as they approached 10k hours.
Surely, though, out of all the people who reached 1k hours and thought about quitting, there would be some who decided to plod through and keep practicing?
These people, as few in number as they might be, would eventually hit 10,000 hours of practice.
Why hasn't anyone found them and interviewed them?
In any pursuit, people will plateau all the time. It's the nature of practice. You have to push through the plateau in order to get to the next level. Some people decide that it's not worth it, so they stop. Are you saying that every single one of these people wasn't genetically talented enough to continue?
Are there any real-world examples that we can point at of people who actually did spend 10,000 hours at something and did not become superb at it?
In Malcolm Gladwell's book, he tried to find piano players who had spent 10,000 hours practicing and then given up (having never made it to the professional scene) but he couldn't find any.