10,000 hours to Mastery

In Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 book, Outliers, he promotes the 10,000-hour rule.

This is the idea that if you spend 10,000 hours on any skill you will reach mastery.

“Gladwell uses several examples in Outliers when introducing this rule: one is the research that focused on violin students at a music academy in Berlin. The study found that the most accomplished of the students had put in 10,000 hours by the time they turned 20. Gladwell also estimates that the Beatles put in 10,000 hours of practice playing in Hamburg in the early 1960s, and that Bill Gates put in 10,000 hours of programming work before founding Microsoft. Hence the 10,000 hour rule was born: put in your 10,000 hours of practice, and become an expert in a given field.”

A lot of research challenges the rule and says the 10,000 number is flawed.