I've never idealized a number until Malcolm Gladwell mentioned "Ten thousand hours" in his book: The Outliers.
Psychologists have a way of keeping their debates alive for decades. One of those is the ever lasting debate of "Are experts born or made?"
In the 1800s, it was proposed that experts were born regardless of the amount of practice or effort put by the person. An innate characteristic exists in every person that defines his or her level of expertise. In fact, Sir Galton published a book called Hereditary Genius, in which he states: "I propose to show in this book that a man's natural abilities are derived by inheritance, under exactly the same limitations as are the form and physical features of the whole organic world".
Others later on challenged that proposal by performing studies on elite performers weather in sports or music and correlating the hours of practice with level of expertise.
Gladwell describes many such examples and then states: “The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything,” writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin. — p. 40.
To make things complicated, our psychologist friends were still trying to keep the debate alive. So again came another group who proposed that: Yes, practice is essential, but how much practice you need is genetically determined. They backed up their theory with twin studies in which they found that if a twin can draw, the other one is more likely to know how to draw as well. That's pretty sound evidence. But let's not go there. Let's go back to practice.
I'm not trying to undermine your genes. But let's face it. Unless you're God, you cannot control your genes. Hence, life becomes much more fun and simple when you focus on the things that you can control. And we like fun and simple. So, let's be in the driver's seat of our expertise and control our practice.
Regardless of the number (because I learned that it's not that important anyways), notice that when Gladwell talked about practice, he said 10,000 hours not 10,000 pages. The studies were performed on musicians, sports players, chess players, computer programmers, and many more. Still, the common thing between them was 10,000 hours of deliberate practice: 10,000 hours of playing the violin, 10,000 hours of playing chess, or 10,000 hours of computer programming. It was never about reading, because apparently no amount of reading can produce an expert. Accumulating data, is essential for building a base. Going up the ladder, on the other hand, requires more effort. It's easy to agree that you have to deliberately and consciously practice. It's harder to apply it. The opportunity will not come to you. You have to go to it. Often times, you will go to "Mr. Opportunity" and find yourself standing behind a locked door that won't open. But depending on how bad you want it, you will stand. You will endure. And in the end, it will crack open. And when it does, and you see only a glimpse of light, you might get discouraged because you expected more right? A rainbow maybe? Oh well, It's hard and dark. It's a mess and it's a lot of sweat. But at least, it's not painstakingly average. So, keep going on because you're on the right track.
I can tell you for a fact, that the 'ten thousand hour'- rule is applicable wherever you plug it in. For example, in my case, as a budding radiologist, you need X hours of practice. And by practice, I mean cases.
During your first year of radiology, you find yourself in a very steep learning curve. I guess it's only natural, given the almost vertical slope, to feel like you're barely hanging in there. But still, that doesn't put you off the hook of collecting cases from day one. Within the past year, I've observed a humongous difference between those who read more and those who take cases AND read as well. If you were a book worm at med school, like me, you'd understand that shifting your ways of learning might be frustrating at first. But flexibility with your approach and the trial and error method are always helpful. Keep trying until you find your balance and once you're there your "learning endorphins" will kick in. It's a natural high!
Bottom line, read a lot but remember that what separates the good from the great is that the greats practice more.
Psychologists have a way of keeping their debates alive for decades. One of those is the ever lasting debate of "Are experts born or made?"
In the 1800s, it was proposed that experts were born regardless of the amount of practice or effort put by the person. An innate characteristic exists in every person that defines his or her level of expertise. In fact, Sir Galton published a book called Hereditary Genius, in which he states: "I propose to show in this book that a man's natural abilities are derived by inheritance, under exactly the same limitations as are the form and physical features of the whole organic world".
Others later on challenged that proposal by performing studies on elite performers weather in sports or music and correlating the hours of practice with level of expertise.
Gladwell describes many such examples and then states: “The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything,” writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin. — p. 40.
To make things complicated, our psychologist friends were still trying to keep the debate alive. So again came another group who proposed that: Yes, practice is essential, but how much practice you need is genetically determined. They backed up their theory with twin studies in which they found that if a twin can draw, the other one is more likely to know how to draw as well. That's pretty sound evidence. But let's not go there. Let's go back to practice.
I'm not trying to undermine your genes. But let's face it. Unless you're God, you cannot control your genes. Hence, life becomes much more fun and simple when you focus on the things that you can control. And we like fun and simple. So, let's be in the driver's seat of our expertise and control our practice.
Regardless of the number (because I learned that it's not that important anyways), notice that when Gladwell talked about practice, he said 10,000 hours not 10,000 pages. The studies were performed on musicians, sports players, chess players, computer programmers, and many more. Still, the common thing between them was 10,000 hours of deliberate practice: 10,000 hours of playing the violin, 10,000 hours of playing chess, or 10,000 hours of computer programming. It was never about reading, because apparently no amount of reading can produce an expert. Accumulating data, is essential for building a base. Going up the ladder, on the other hand, requires more effort. It's easy to agree that you have to deliberately and consciously practice. It's harder to apply it. The opportunity will not come to you. You have to go to it. Often times, you will go to "Mr. Opportunity" and find yourself standing behind a locked door that won't open. But depending on how bad you want it, you will stand. You will endure. And in the end, it will crack open. And when it does, and you see only a glimpse of light, you might get discouraged because you expected more right? A rainbow maybe? Oh well, It's hard and dark. It's a mess and it's a lot of sweat. But at least, it's not painstakingly average. So, keep going on because you're on the right track.
I can tell you for a fact, that the 'ten thousand hour'- rule is applicable wherever you plug it in. For example, in my case, as a budding radiologist, you need X hours of practice. And by practice, I mean cases.
During your first year of radiology, you find yourself in a very steep learning curve. I guess it's only natural, given the almost vertical slope, to feel like you're barely hanging in there. But still, that doesn't put you off the hook of collecting cases from day one. Within the past year, I've observed a humongous difference between those who read more and those who take cases AND read as well. If you were a book worm at med school, like me, you'd understand that shifting your ways of learning might be frustrating at first. But flexibility with your approach and the trial and error method are always helpful. Keep trying until you find your balance and once you're there your "learning endorphins" will kick in. It's a natural high!
Bottom line, read a lot but remember that what separates the good from the great is that the greats practice more.
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