Psychology Archipelago

Expertise And Issues With The 10,000 Hour Rule

In this world of ever-increasing complexity, we turn to experts to make sense of the chaos. We all want to become an expert. But what makes an expert? 

According to the Oxford Dictionary, an expert is defined as “a person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area.”

Experts in general have a very high amount of knowledge and skill, and have very few gaps in their understanding. They are thus very sought after to provide a nuanced and objective perspective on topics that might seem too complex to most people.

For example, I am a USCF 2000-rated “expert” chess player. I think chess is a good analogy for expertise due to its objective nature. It is a perfect information game (there is no hidden information) and it follows an Elo rating system, devised by Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American physics professor. It works by giving each player an Elo, a number calculated based on performance in previous games, where the higher the number the better. For every subsequent game, it calculates probabilities based on this number, and changes the Elo in accordance to the probabilities of a win, loss, or draw.

I often look at other disciplines and compare it to chess ratings, saying “oh that rock climber would probably be around 1700.” I say this under the assumption that it takes a certain amount of time and effort to reach a certain level of skill in anything.

But how does one actually become an expert? 

Popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, the “10,000 hour rule” states that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in a field. It has a lot of good core messaging, telling people that experts are made and not born. While I believe this to be true, like most pop psychology, this rule is far too simplified. 

Missing from this rule is the idea of “deliberate practice.” 

Described in the 1993 paper that Gladwell famously cited for his rule, deliberate practice is when you practice in a strategic manner, not just randomly doing whatever is related to what you are doing. This can be facilitated by teachers who know what your weaknesses are and how to improve them. 

This idea of deliberate practice is similar to the “zone of proximal development,” coined by Lev Vygotsky. This idea is that we must do things outside our capabilities, but not so far outside in order to grow. We must practice in the area that we cannot do ourselves but can accomplish with guidance, like that given by a teacher. 
Although far from a world-class chess player, in my experience, practicing hard tactics, memorizing openings, and working on “boring” aspects bring the biggest benefit in skill. Just playing thousands of games does not make you an expert. While it is often more comfortable to play random games or just mindlessly click through easy puzzles, the hard solitary practice is where you reap the biggest rewards.

What these thousands of hours of deliberate practice seem to achieve is pattern recognition. In a study of chess players, they found that stronger and weaker players did not differ significantly in the depth nor breadth of their spoken analysis of unfamiliar positions. However, when comparing the decrease in move quality in quick versus slower games, masters continued to perform at a much higher level than weaker players. This seems to be due to their pattern recognition, something that is instinctual and much faster than pure calculation. 
10,000 hours is also not enough in many situations depending on your goals. 

Even the research that Gladwell based the rule off of takes 10,000 hours as the time spent for top violinists at the age of 20. However, while excellent at the age of 20, any prodigy at the age of 20 is definitely still growing their musicianship and their techniques. 

Experts are not infallible, and they are always growing. In fact, most of the best craftsmen take a growth mindset, not getting comfortable in what they know and never taking their skill as fixed. Japan is famous for its craftsmen, and it also has had a culture of Kaizen, a process of continual growth for many decades. 
There are also fields that do not have the sorts of environments that are conducive to expertise. 

We need environments that give us feedback, the more immediate the better. For example, political science writer Philip Tetlock’s book, Expert Political Judgment shows that the political environment is often not conducive to learning. 

Picking 284 people who were experts in the political and economic spheres, Tetlock asked them to predict future events in the political sphere. By the end of the study, the experts made over 80,000 predictions. It turned out that specialists were not significantly more reliable than non-specialists. They were often asked questions in emerging situations or different climates, and thus there isn’t enough information to make reliable predictions in many of these situations. 

Practice isn’t everything. 
Jiro, known as one of the best sushi chefs in the world serving former President Obama and Prime Minister Abe. Credit: White House / Pete Souza
Recent studies have also shown that even thousands deliberate practice is not necessarily going to make you the best in the world. A meta-analysis in 2016 found 18 percent of increased performance can be attributed to deliberate practice. The study also found that only 1 percent of the variance in elite performance can be attributed to deliberate practice. A replication of the original 1993 study that spawned the 10,000 hour rule found that the effect sizes of practice were much smaller, accounting for about a quarter of the difference in skill. 


It seems that other factors such as strong relationships, coaching, and talent may play a larger role than just practice.

In response to these deficits, there are many articles such as from Vox, arguing that practice and the idea of reaching for expertise isn’t healthy. Many argue that mediocrity should be satisfactory, and that we shouldn’t pressure ourselves to the impossible standard of expertise.

Personally, I agree that attaining accolades and medals isn’t what your life should be based around. There is no doubt that practice isn’t everything, and there are factors outside our control that might prevent us from becoming the very best. 


However, I do believe that achieving your maximum potential, whatever that may be, is something noble and worthy to strive for. In a world of jealousy and social media influencers only showing their best selves, we ultimately should look in ourselves. Practice is something that we can control and take pride in. Instead of looking at results, we can be proud of the work that we put in. So, I say, take the 10,000 hour rule as gauge of your hard-work rather than a condition for success.