It Isn’t 10,000 Hours That Makes You an Expert

Anders Ericcson was a cognitive psychologist who created the concept that became the basis for Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “Outliers,” and the notion of “The 10,000 Hour Rule.” The idea is that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in anything.

What is missing from what Gladwell popularized is that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert. Ericcson believed it was important to have a way of measuring the progress as well as someone evaluating your progress.

After all, using an example from golf, a player could get on the golf course and play every day for 10 years and not learn anything from it. All that would happen to them is they would bake in the same bad habits year after year after year making them know better a player than they were when they started.

That’s where most people are. They learn how to do something and rarely or never try to improve. If they try to improve, they do it through trial and error with no input from the outside.

As someone who is not an expert at what they want to achieve, trial and error makes it more difficult. After all, you know where you are and know where you want to get to but not necessarily how to get there.

Having a coach or a mentor, having an expert to work with in this area that you want to…