Gladwell and the 10,000 Hour Theory

Think of something you are passionate about. Is it a skill that you are able to push yourself in? People are always told that with enough hard work you could become a master of that skill. Even without natural talent, enough hard work at a skill will eventually build up the ability. By constantly pushing oneself past their limits during practice, they can improve quicker than someone who has the natural ability and doesn’t try. However, skill doesn’t always equal success. As Malcolm Gladwell states in his book The Outliers, luck plays a large role in the ability to obtain the 10,000 hours required to become an expert in a subject. However, many studies and even the researchers of the 10,000 hour study have rejected the rule outright. I disagree with Gladwell that 10,000 hours is required to become a master, and that luck plays a much larger role than he states.

Some of you may have heard of the four-time Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles. She blew us all way at the 2016 Rio Olympics, performing breathtaking skills no one has ever done before-one of them even named after her. She has dedicated her whole life for these very Games. As of today, she is the best gymnast to ever live. Simone obviously has a large amount of raw talent. However, her triumphs are because of much more than that; over the course of her life, she has practiced at least, if not more, than 10,000 hours. In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell proposes the idea that an individual must practice at least 10,000 hours in order to be considered successful. I agree with Gladwell’s claim that through excessive amounts of practice, in

How many hours of someone’s life are necessary to perfect a skill? 300? 5000? Perhaps try 10,000 hours. In this chapter from Outliers, “The 10,000-Hour Rule”, Malcolm Gladwell argues that talent isn’t innate, but takes 10,000 hours to perfect a skill based on opportunity, talent, and practice. Throughout the chapter “The 10,000-Hour Rule”, Malcolm Gladwell effectively relies on logos--evidence from well-known figures and charts that show age similarities--to support his theory that it takes a particular window of time to offer someone the opportunity to practice for 10,000 hours to succeed at a skill. However, Gladwell ineffectively relies on repetition of evidence and failure to

Gladwell’s 10,000 Hour Rule is also an important element in a success story. Bill Gates, the Beatles, and Joe Flom all spent years practicing their trades. Correspondingly, the 10,000 Hour Rule says that expertise in a subject is a product of 10,000 hours of practice. In order to do well in something one must take one’s time to master it. Essentially, practice makes perfect.

In order to become an expert performer Abbott and Collins (2004) suggest that talent development requires the possession of Psychological Characteristics for Developing Excellence (PCDE), which as the performer moves through the transition phases become further developed. PCDE’s are both trait characteristics and state related skills such as self-belief, dedication and discipline (Abbott and Collins, 2004). Another significant aspect of becoming an expert musician is deliberate practice. Deliberate practice requires determination with the correct motivation for the performer, and the necessary time and effort roughly equating to 10,000 hours (Ericsson et al., 1993). MacNamara, Holmes and Collins (2008) state that expert musicians require numerous aspects to reach the highest level; natural talent and/or deliberate practice combined with social context and significant others are needed to maintain performance at this high level. As talent is developed, the performer moves

One’s skills and talents define what someone does and how others perceive them. In Outliers, Gladwell speaks of the “10,000 Hour Rule”. He says that if one practices a skill for 10,000 hours, then they will master that skill. Some musicians, like the Beatles, are known for their music and their musical talent, because they practiced over 10,000 hours. Their musical skills help develop their identity and how others recognize them.

To work until reaching the level of mastery of anything is a massive achievement in a person’s life. What if someone told that person that if they haven’t had reached the level of mastery if they haven’t practiced a certain amount of hours. How would that make them feel? Enraged. Depressed. Speechless. Talentless. In the Chapter “The 10,000-Hour Rule” by Malcolm Gladwell, he argues that the amount of practice required for the mastery of anything is 10,000 hours. He uses examples of famous people or groups of people that the audience might know to try and dispel the myth that to be able to master something, it takes more than innate talent. Malcolm Gladwell's use of logos and imagery fail to prove his point to the author due to the statistics he uses, and the sentences he uses to prove his point that the amount of hours required for mastery is 10,000 hours.

The road to greatness is a long path filled with struggle and time. Based on research by the best-selling author Malcom Gladwell inside his book Outliers popularized the idea of 10,000 hours of guided practice “the magic number of greatness”(Gladwell, 47). With enough practice he said anyone could achieve any work that of a professional. While some say the 10,000 hour rule is the key to success I believe that success is based on genetics, talent, and time period. It is whether one was born with the talent, achieved it later within life or was born during the wrong time period is what makes a master out of someone. Where the 10,000 hour rule is not a truth.

This quote shows a professional coming to a conclusion about his studies,“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”(Gladwell, 7). This statement from the text shows us how a studies have shown that if a person practices ten thousand hours of whatever they find interesting they can become world-class. Becoming a professional baseball player does happen with luck, you need to be devoted and put in the effort needed to get good. Another quote is,“the striking thing about Ericsson’s studies is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any naturals, musician who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did”(Gladwell, 5). The quote helps support the previous quote by stating that a person needs ten thousand hours of practice to be world-class because they haven’t found a person that has been the best without training as

Early specialization is characterized by year-round training in a single activity, beginning at a young age, apart from other activities with the goal of developing expertise (Ericsson et al., 1993). Ericsson and his colleagues studied pianists and violinists of varying skill levels and discovered that the expert musicians typically began training between ages four and five while the non-experts started training later in life. Moreover, a pattern emerged indicating that the level of performance attained related to the amount of deliberate practice. By age 20 the best performers had spent over 10,000 hours, an intermediate group had put in 8,000 hours, and the least accomplished group only 5,000 hours. In their theory of deliberate practice, Ericsson et al. (1993) suggest that talent plays no role in the development of expertise, rather it is an effortful activity motivated by the goal of improving performance. Typically, deliberate practice requires a high amount of concentration and must be carried out over time. The obligation to significant amounts of deliberate practice in one sport from a young age has been demonstrated as one approach to developing elite athletes (Helsen et al., 1998).

Time or Talent: Can someone be born gifted or do they have to ‘earn’ their talent? In order to be successful, 10,000 hours is required to become professional; however, in order to be successful one must be born in the right time and place. Malcolm Gladwell makes this argument by providing evidence that Bill Joy, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs were all born from 1952 and 1958 and now became some of the most successful people in the world by their twenties. In the chapter “The 10,000-Hour Rule”, Malcolm Gladwell uses tables and anecdotes of famous people in order to create a logical argument and effectively boost his reliability (ethos). However, in the process of using charts and anecdotal evidence, Gladwell creates many logical fallacies, which makes both his logos- and ethos-based arguments ineffective.

Gladwell uses Korean airplane crashes and Asian children being good at math to support his arguments on cultural legacy playing a part in being successful. In these countries there is a high level of respect and a strong foundation of hard work that contributes to these two events. The respect created the plane crashes since co pilots fear speaking up to their superiors, and the foundation of hard work drives the children to put their all into their work. Gladwell takes these properties and applies them to a school named KIPP in New York City that supposedly uses cultural legacy to help make their students succeed. The problem with this that Gladwell presents cultural legacy as being heritage linked. KIPP school is duplicating the actions of

In Outliers, Gladwell discusses a theory named “The 10,000-Hour Rule” that proposes the 10,000 hours is the specific amount it time it takes for someone to become a master at a skill. The quote “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing that makes you good” (Gladwell, p.42) exemplifies how Karp came to becoming a computer genius. David Karp had access to extended advantages not offered to other high school students by being homeschooled at a young age. Encouraged by his mother, Karp dropped out of school at age 14 to be homeschooled with an emphasis on computers, coding and Japanese (Cooper). The addition time allowed Karp to

Gladwell opens this part with the story of the observed PC scientist Bill Joy. The University of Michigan opened one of the world's most created PC centers in 1971. He entered school thinking about a significant in either science or number juggling, yet he uncovered the preparing concentrate late in his first year and was trapped. Happiness at last enrolled in doctoral level school at college Berkeley, where he incapacitated his PhD overseers with his academic capacity and brilliance. He went to adjust UNIX, a standard working structure, and his modifies stay basically today. It is every now and again said of Joy that he succeeded in a challenging new world where legacy, affiliations, and status didn't have any kind of effect. He was judged exclusively on his ability. Gladwell dispatches into a discourse about the presence and nature of "inherent ability"— the inclination, insight, and capacity we are

Malcolm Gladwell supports his claim that in cognitively demanding fields there are no naturals, by writing interesting anecdotes that show examples. For example, the article contains an anecdote in talking about how Mozart’s earliest works were not outstanding; his earliest masterwork was created when he was twenty one years old, showing he had already been practicing for ten years and he had to practice to create his masterwork. Gladwell argues that even Mozart was not a natural. According to Gladwell’s article, he shares a story about the Beatles and how they played eight hours every day for two hundred seventy nights over the course of a year and a half. This evidence shows that they practiced long hours, and when they got to the United States they