10 000 Hours In Outliers By Malcolm Gladwell
The 10,000-hour rule, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, is considered a key to success. Though hard work is necessary for mastering something, do we really need to spend 10,000 hours or is there more to this than Gladwell presented in his book Outliers? With further research it was found that 10,000 hours is not the end all be all for mastery. In fact, Gladwell was wrong because he oversimplified what is necessary for mastery and the amount of work people need to put in by a long shot.
In chapter two of Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers the 10,000-Hour Rule was introduced. It was found by “psychologist K. Anders Ericsson, stating that … in order to become an expert or professional at just about anything it takes roughly 10,000 hours, or 10 years …show more content…
One example Malcolm Gladwell triumphantly gave in Outliers was on The Beatles to support his 10,000-hour rule. This only shows a successful case of this rule for mastery. Somehow Gladwell neglected to tell about the people that did not succeed such as the “thousands of garage bands who put in their 10,000 hours and still stink” (Shermer 58). This shows that there is more at play than just 10,000 hours. For some people working thousands of hours doesn’t cause an improvement in ability or work. Though he did mention that opportunity matters and that people can’t put in that many hours without help there are more factors that can influence how successful one is. According to Michael Shermer, writer and historian of science, “Science shows that by nature humans vary considerably in both physical and mental abilities, and a good portion of that is attributable to our genes” (58) Psychologist David Epstein says that “DNA analysis turned up 21 gene variants related to aerobic improvement, and HERITAGE participants who had at least 19 of the 21 variants improved their VO2 max three times more than subjects with fewer than 10 of the gene variants” (qtd. by Shermer 58). This means that in order to succeed we need decent genes, a good environment, help from others, along with a lot of hard work that could take anywhere from 3,000 hours to 23,000 hours for
In chapter two of Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers the 10,000-Hour Rule was introduced. It was found by “psychologist K. Anders Ericsson, stating that … in order to become an expert or professional at just about anything it takes roughly 10,000 hours, or 10 years …show more content…
One example Malcolm Gladwell triumphantly gave in Outliers was on The Beatles to support his 10,000-hour rule. This only shows a successful case of this rule for mastery. Somehow Gladwell neglected to tell about the people that did not succeed such as the “thousands of garage bands who put in their 10,000 hours and still stink” (Shermer 58). This shows that there is more at play than just 10,000 hours. For some people working thousands of hours doesn’t cause an improvement in ability or work. Though he did mention that opportunity matters and that people can’t put in that many hours without help there are more factors that can influence how successful one is. According to Michael Shermer, writer and historian of science, “Science shows that by nature humans vary considerably in both physical and mental abilities, and a good portion of that is attributable to our genes” (58) Psychologist David Epstein says that “DNA analysis turned up 21 gene variants related to aerobic improvement, and HERITAGE participants who had at least 19 of the 21 variants improved their VO2 max three times more than subjects with fewer than 10 of the gene variants” (qtd. by Shermer 58). This means that in order to succeed we need decent genes, a good environment, help from others, along with a lot of hard work that could take anywhere from 3,000 hours to 23,000 hours for