I wish to voice my strong sketpicism about this 10,000 hours claim.
This is my area of research. I have done experiments, pubished papers in
the best peer reviewed journals, and written at least one book that talks
about this. anders Ericsson, the person responsible for the 10,000 hours
figure, is a friend. I have known him since he was in graduate school.
I don't beleive him.
All the other stories are derivatives. As for Malcolm Gladwell, he is
completely untrustworthy. Gladwell takes one single investigator and then
uses that one person's work to base (and bias) his wonderful journalistic
writing style.
If you want a brilliant expose of Gladwell, read the truly excellent book
by Duncan Watts: everything is obvious once you know the answer. Duncan
watts is a scientist, but a great writer as well.
I never trust books on science by non-scientists, no matter how well they
are written.
--
Ericsson denies the power of individual differences. He also studies
extreme skills.
One can gain a deep appreciation of many topics in far less time. Does it
take time to develop the extreme skill of the world's best performers? yes.
But not everyone has to be the world's best. (In fact, by definition, not
everyone can be the best.)
How long does it take? it depends upon:
the person
the topic
the level of mastery desired
the level of skill desired
So, for example, I can slowly accomplish some tasks quite well with only a
relatively small amount of instruction and training. If I spent a few more
hours (or a few thousand), I could do equally well, but with far less
mental effort and far less time.
For most of us, the peripheral topics we need to use occasionally can be
learned with only a relatively few hours.
Think of it this way. 2,000 hours is one year of training at 40 hours/week.
10,000 hours is 40 hours of training every week for 5 years.
It is nonsense to think that all professionals need that amount of training
for every skill they possess.
------
Notice too that i said training, not practice. There is lots of evidence
that practice does not make one better. it is training that is required:
training is targeted practice, with intelligent assessment afterwards (in
design, we call that critique).
Don't believe everything a popular journalist tells you.
Don.
And, as my academic signature says:
Prof. Emeritus Cognitive Science & Psychology
(University of California, San Diego)
Breed Prof. of Design and Prof. EECS, Emeritus
(
Northwestern University
)
Author of some relevant books: Learning and Memory. Memory and Attention.
Models of Human Memory. Human Information Processing.
For Terry: Models of Human Memory is almost entirely mathematical models
of memory, the one exception being a computer simulation model.
>
Don Norman
Nielsen Norman Group, IDEO Fellow
[log in to unmask] www.jnd.org <http://www.jnd.org>
"Stupid Smart Things" and other LinkedIn
Essays<http://www.linkedin.com/influencer/12181762-Don-Norman>
| Core77 Essays <http://www.core77.com/blog/author/don-norman/default.asp> |
Essays on my website <http://www.jnd.org/dn.pubs.html>
Book: "Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded<http://amzn.to/ZOMyys>"
(DOET2).
Course: Udacity On-Line course based on
DOET2<https://www.udacity.com/course/design101>
(free).
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