Researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours
The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a critical minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. According to Daniel Levitin, a neurologist, “The emerging picture from such studies is that 10,000 hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert — in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others do. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”
This holds true for child prodigies also. For instance, Mozart’s best works came after he had been composing for more than twenty years, according to the music critic, Harold Schonberg. The practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.
The other interesting thing about that 10,000 hours, of course, is that it is an enormous amount of time. It’s all but impossible to reach that number all by yourself by the time you’re a young adult. You have to have parents who encourage and support you. You can’t be poor, because if you have to hold down a part-time job on the side to help make ends meet, there won’t be time left in the day to practice enough. In fact, most people can reach that number only if they get into some kind of special program — like a hockey all-star squad — or if they get some kind of extraordinary opportunity that gives them a chance to put in those hours.
Bill Joy is a programming guru who is dubbed “The Edison of the Internet” because of his contribution to the code that produced the internet and many other computing and programming languages. A careful look at the stream of opportunities that came Bill Joy’s way will reveal that talent was not enough, an opportunity was also necessary to make the man. Because he happened to go to a farsighted school like the University of Michigan, he was able to practice on a time-sharing system instead of with punch cards. Because the Michigan system happened to have a bug in it, he could program all he wanted. Because the university was willing to spend the money to keep the Computer Center open twenty-four hours, he could stay up all night; and because he was able to put in so many hours, by the time he happened to be presented with the opportunity to rewrite UNIX, he was up to the task. Bill Joy was brilliant. He wanted to learn. That was a big part of it. But before he could become an expert, someone had to give him the opportunity to learn how to be an expert.
The story of The Beatles — John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr — also confirms the 10,000-hour rule. Bill Gates also had a string of events in his life that ensured he put in the required number of hours to become an extraordinary entrepreneur.
A look at the list of the 75 richest people in human history also reveals that 14 of the names are Americans who were born within 9 years of each other in the 19th century. Why is that? The American economy went through the greatest transformation in its history at the time when these people were at their prime. You had to be born later than the 1820s and earlier than the late 1840s to be able to take advantage of this opportunity.