The 2008 book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell was a huge publishing success, selling more than 1.6 million copies as of mid-2023 and elevating the author to new heights of public intellectual star power.
Fundamental to the book is a collection of stories that suggest applying intentional effort over long periods of time is required for outsized achievement.
Thus, The Beatles performing live shows over and over in Germany before they made it big, is what allowed them to, ultimately, make it big, and J. Robert Oppenheimer was able to have the impact he had on the world (for better and for worse) because he attained gobs of practical experience in his field early on (compared to other brilliant people who, despite having the raw materials we might typically consider necessary for success, didn’t have the chance to flex those muscles consistently over time).
He coined the “10,000-Hour Rule” to explain this disparity between wildly successful people and people who are otherwise similar, but who experience less success (by multiple metrics) because they failed to practice their craft for about 10,000 hours.
This rule was premised on a 1993 study on the role deliberate practice plays in the achievement of expertise in the world of violin players.
The researchers discovered a correlation between the success attained and the amount of practice violinists put into their craft, and the implication was that more practice equals more success, and that practice was perhaps even more important to their success than other attributes like genetically or culturally inherited advantages, or personality traits.
A replication of this study was published in 2019, tightening up some of the controls and increasing the sample size, and it found that the famous correlation between practice and success wasn’t as strong as that original study implied: it’s still important, but not the most important thing—some of the world’s best violinists actually practice substantially less than their average-level peers.
Based on the findings of that new study, it was estimated that around 26% of the difference between being good at something and amazing at it can be attributed to practice, down from the 48% claimed in the original study.
A 2016 meta-analysis of this topic, looking especially at practice and success in baseball players, found that it was probably something closer to 18%.
A slew of other studies in the years since Outliers hit shelves have also challenged its core assertion, finding that most of the existing data on this subject doesn’t back the premise that practice is the most vital ingredient of outsized success, and that a combination of genetics, personality, culture, life experiences, health, economic class, handedness, and other such attributes are generally more important.
Also notable is that the amount of practice a person requires to substantially benefit from it varies greatly based on those other variables: the number of deliberate practice hours necessary to improve from “good” to “masterful” at something like chess ranges from 728 to 16,120 hours, which means one person may have to practice 22-times as much as another to achieve the same growth.
None of which implies practice, and especially intentional, focused practice isn’t important, and none of which suggests the stories told in Outliers aren’t true, at least for some value of “true.”
It does serve as a reminder, though, that the versions of science that make their way into popular media will sometimes be simplified, shallow versions of what the research actually says, and that it’s therefore prudent to take what inspiration or motivation we can from them while remembering that they are far from scientific gospel.