True Story: Sometime around 2001, while I was getting strangled on a regular basis as a beginner in Jiu Jitsu, I worked out a theory: It takes about 1,000 hours of focused effort to become competent at any complex skill, and about 5,000 hours to master it. I wrote it up for Early to Rise, my first online “blog.” I tested it. I built a method around it.
Seven years later, a Canadian journalist named Malcolm Gladwell published a book called Outliers, announced that it takes 10,000 hours to master anything, and became very famous.
I wrote a small, dignified blog post accusing him of stealing my idea.
It turns out that neither of us invented it. The point is that the theory is real – and that it changed the way I have taught and learned ever since.
A Note on the Timeline
For the record, here is who got there when.
Eight years before I scribbled down my version, a Swedish psychologist named K. Anders Ericsson published a paper with two colleagues, Ralf Krampe and Clemens Tesch-Romer, titled “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance” (Psychological Review, 1993). After studying violinists in Berlin, they argued that expertise comes from thousands of hours of focused practice, not from raw talent. I had never heard of that study. I doubt one American in 10,000 had.
Ericsson at his desk, 1999
Then, in 2008, Malcolm Gladwell turned Ericsson’s research into the famous “10,000-hour rule” in his bestseller Outliers – and the idea exploded.
So: Ericsson first, me second, Gladwell loudest. I’ll settle for second place.
