10,000 hour rule

Can one quantify what is required to achieve mastery in a field? According to neurologist Daniel Levitin as quoted in Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, one can. It takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a world-class expert. It does not matter if the field is music or ice skating.

I am not convinced. I wholeheartedly agree that one must put in the time to be successful but one must also have some aptitude or talent for the field. I could spend 10,000 hours learning to play the piano but since I have no musical ability I could not become a world-class expert.

In an article in the January 2009 issue of Discover magazine, a researcher found this to be true. A Finnish medical geneticist Irma Järvelä studied 224 members of 15 Finnish families who were either professional or amateur musicians or were related to one. She located “several DNA sequences that correlate with musical ability. One of the implicated genes codes for a protein that may be involved in translating into neural signals the tremors of hair cells in the inner ear. Another gene she identified had previously been linked to dyslexia, suggesting that language development and musical ability may have the same origin.”

Play it, Sam.