Do you need 10,000 hours to be a genius?

[Swampy]

This has become a very famous rule, if it can be called a rule, and it was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell a few years ago in his book, Outliers, when he said that a person needed 10,000 hours of practice to be a world-class phenomenon in his field, be it music or chess.

I've never accepted that. Yes, practice can make (almost) perfect, but there's no evidence that it's necessary - for example, the mathematician, Ramunujan, and the writer, Franz Kafka, came out of nowhere to become the phenomena that they have become. And did Elvis really play the guitar for 10,000 hours? I think genius is an elusive quaiity, which we still cannot understand and may never understand ... even if we spend 10,000 hours studying it.

[Sir John]

I only took 5000 hours!

[Swampy]

And in what area are you a genius?

[Sir John]

[dry]

Aug 21, 2018 0:09:07 GMT -5 Swampy said:

This has become a very famous rule, if it can be called a rule, and it was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell a few years ago in his book, Outliers, when he said that a person needed 10,000 hours of practice to be a world-class phenomenon in his field, be it music or chess.

I've never accepted that. Yes, practice can make (almost) perfect, but there's no evidence that it's necessary - for example, the mathematician, Ramunujan, and the writer, Franz Kafka, came out of nowhere to become the phenomena that they have become. And did Elvis really play the guitar for 10,000 hours? I think genius is an elusive quaiity, which we still cannot understand and may never understand ... even if we spend 10,000 hours studying it.

I needed 20 years to master the piano.  But then I'm not a genius........

DL AJY

[Swampy]

A recent study says that average violinist players practice as much as good ones, so nix to that 10,000-hour-rule.

[Swampy]

As this article says, there's no magic number, and intermediate practitioners can practice more than grandmasters. In the end, talent will make the difference.