Good Life Project - Anders Ericsson: Dismantling the 10,000 Hour Rule

Episode Date: May 16, 2016

Ever hear of the 10,000 rule? The idea that it takes 10,000 hours to become world-class at anything?Well, what if it wasn't true?And, what if the research it was based on actually said something very different? Something that somehow got "lost in translation" when the data went mainstream.In today's conversation, we sit down with K. Anders Ericsson, PhD, Professor of Psychology at Florida State University. He studies what it takes to be the best in the world in domains such as music, chess, medicine, and sports. And it was his research that served of the basis for the now wildly popular 10,000 hour rule that's been cited in some of the biggest books of the last 10 years..Problem is, as you're about to discover, it's a lie. There never was a 10,000 rule. That number, along with the idea of a "rule," is based on a series of misinterpretations of his work.In this new book, Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, and in today's conversation, Ericsson finally sets the record straight. He distills three decades of myth-shattering research into a powerful learning strategy that is fundamentally different from the way people traditionally think about acquiring new abilities.EIn This Episode You’ll Learn:The difference between "traditional" practice, "purposeful" practice and "deliberate" practice.How Malcolm Gladwell may have misinterpreted Ericsson's research on the 10,000 hour rule.How Ericsson sees the importance of the role of a teacher in accelerating the path to expertise.What actually motivates someone to do the often grueling work for the years it takes to become great.How he's studied people who have learned and developed systems to memorize long strings of numbers.Mentioned In This Episode:Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm GladwellWhiplash Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X.

Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot if we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. So imagine stepping out of your day-to-day life and just dropping yourself into a gorgeous 130-acre natural playground for three and a half days of learning and laughing and moving

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from New York City. And more than half, actually well more than half the spots are already gone at this point. So be sure to grab your spot quickly because our final $100 early bird discount ends June 15th, 2016. After that, it goes up to full price. So you can learn more at goodlifeproject.com slash camp, or just click the link in the show notes now. If you feel it's futile to put in the effort, then obviously there's a motivational problem. But once you basically see this as instrumental in you, you know, becoming something that you're currently not able to do, that I think is invigorating and motivating. Have you ever wondered how to become extraordinary at pretty much anything? Well, there are a lot of promises out there in the world. There's a lot of mythology.

There are a lot of techniques and strategies. Today's guest, Anders Ericsson, is actually one of the foremost researchers in the world on expert performance, on becoming extraordinary at nearly anything. In fact, it was his research that Malcolm Gladwell originally was quoting when he sort of popularized the idea of the 10,000-hour rule. And we talk about that and also how that attribution or that interpretation really wasn't quite what the original research showed. To find out what it did show, tune into this conversation. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. As I mentioned, I have a longtime fascination with your work and

just sort of the exploration of what does it take to be extraordinary in any particular field. In your newly out book, you open up with a conversation that I thought was really fascinating about some early research that you were doing with a young runner in college and a little bit of belief shifting about what was possible with memory. Would you share a bit about that? Yeah, and I think because it really exemplifies what we're trying to describe in the book, kind of that change in way that people do things and how that impacts the possibility here of improving it. So if we take the simple task of just reproducing a list of numbers, you know, most people can do like a phone number or seven digits. And the way they typically

do it, if you read them a phone number, is just to kind of recite it to themselves until they've keyed it in and then they kind of forget about it. And that was very important when I kind of started my research career, a sort of a constraint that basically seemed to limit what humans could do is that inability to actually pay attention to a lot of things at the same time. And so I was working with a colleague, a professor at Carnegie Mellon, and we were kind of interested in how could training really change that. And there was some early work indicating that you could at least increase the span here or the number of digits you could recall by at least five. So we kind of contacted a student who actually signed up for work study at Carnegie Mellon. So he was going to do work. And we asked him if he was willing to spend some of that time,

you know, training to memorize numbers. Little did he know what was about to ensue. Yeah, you know, I guess we all really didn't know what was going to happen. And I remember those were really exciting times. So he basically, you know, for the first week, I guess he was kind of increasing a little bit, so he got up to about 10 digits. But then there was one session where there was kind of a change in how he was doing it. He basically, instead of reciting all the digits that were presented, he kind of focused in on the first three digits and then tried to make associations. And he was a runner, so a lot of the times could be viewed

here as minutes and seconds, and then he could actually form associations. So 4.13 would be, you know, 4 minutes and 13 seconds, which would be a very good mile time. And by concentrating on it for a while, he could then shift his focus on the remaining digits. And then when he recalled, he could actually recall from long-term memory that first set of three digits, and that actually increased his span. And then as he got better, he could do several of those three digits. And eventually, I guess he came up with a system that would allow him to do, I guess, over like 20 of these groups that he could store in long-term memory.

And then at the end of the presentation, he could then go back to the beginning and recall each of them from long-term memory. But I guess this transition here from rehearsal, because if you were sticking to just doing more of the same with rehearsal, you would never get beyond 10 or 11 digits. But by shifting the strategy of using long-term memory, he was kind of able to open up a space of possibilities. And we've studied other of his colleagues that also got to about 100 digits. And now I think the current record for how many digits you can report back is over 450.

So this is just sort of, you know, in some ways it's mind boggling unless you understand kind of what they're doing, and also the amount of time that they took to develop the skill to be able to do it at the speed of presenting digits at one digit per second. Right. So talk to me about that time, because this didn't happen over a few weeks. No, it was basically, I think, about 400 hours. And we had maybe two or three hours a week of training. So over a few years. So we're talking about hours a week of training. So over a few years. So we're talking about over a couple of years. And I think that is kind of key and in some ways really helpful that you're not really kind of starting and then spending eight hours a day, you know,

seven days a week on training. He did one hour and then he didn't do anything the next day, and then he did it another hour. And I think basically that intensity of being able to focus while he was being tested is part of the success of his training. And I think that's one of the things that we've seen here and many other experts is that ability to concentrate during short periods and sort of stretch what you're able to do to a level that you couldn't previously attain. Yeah, it seems like, so there's so much mythology that I think I want to talk to you about also. And you write about this, your earlier research became popularized, maybe it was 10 years ago at this point by, you know, very well known writer Malcolm Gladwell, and then went out into the universe and

kind of became known as the 10,000 hour rule. And a lot of people took that as well, you know, you just keep iterating, you keep practicing and repeating for some 10,000 hours, and magically, you know, you're the best in the world. And, you know And we'll deconstruct some of the fallacies there. But I think one of the starting point beyond the number itself is this difference that you're talking about, that you're making between the idea of to become extraordinary, for him to be able to increase his performance abilities to memorize seven numbers up to 100-something numbers,

which would put him in a pretty elite class in the world, I'm guessing. Well, at the time, he actually performed the highest level that were documented. Now, there are other individuals who kind of duplicated what he did and even gone past it. And I think that's kind of interesting because that's a point that we're making between sort of purposeful practice versus deliberate practice. So, the first student that, you know, basically reached 82 digits as his maximum, he kind of, you know, went along and solved problems and tried to figure out

what he could do differently that would allow him to store longer and longer lists of digits. Now, those individuals that are now able to do over 450 digits, what they're doing, they're more like the kind of music students that we have that start out with a teacher that actually tells them the fundamentals. So they're not, you know, kind of trying to figure it out by themselves. They're actually learning a system, and then they actually practice that system. And by executing that system, they're now able to do vastly more than that individual that had to figure out for himself. And I think that's a really powerful idea that if you can draw on what teachers have learned over sometimes centuries about the best way of doing things, and you actually start when you can do it multiple ways, because if you're

beginning at low levels, there's many ways that you can do it. But as you're getting higher and higher up in the skill hierarchy, there's going to be fewer and fewer things that would allow you to actually reach one step higher. And I think in music, that's really critical. And I know of some historical examples of people who actually had to relearn how they were doing things in order to advance to the next level of mastery. And it makes so much sense.

And we're always taught, if you can find somebody who's already been there, an extraordinary mentor or teacher who's figured out, who's stumbled and fumbled and figured out a process or a method that works, you can accelerate, you can leapfrog a bit by coming under their tutelage, learning their approach. I guess my question with that is this, if you make the assumption that that will get you from zero to 50 or to very good at something a lot faster because they figured out you're essentially learning somebody else's system. Does the fact that you haven't gone through the process of struggle and iteration and complex problem solving and trying and failing, trying and failing until you've constructed your own. You haven't learned through the own problem-solving process to

learn how to potentially break through the ceiling of another person's system because you didn't go through the process of constructing it yourself? I think that's a really interesting question. And I would argue that I would expect the benefit here of having gone through the process of figuring out how to do it, that that may transfer more if you selected to try to memorize some other type of information. Because that's one of the important findings here is that if you train your memory for digits, the way that you form meaningful associations doesn't transfer into letters.

So we had this guy who was able to do 80 digits, his memory span or his ability to remember lists of consonants hadn't improved any. So it's basically, in order to start out with a new type of material, you really need to kind of establish these mnemonic associations. But I think that's where I would expect. I don't know that I have, well, we have some evidence of people that were tested

where we actually, you know, they were skilled at one thing and then we tried to see here, could they transfer the skill to another type of material? And we've seen examples here of people who can draw, but they're drawing primarily on the knowledge. So they actually sometimes can translate. So we actually had one exceptional student who memorized about 60 digits, and we gave him less of symbols, you know, the top row of a typewriter, just to see here how he would be able to do with symbols. And he basically was performing at a

normal level. But then he figured out that he could actually find associations between the symbols and digits. So he could actually translate them into digits. And then he was able to... And that's where his... Right, and then he was able to improve to about 30 of those symbols. But from his verbal descriptions, it was very clear here that he was kind of translating it into digits, which he was really good at memorizing. Right, so as long as he could figure out sort of the master key to get back to the methodology that he had become proficient at, he was able to do it. And we also have some similar research on a Chinese student who was using a method that

he could kind of make to fit into memorizing cards so he could translate cards into digits and then basically remember the digits and exhibit exceptional performance. Right. So let's talk about this idea. You brought up these two words, purposeful practice and deliberate practice. And deliberate practice is the one that I've been familiar with for quite a while now, which is very different than just the notion of practice. So what's deliberate practice, and tell me if I'm getting this wrong, is the type of very specific practice

that leads most efficiently, at least by what we know now, to growth, to mastery, to expertise. Right. And I think to kind of clarify, because people have been using deliberate practice in sort of ways that are a little bit different from what we originally proposed when we looked at musical students. Because the musical students were working with an individual teacher that actually guided their practice, so they could actually translate that into now detailed practice activities that they could go off and do by themselves and monitor the outcome. And we kind of call purposeful practices when you have a training task with a goal, and then you have something that you can do over with immediate feedback, and you have opportunities here to repeat it,

and also then to kind of reflect and figure out ways in which you can do it differently to reach the goal that you set for yourself. So the big difference then, just because I want to make sure it's clear in my mind, is one has more external guidance by a teacher and the other is more internally. Exactly. So purposeful practice or say deliberate practice would be purposeful practice, which is now supervised and actually guided by a teacher. Because I think that's one of the problems that a lot of individuals have when they want to improve something.

You know, if they're going to do it for the first time, the likelihood that they are going to figure out effective ways of improving their performance is much less. So if you actually have a teacher who worked with a lot of other individuals, they would be able to kind of assess, well, here's where you're at, and let's sort of correct your fundamentals here before we kind of start moving into the higher levels. And then basically, and here is a good practice task for you to adjust what you're doing incorrectly because eventually that is going to be a real limiting factor.

Right. And the big difference between whether it's purposeful or deliberate, the big difference between those two categories and just regular practice. Right. So that's a huge difference between purposeful practice and basically practice or play. Just like putting in the hours. Right. You know, and I think one example that I like is, you know, playing doubles with some friends and then basically you miss a backhand volley or something. Now, basically what happens is the game just goes on. And if you encounter the same situation, you know, an hour later, it's not

likely that you're going to do any better than you did that time. So the idea here, how you actually now do purposeful practice would be for a coach to kind of look at you and say, okay, you need to work on your backhand volley. And then the coach can set up easy volleys where you're ready to basically hit them and then eventually get more difficult shots, volley shots. And then eventually you may have to run up to the net and basically do it. And then finally, it would be integrated in rallies where you would basically, you know, do the backhand volley as part of the regular playing. And the idea here is that with that purposeful practice where you're actually kind of helped to focus in on a particular aspect, that you can probably gain, you know, as much in two hours as you would as in a couple of years of just playing with friends.

So, yeah, because it's interesting, right? You'll have somebody, you know, let's say you're playing casually with friends and, you know, maybe it's every weekend you've got a game. But the primary, the reason you do it is because it's fun. You love to get together with your friends. You're playing tennis every weekend. You know, you like your backhand isn't what it needs to be. But, you know, there's your purpose in sort of like playing every weekend, even though it seems like you're playing a lot, you're playing hours every weekend for years, there's never this deliberate focus on there's a specific thing that I want to get better and better and better at. So simply playing without that focus will never – you'll hit a plateau pretty quickly. And from what I'm understanding, you're saying the way that you move through that to the next level of expertise is in a much more focused, intensive, guided repetition

with a specific focus on improvement. Exactly. And I guess if you're working with a teacher, then they would be able to set up a sequence of different things that you could make adjustments. And I think what's really important is that the teacher have a good confidence in that you're able to make these adjustments with these training activities and if you run into problems then the teacher is going to go in there and diagnose what is it that is really you know the obstacle that we need to fix first before you can achieve the goal yeah and and. And I think that kind of confidence of having somebody who knows that you would be able to actually achieve this immediate goal. And then as you've done that, there will be a sequence of other goals that eventually will race your performance. That's really key. And in some ways, it's fundamentally different from this view that you're playing and then

eventually you will uncover some gift or some ability that just emerges magically, I think is a very big difference. And I know that when I've talked to college students, a lot of them actually spend a lot of time looking for what they're gifted at. And very few of them, or essentially nobody that I've met, actually finds the gifts. So instead, if you take the view here, this is what I would like to do, and then figure out, you know, what is the path that would permit me to be able to do what I want to do. That is, I guess, what our research kind of indicates is the positive way of, you know, improving. Yeah.

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Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be funny. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot't shoot if we need them y'all need a pilot flight risk and and that brings in what i mean it brings in two things in my mind that i'm curious about one

we've already talked about but i want to actually take it a step further is the idea that the teacher or the mentor and their role in holding somebody to a practice that may not be all that much, all that enjoyable, you know, it's, and which brings me to the second thing, which is the motivation and where it comes from, because the type of practice that you're talking about, you know, it's the, it's the scales, but it's not just playing the scales on your instrument. It's every time you play a scale, thinking like, how could I improve on this particular thing over and over and over? And most people, and I'm curious what your experience has been, but I know for me, I quit playing guitar very young because part of the reason was it was just I was miserable doing those basic things. But I have friends who would vanish, would literally skip school because there was something inside of them that just drove them to want to get better and better and better. And they didn't have a teacher. There was this fierce, intrinsic sense of motivation that

in some way allowed them to endure work that I think almost everybody else viewed as somewhat maniacal and maybe even enjoy it. So I'm curious what your experience has been around the dance of where motivation comes from and how much of that comes from the outside or the teacher versus something inside? I think those are great questions. And I think we're kind of making slow progress to be able to answer them. What I see is that when it comes to practice, the way you organize a practice may make it a lot easier to do. So one way, if you actually have a practice schedule where you don't have to decide that you're going to practice, but you basically, that's part of your daily ritual. You basically, and often with musicians, you know, the first thing that they do

is actually put in time practicing, but they also kind of adjust it so you don't push yourself. So you actually give yourself, make sure here that you have full concentration. So you have rested. So you basically, once you get into the practice room, it's kind of almost like a ritual of sorts where you actually are, you know, really excited here about pushing yourself. And I think by pushing yourself, it's almost like in some ways, as you're doing it, you don't really notice time. And I think if you don't have that concentration in the stretching, then I think you're more likely here to basically notice, you know, that it's boring boring and you don't really see that you're getting better. Because I think having that experience of being able to do something that you couldn't do, that actually is a very enjoyable, it's sort of feeling like, you know, you're climbing a mountain and you can kind of see here new views that you, you know, couldn't see before. And I think that kind of coupling, you know,

basically what you're doing with consequences that are important to you. And I know talking to musicians, when you are able to play music, when you can actually play music that you enjoy, you know, the sounds are being produced. That seems to be the kind of stage where a musician can really enjoy because now they have the control and they can discover new things. If you don't, you know, so very early on, you really don't have those representations and it's going to be apparent. Maybe you were sitting around and say,

wow, you know, that was really beautiful. You just did that. But as you develop, I think you're internalizing these things. So you can now have that kind of experience. And it also empowers you, you know, big group of people to give them a musical experience. I know a lot of music students and musicians that really treasure that. I mean, that is sort of a really special feeling and then obviously people are going to be grateful to you because you were the one who gave them that experience yeah i wonder

if the motivation side is a blend then of in part being able to visualize that eventual outcome of like in putting yourself if i was there and i could do this and I could feel that way, being able to get clarity around that. And then simultaneously, it sounds like the other piece of it is maybe learning how to break the practice, the iterations into small enough pieces so that you can experience some, even though it's hard, grueling even in some instances, you can experience some small hint of progress along the way. And I guess that kind of jives with Teresa Amabile's work on sort of small bits of progress as the thing that moves us. No, and I think that's very important. I would add just having the assurance here that the teacher, if you run into problems that seem to basically be an something that you're currently not able to do, that I think is invigorating and motivating. Yeah, which also makes so much sense. And it also kind of brings in Carol Dweck's work on the fixed and growth mindset. If you see that this is actually, you know, you're not genetically faded where you've hit your ceiling, but it's actually it's a matter of learning how to practice purposefully, deliberately the right way. And that's what I think is very helpful for children to acquire a high level of skill in some domain because that gives them sort of the repertoire

of tools and they will be able to appreciate you know how the teacher can actually help them overcome things that they thought were really limiting factors and and this idea here that you really want to get to a point where you have independent control over what you're doing so if you're just trying to memorize things without really kind of embedding it with the rest of your knowledge so you can really use that knowledge, I think that must be a very difficult activity. And I remember as a fourth or fifth grader that I made this contract with myself that I would not memorize things that I couldn't understand. And I remember, you know, taking history.

And what I ended up doing was to go to the library and reading books about this historical period. So I could kind of do that. And then I could actually get all the right answers to the questions. But I didn't have to spend the time now kind of memorizing years and names and stuff like that. So it was sort of a more indirect way. And I say some parallels to, you know, memorizing digits. So instead of doing just the simplest way of rehearsing it, you're actually, you know, adding that processing of interpreting the numbers and meaning, you're doing a lot more work. But that kind of opens up now this activity and allows you to develop more skill and actually use this and relate it to other things that you know, as opposed to something that you memorize, and then a year from now, you may have forgotten everything.

Yeah, it's also interesting. It gives me just the tiniest bit of insight into how early in your life you're sort of your fascination with going deeper into really trying to figure out how things work on a theoretical level. Well, you know, I think that a lot of people probably are interested in trying to figure out here how to think and how to basically do things. But yeah, no, I think that is something that I remember being amazed at how scientists come up with formulas and stuff like that and really kind of trying to understand. And I found it very useful, you know, later on in high school reading biographies, because that kind of gave this historical progression. Because, you know, why is mathematics

the way it is? Well, if you read about the history of mathematics, then mathematics was developed as a tool for certain types of problems. So it wasn't like something that was divinely given to humanity. This is sort of an abstract tool that is designed here to help you solve certain types of problems. Yeah, indeed. Before we move on from the notion of the role of a teacher, two things occur to me that I'd love to bounce off of you. And then maybe the two extremes. One is the idea of we're in the age of technology where things are moving very quickly,

especially in AI. Do you conceive of a potential time or maybe do you even know examples of where this is happening now where an application or technology with or without some labeled artificial intelligence could effectively play the role of the teacher in the way that you're saying would be necessary to really create an accelerated move towards expertise? Well, I think there are a lot of interesting developments in AI that I think could provide

learning environments. I think when it ultimately comes to coaching individuals, it's going to be in relationship to the available learning tools. So I think I could imagine, for example, we've collaborated with people in medicine on how do you learn how to interpret x-rays. So if you see an x-ray, is it a fracture or is it not a fracture? Now, that is kind of difficult to do when you're actually training individuals in the real-world situation because not even the expert knows the correct answer here, whether there is a fracture or not. But with days or sometimes months, people will know for sure here whether there was a problem or not. So by not taking that x-ray and now associating this information that is now known about the real outcome, you could kind of provide a library. So instead of actually doing x-rays

that need to be judged, you're actually going in and looking at this old x-ray, looking at it and trying to diagnose it. And then once you've done that, you can immediately get feedback. Right. You don't have to wait the months to see whether you're right or not. Right. And I can see, you know, that a teacher would be able to kind of help somebody to identify, well, you have a problem here detecting this type of thing. So let's, you know, from the library bring up 30 examples here where this type of feature was either present or not present. And then you could basically spend an afternoon. If you had to wait until you basically had those 30 experiences, it may take you 15 years. And now we could basically provide you with that kind of distilled experience in a couple of hours in an afternoon.

Yeah. So that makes sense to me also in the context of something where it seems like it's largely cognitively based and not so much physically based. What about in the context of something like that. And your body has to adapt along the way. The neural pathways have to change and get rerouted and built and deepened. Well, and I think that's where I see the role of the mental representations. They provide kind of the central integration. So now, obviously, if you need to improve, say, your strength, I mean, that's not something that you can just sit and think about. I mean, the way that your muscles will adapt is, and this is where the cognitive part comes in. When you look at sports now, it's not just increasing strength in a blind way, you're actually looking at exactly what are the motor functions that you need that strength to be able to complete.

And now you design training activities where you can, you know, ideally image that you're doing it the real thing, but you're not putting this added pressure so you can actually repeat this action until you actually stimulate the muscles so they will respond here. And most of the responding to the muscles are not happening when you're doing the training. It's more that that creates a stimulus for the physiological system that then when you're resting, you actually have the biological reprogramming where you have growth of capillaries and maybe changes of mitochondria and all sorts of things that will now, once you're doing it next time, you will actually have gradually modified that structure. And that's where it's really important that you do

it gradually because if you were to try to strain the system so much, you know, you may actually injure it and break something. And I think that is one thing that I would argue here, that having that internal control over what you're doing, so you're actually kind of protecting the body. You have to have enough stimulus to get the change, but you can't have too much because that will actually now injure the system. And then, you know, we know that anybody who is a ballet dancer or musician would injure themselves. You know, that's the worst thing that can happen. Yeah. Yeah, so it's almost like it doesn't, even if there is technology that allows the brain side of things, the neural side to accelerate in some way, if it's linked to necessary adaptation in your physical body, there's always going to be a drag in the system, which you were to try to lift something that was basically potentially something that you could mentally do, but if your muscles aren't built up to match that, then you have a real problem. Yeah. So that was the potential technology serving as guide and potentially even motivator.

You can certainly blend in some gamification with that. The flip side is what I, for lack of a better word, I might call the whiplash dilemma. Did you see the movie Whiplash by any chance? No, I did not. So it essentially tells the story of somebody who, they don't name the school, but everyone kind of knows that it's Juilliard in the city, of a young jazz drumming prodigy who comes in. And there is a maniacal band teacher who sees the prodigy and kind of believes that the only way to be the best in the world is to devote your entire life and play until your entire body bleeds nonstop and to give up everything on the planet and essentially destroy yourself in the name of becoming the best in the world. And if you die along the way, so be it. It was a noble quest. You know, it's interesting. The movie ends not,

it doesn't end saying this is necessarily a good thing or this is necessarily the bad thing it kind of poses the question is this level of sacrifice surrender and just utter all in devotion and exclusion of almost everything else necessary to be the best of the best i i would argue that i've seen and i think that's really the negative consequences i i've more encountered with parents of prodigies that basically now impose they are almost like taking over control over the child and then just basically has a child do things in a way that is not controlled by the child but basically by the parents and I think that is really wrong. And if you really think, and this is one reason why relatively few prodigies are ultimately going to be the best

music adult performers. And I think part of the reason is that the parents take too much control. If you really want to develop an independent performer, you're going to have to help the child acquire more and more control. And that kind of goes against this idea in the prodigy parent who is basically making sure here and limiting all sorts of options for the child. And I believe that what you want to do is actually help the child become increasingly in control of what they're doing. And then when they get to the transition here in the teenage years, they are really ready to kind of start being an independent contributor and working with even more advanced teachers than the parents of the prodigies who nearly always are not kind of super masters in their domain. They're more kind of organizing the life of the child.

And I'm not convinced this idea here of suffering and doing all sorts of things, because when I talk to very successful people, I think they're designing their lives for a long term kind of trajectory. And maybe if you were wanting to peak here at 24 and then basically your life would kind of stop after that point, there may be some merit, but I still would, on principle grounds, argue that you really need to support the individual and providing that individual control. And if you do that, you're going to be less likely to have that individual, you know, kind of work extended hours. They're going to be more interested here in that full-time concentration that they can put in on the four or five hours. And when we look at expert performers, I've yet to find somebody who every day puts in more than five hours of kind of focused, deliberate practice. And when you look at, for example,

authors who are writing books, they almost always are limited to about four or five hours. Yeah, I'm cooked after four hours of writing, like really writing. Right. So what is the point here of pushing yourself to do more? I've read a couple of Nobel Prize winning authors who actually, because of book contracts and other things, were trying to squeeze in time in the afternoons as well. And they found that essentially they had to spend more time revising what they did in the afternoons. So basically that wasn't even a winning strategy if you wanted to write the book. And I think harmonizing and providing the kind of environment in which you're able to do your best during these four or five hours, I think that's great. And I don't see that that needs to be a sacrifice.

And if you're pushing it beyond those bounds, I think you're more likely here to create either a burnout motivationally or maybe you will injure yourself for athletes i mean typically when they train too hard you know they actually are more likely not to have injuries and then basically you're going to have to stop anyway yeah it makes a lot of sense it's interesting since you brought up authors now um something curiosity rose with me which is in that in the context of that's you, if I'm working on a book, I'll usually, like you said, you pretty much nailed it, like five hours, my absolute outside window of really intense writing. Generally, it's more between three and four, and then I'm just done. I need to go outside, move my body, go for a walk and enjoy life.

There's an interesting, there seem to be two approaches to writing. One of them is, for lack of a better word, people call it essentially, vomit it onto the page, don't think about editing, don't try and fix it, don't try and make it better. Then when it's all out there, go back and then go, which tends to be my approach, actually. I'm wondering in the context of how those two different at the phase here where you're reaching the kind of the highest level of professional authors. But what I find is that what seems to be key to successful authors is that they actually start writing at a relatively young age and then they read. So that's kind of consistent with this idea here that if you're not producing something, then there's nothing for you to kind of review or ideally to have a parent or a teacher kind of comment on. So basically, it's kind of you need to produce almost like an athlete. Basically, you need to kind of do the things in order to generate feedback about how you can improve it. So once we're kind of talking now about you becoming a more advanced writer, and basically it may also depend a little bit on what kind of genre of writing you're doing. Are you writing plays or are you basically writing, you know, novels? So, I don't know many examples here of spew out and then revise kind of approach to writing. And maybe there are famous successful writers that work that way. Most of the writers

that I've read biographies of seem to be more of the kind like you, where they, you know, kind of work on a plan. And then once they have a plan, they kind of work. But then as they're working, the plan may change because basically once they get down to describing the particular situations or the facts, now basically a different structure emerges. So, you know, it's planning, but it's also being open here to revising that plan. Yeah, and it's interesting too, as you're speaking, I was thinking to myself, the people that tend to just spew it all out, like, you know, like write literally 100,000 words that I know and then don't even think about editing, they just go, go, go, and then they go back and they start making all these editing passes.

To the one, they are all fiction writers, either romance or thrillers. They're literally out of thin air. They're creating a world and characters and beats and stories and plots. And although they're, what interesting too, is the exception that one of the exceptions that I know who's maybe the most prolific and very likely the most financially successful, although that doesn't necessarily mean successful as an author, would be James Patterson. And he's well known to create extensively detailed outlines for his fiction before he sets a pen to page. So it's interesting to think about that person who's sort of like at the very top in terms of producing on editor who would be that mentor slash teacher who could really come in and say like this, I've never met anybody who produces something independently as a writer, who creates something as good as could be created with an outside editor.

And I don't know, when you're talking about Nobel Prize winning authors, would they work with editors? Anybody who's commercially published or traditionally published, yeah. I mean, are there extraordinary examples like, yeah, Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, supposedly, was written in a handful of days, but also digested out of journals that were kept for quite an extensive amount of time. But I don't know if those then went to a publisher and there was significant editing after them or it just kind of like hit the page and it was largely the way it is. But then again, we get into the risk, don't we, of finding the extremely rare outlier and trying to prove the rule based on the outlier.

Well, you know, and I think that's kind of interesting whether the rule, you know, almost necessitates how you would do it. I still think that if the vast majority of successful authors do it one way, I think I would advise a student to basically follow that path unless they basically found here that they just, you know, for whatever reason, couldn't follow that path. Because it seems to me to suggest that, you know, that's the way it's done. But I think with the rule here about the five hours, I'd be interested to find even a single counterexample to that. But you really need to have, you know, basically authors who are writing books that would take a substantial amount of time. So a poet may, in fact, you know, not really qualify because they can kind of produce the piece in less time so they don't really need to pace themselves over you know

weeks or months yeah to be able to produce the piece because once it's big enough then you need to sort of you know be able to sleep and sort of resume what you're doing and and that i think imposes some interesting constraints on how you really can construct uh you know a very excellent piece of writing yeah i want to circle back to something that we spoke just touched on briefly in the beginning which was um the idea that you've been doing research for for substantial amount of time now in this area of expertise and expert performance and a number of years back, well-known writer Malcolm Gladwell came out with a book where he sort of popularized this idea of

the 10,000 hour rule. And it seems like the way that it was offered through him is not the way that your sort of original research was focused or was your intention. Take me into sort of what happened here and what the real message is. And I think it's important here that Malcolm Gladwell and I had no contacts before he published that book. And I think there are two things that I think are different. One is that when Malcolm Gladwell, he never talks about deliberate practice. He talks about practice. And he seems to refer to practice as the Beatles were playing in Hamburg for hours and hours during a period. That doesn't match the definition of purposeful practice, where you're really trying

to change specific things. I'm sure that playing the same piece over and over and then discussing here how you would be able to do it better, you know, could improve the performance, but it really doesn't connect up here with what I saw as Beatles' really kind of historic contribution, which was composing this new music and then performing it. It wasn't like they were excellent performers. They were more performing this really creative new type of music. And in order to kind of understand the precursors of how they were able to, you know, get exposed to the different types of music, you would be looking at a very different

kind of background activities that would allow them now to kind of compose and sort of introduce to the Western music sphere, you know, a line of music that belonged to different cultures. Right. So that's the difference between how he really just spoke about something which really very likely wasn't the purposeful practice you were talking about. Talk to me about the 10,000 number because that's also... Right. And there, I guess, you know, he was noticing here that we reported here that the average of individuals in our most elite group had spent 10,000 hours, suggesting that there was something magical about the 10,000 hour that once you got over that kind of boundary that you now actually would belong into the best category. But the actual finding was that this was just an average, and in some sense, they were overlapped between the groups. So the point we were wanting to make is that, look, even the most talented individuals are spending this remarkable amount of time before they actually reach becoming to the music academy. And if you really are asking what somebody who is going to win an

international competition spent, they typically do that in their early 30s. So that's like 12 years after age 20. So we estimate that, you know, 20, 25,000 hours is actually the amount of time that they have spent now practicing by themselves. So I agree with Gladwell, and I think his point here about look at these skills, how long it takes for even the most, quote, talented individuals to attain them. And if you want to basically be great at something, you're going to have to be patient. But I think some people have misinterpreted that to say, if I just put in 10,000 hours playing soccer, I'm suddenly going to be an expert. And that, I think, is, you know. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

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You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. Misinterpretation that actually is pretty hurtful because it sort of robs

these individuals who want to get better about the knowledge here about what they really need to do if they're going to change their performance. Yeah, and I would imagine it's also,

and tell me if this is right or not, it's not only, there's probably a huge variance, not only between the individual, but also between the domain of expert performance. Right, you know, and we started talking here about, you know, the college student that broke the world record here for digits, you know, and he spent 400 hours.

And at that point, he was the best. Right. Now, basically, obviously, today, there are people who are doing far better. But I think if you look at any domain, these historical increases are really interesting. So like in marathon, you know, if you ran a threehour marathon, you would be competitive at the Olympic level at the early Olympic Games. Now that's basically what is required. It doesn't even qualify. Yeah, just to qualify a Boston Marathon, that's basically what you need to do. And there are thousands of people who are doing that. So I think over time, you know, we've really kind of learned about effective training.

And then individuals, actually, if we look at their absolute performance, there's been a great rise in their ability to perform. And I think that's a very important perspective that if you're interested in improving your performance, you should look at the objective level. And it may be not as important here if there are other people in the world who are equally good or better than you are. The key is that in most sort of activities, it's the objective level of performance that makes a difference. So if you're a doctor and you're able to treat patients here with better outcomes, that is really genuinely good. It doesn't matter whether, in fact, your performance is the best or third best or whatever. patients knowing that they have invested in improving their ability to diagnose and find the right kind of treatment for patients. I think that satisfaction is what I think is driving

many doctors. Yeah. It's interesting to hear you say that also. There was a couple years back, I needed a bit of surgery. And so I went and I searched for like the top surgeon in New York for this particular field. And generally these guys, you know, they don't take insurance as much and their, you know, their rates are top of the market. And, and I was having a conversation with some friends about, about this and they're like, well, you know, you're, you're paying a lot of money, you know? And I, and I said, well, said, fundamentally, in my mind, I'm paying not to go first or second or a thousandth, like, I'm paying for the data set and the pattern recognition and the, you know, the mental model that has been developed in this person's mind to allow them to

be better and more efficient that somebody without those years and that data set and those exposures, just no matter how smart they are, just doesn't have to draw upon. But I think that's interesting. And I believe now with simulators that it may be possible to actually help surgical candidates to develop the skills. So once they actually become independent surgeons, that they will now have reached a higher level than was true in the past. And I think it's kind of intriguing here that allowing for that measurement is the first step to kind of help us kind of design out training that will actually improve the performance. And I think medicine is really remarkable in being willing to do that because everyone realizes here that if we can improve performance, it's going to benefit everyone.

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. The flip side is, though, medicine is still, even though it's certainly more regulated and from the outside looking in, the early years are more humane than they were a generation ago. It's still an extraordinary number of hours, way beyond four or five hours a day where you would say somebody is really at their best. I wonder how that plays into allowing your brain to recover enough to really be optimal during the windows when it needs to be and engage and really benefit from these advances in technology or things that might really help. And I think that's interesting. And I've been talking to some medical educators. And part of the thing, I think, is that the current training system is based on the hospitals and how you can integrate training with treating patients for financial reasons.

And that means that some of the training doctors, they're spending a lot of time doing things that really, in some ways, isn't designed to improve their performance, but it's more a service that they're doing to the system. And I think maybe with simulators and other ways in which you can make training more effective, that you would actually be able to kind of help trainees to reach measurable, objective performance faster. And that, I think, would benefit everyone in the whole system.

Yeah. I mean, imagine if you had, you know, an hour out of a 10-hour shift was in some form of simulator that really gave them that focus, you know, what would the net effect be across? Well, I think there are all sorts of really interesting questions and I'm just delighted here that people are starting to discuss it. And I see that, you know, there are all sorts of interesting initiatives at various hospitals where they're really trying out different ways. And hopefully once, you know, those results come in, other places will find ways here that they can improve. Yeah. I want to come full circle.

We've both used the term, two terms throughout the conversation at different points, talent and prodigy. And the beginning of your book, Peak, kind of addresses this, I think, in that we talk about somebody having a gift. And in popular parlance, when we talk about that, we think it's some sort of genetically endowed gift. And it seems like you do see, in fact, that we all have a gift. But in your mind, the gift is not the gift that we seem to all be talking about.

Well, I think I would argue that if you think that everyone has potential, now it's more a question here of actually helping individuals to reach that potential. And I would argue that the research, I've been trying to look for constraints, something that actually would, due to somebody's DNA, would limit their success in some domain of expertise. And it seems like height and body size are the only areas that I think that we currently have compelling evidence to argue that if you're wanting to be a center playing basketball and you are way shorter than average, that probably would not be a good fit. And there are other domains where actually you could capitalize on being below average, like artistic gymnastics and some other sports. And I think looking for those real constraints, and until we have firm evidence to tell people here, well, you don't have the genes to be able to do X, Y, and Z.

And my reading of the literature is that we don't really have robust evidence that would tell you that you're less likely to be successful in this domain. Now, maybe 10, 20 years from now, we will have more information about that. But until that point in time, I think we should basically support individuals. And in particular, I think, investing in giving individuals access to teachers so they actually will be able to more effectively develop into independent performers. Yeah, and teachers and intelligent processes, you know, processes that are what you're proposing

that are rather than let's play doubles, whether it's, you know, like tennis on the weekend or math in the classroom. Let's take it. Right. And basically, I think there's room for, you know, playful activities. It's just that you need to make room now for this focused activity. And once you kind of combine the two, I think you will have a better system that will be more rewarding for everyone at home.

That makes sense because then there's a little celebration with the doubles. Wow, look at what I can do. The backhand finally improved. It makes a lot of sense. Really enjoyed this conversation. I want to come full circle with one final question. So the name of this is the Good Life Project. So if I offered that term out to you just on a personal level, to live a good life, what comes up?

What does it mean to you? Well, I would argue that feeling that basically the work that you've been doing is beneficial to other people is maybe some of the most rewarding experiences that I have. And I would say that over the years, you know, people have come up to me and said, you know, I read this and that, and that really led me to rethink here, you know, what a teacher told me that I couldn't do this. And I basically have now contacted another teacher who has basically helped me now, you know, sing or I think other activities that often people want to do is to draw and then you have all the sports and, you know, playing musical instruments. And that kind of sense here that I'm helping other people, you know, move in a direction that makes them happier, that's probably one of the most rewarding things. And I think the more that we can help other people develop skills so they, in turn, can actually, you know, help others would be, you know, the kind of positive good circle where, you know, we would actually create an even better society than we have now.

Thank you. Thank you. Hey, thanks so much for listening. We love sharing real unscripted conversations and ideas that matter. And if you enjoy that too, and if you enjoy what we're up to, I'd be so grateful if you would take just a few seconds and rate and review the podcast. It really helps us get the word out. You can actually do that now right from the podcast app on your phone. If you have an iPhone, you just click on the reviews tab and take a few seconds and jam over there. And if you haven't yet subscribed while you're there, then make sure

you hit the subscribe button while you're there, then make sure you hit the subscribe button while you're at it. And then you'll be sure to never miss out on any of our incredible guests or conversations or riffs. And for those of you, our awesome community who are on other platforms, any love that you might be able to offer sharing our message would just be so appreciated. Until next time, this is Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project. Meditations, whatever your vibe, Peloton has thousands of classes built to push you. We know how life goes. New father, new routines, new locations.

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