1 Minute Takeaways
Overnight success doesn’t exist. Success takes mastery. Mastery takes hours. Specifically, Malcolm Gladwell suggests it takes 10,000 hours of purposeful practice to achieve mastery.
10,000 hours translates to 5 hours per day, every day, for over 5 years
Circumstances can make a difference. Bill Gates had access to one of the few modern computers as he was growing up where he clocked 10 hours of programming ahead of launching Microsoft.
IQ isn’t the only factor that determines success. Attitude, adaptability, resilience, emotional intelligence play a much bigger role.
Love what you do. If you are going to be spending 10,000 hours mastering a skill, you want to make sure it is something that gives your joy and purpose.
How is Outliers relevant today?
Social media has been a blessing for many aspects in people’s lives. I, for one, having lived in more addresses I care to remember (that’s not true, I remember, it’s 19 addresses) have benefited from keeping in touch with others through t

he years. This wouldn’t have been possible without this technology.
However, as with most technologies, there are down sides. Everywhere I look I am bombarded with motivational messages and people living their best life [or pretending to do so]. We have grown to crave instant gratification and admire those so called overnight successes.
Are overnight successes really a thing?
In his book, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the concept of mastery needing hours; specifically 10,000 hours.
Where did 10,000 hours come from?
Outliers highlights a number of examples that point to 10,000 hours being the magic number for mastery. Across sports, music, entrepreneurship there appears to be patterns of many hours spent in the attainment of a skill. One story that stuck with me, amongst many, is the skill level violin players attain with practice. The following story is from Gladwell’s book:
A study done in the early 1990s by the psychologist K. Anders Ericsson and two colleagues at Berlin’s elite Academy of Music. With the help of the Academy’s professors, they divided the school’s violinists into three groups.
In the first group were the stars, the students with the potential to become world-class soloists. In the second were those judged to be merely “good.” In the third were students who were unlikely to ever play professionally and who intended to be music teachers in the public school system.
All of the violinists were then asked the same question: over the course of your entire career, ever since you first picked up the violin, how many hours have you practiced?
Everyone from all three groups started playing at roughly the same age, around five years old. In those first few years, everyone practiced roughly the same amount, about two or three hours a week. But when the students were around the age of eight, real differences started to emerge.
The students who would end up the best in their class began to practice more than everyone else: six hours a week by age nine, eight hours a week by age twelve, sixteen hours a week by age fourteen, and up and up, until by the age of twenty they were practicing—that is, purposefully and single-mindedly playing their instruments with the intent to get better—well over thirty hours a week. In fact, by the age of twenty, the elite performers had each totaled ten thousand hours of practice.
By contrast, the merely good students had totaled eight thousand hours, and the future music teachers had totaled just over four thousand hours.
Is 10,000 hours the only factor?
No.
The author discusses practice, circumstances, and the way society is set up as factors determining the rise of outliers. Let’s talk about hockey. According to the author, the cut off for children to join hockey teams resided in the back end of they year:
A boy who turns 10 on January 2, then, could be playing alongside someone who doesn’t turn 10 until the end of the year
This means that children playing in hockey team could have 8-12 months difference of physical maturity. This probably doesn’t sound like much, but it can be a large difference when it comes to the physical maturity of 5-6 years old.
Ok what’s the point?
The point is - the more physically mature children have an edge over the less mature ones. Because they have a physical edge, they get noticed by the coaches. Because they get noticed, they play more. Because they play more, they get selected for regionals - I could continue here, but you get the point.
If this rings a bell, it is because it’s the same concept behind systematic racism. I would suggest checking out this fantastic article by Ben & Jerry, which we mentioned in the podcast: article.
Does the 10,000 hours rule still hold true?
There have been a number of articles published, since the release of the book, claiming to debunk the 10,000 hours.
One article in particular dissected the violinists case study and highlighted that practice wasn’t the only factor in the making of a virtuoso. Skills, genetics, the quality of teachings one can get access to - among many other factors, determine the making of an outlier.
I personally buy into the practice makes perfect concept but I find the specific number of hours hard to accept as an absolute truth. However, I also recognise that there are other factors that can give an edge. As per the previous article on the Unfair Advantage, money, intelligence, location, education and status can all be factors into the making of an outlier.
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