10 years to get good at anything
Summary
- In order to get truly expert at anything, we must put in time. Some studies show 10,000 hrs, some 10 years.
- This time must be spent deliberately practising not just 10,000 hrs of doing the same thing.
Details
- Even geniuses like Mozart spent 10 years 'of silence' before producing his best work.
- Doing deliberate practise deliberately and consistently over a long period of time is very effective
- John Hayes, cognitive psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon university researched the role of effort, practise and knowlege in top performers. After analyzing musical pieces produced between 1685 to 1900, he found that the pieces considered masterworks were produced by composers after their first 10years in their careers. Of 500 pieces, only 3 were written before 10 years: in years 8 and 9. He referred to this period as the 'ten years of silence'
References
Quotes
How long does it take to become elite at your craft? And what do the people who master their goals do differently than the rest of us?
That’s what John Hayes, a cognitive psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon University, wanted to know.
For decades, Hayes has been investigating the role of effort, practice, and knowledge in top performers. He has studied the most talented creators in history — people like Mozart and Picasso — to determine how long it took them to become world class at their craft. Furthermore, he has investigated the choices and experiences that have led to their success.
Hayes started his research by examining successful composers. He analyzed thousands of musical pieces produced between the years of 1685 to 1900. The central question that drove his work was, “How long after one becomes interested in music is it that one becomes world class?”
Eventually, Hayes developed a list of 500 pieces that were played frequently by symphonies around the world and were considered to be the “masterworks” in the field. These 500 popular pieces were created by a total of 76 composers.
Next, Hayes mapped out the timeline of each composer’s career and calculated how long they had been working before they created their popular works. What he discovered was that virtually every single “masterwork” was written after year ten of the composer’s career. (Out of 500 pieces there were only three exceptions, which were written in years eight and nine.)
Not a single person produced incredible work without putting in a decade of practice first. Even a genius like Mozart had to work for at least ten years before he produced something that became popular. Professor Hayes began to refer to this period, which was filled with hard work and little recognition, as the “ten years of silence.”
In followup studies, Hayes found similar patterns among famous painters and popular poets. These findings have been further confirmed by research from professors like K. Anders Ericsson, who produced research that revealed that you needed to put in “10,000 hours” to become an expert in your field. (This idea was later popularized by Malcolm Gladwell.)