Good news! The 10,000-hour rule isn’t real. Bad news. Deliberate practice isn’t fun.
December 24, 2025
By Rachel Smith
We’re ending the year by busting some more scientific myths that have made it into popular culture and won’t seem to go away. This week, it’s the 10,000-hour rule—the idea that the key to achieving world-class expertise in something is to practice for 10,000 hours.
Where did it come from? What is it based on? Is it true? What does world-class mean anyway? And should we even care?
It was Malcom Gladwell who popularized the idea of it taking 10,000 hours of practice to gain expertise in his 2008 book Outliers: The Story of Success. He’s the one who called it a “rule” in the first place (deduction Gladwell). To his credit, he was basing it on actual research, unlike last week’s myth (point Gladwell).
The original research was conducted by Anders Ericsson and was published in Psychological Review in 1993—“The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance.” Ericsson studied students at the Music Academy of West Berlin and found that the “best violinists” had taken part in more deliberate practice, an average of 10,000 hours, than the “good violinists” and the “music teachers.” (Everything I have found describes Ericsson as a kind and humble person, and it’s true that the “music teachers” were from the Music Education department of the Academy, unlike the “best” and “good” students. But referring to them as best, good, and music teacher seems unnecessarily condescending. Deduction Ericsson.)
Ericsson claims that Gladwell misinterpreted his research. He thought Gladwell was focused too much on the number of hours rather than the importance of deliberate practice. He said that 10,000 hours was an average, and that the number itself was not what was most critical. Malcom Gladwell is a journalist and author, not a scientific researcher. A scientist would never refer to something as a “rule” after looking at one study. I mean, gravity is still referred to as a theory, and we’ve been pretty sure of that one for a while. But as much as Gladwell didn’t do a great job of interpreting the science, I don’t think he deserves as much flak as he’s gotten. Is the 10,000-hour rule true? No. Does it have something to teach us about effort and the best way to get better at something? Definitely.
Before we look at what the research says about how much and what kinds of practice can make us elite-level in our field, we must first define what Ericsson and Gladwell are talking about when they say deliberate practice. Deliberate practice has several key factors:
If it sounds like not very much fun, then you have the right idea. Deliberate practice forces you out of your comfort zone. Ericsson wasn’t talking about 10,000 hours of playing 3-on-3 with your friends. It’s more like spending several practice sessions on just your free-throw stance.
Now that we understand what kind of practice we’re talking about, what does the science say?
It depends on what you’re doing
In 2016, researchers conducted a meta-analysis of the relationship between deliberate practice and performance in a wide array of activities. They found that deliberate practice predicted 26% of the skill variation in chess, 21% for music, and 18% for sports. Deliberate practice makes you better, but it’s not the bulk of what makes you better.
The range can be large
In 2008, researchers at Brunel University in the UK looked at the average number of hours it took for someone to reach “master” status in chess. The answers ranged from 728 hours to 16,120 hours. When some people take 22 times the number of hours as others, the average doesn’t really mean much.
Experience doesn’t always matter
In Geoff Colvin’s 2010 book Talent Is Overrated: What ReallySeparates World-Class Performers From Everybody Else, he cites several studies that show years of experience in a field does not always have a large (or any) impact. Auditors with years of experience aren’t any better at detecting corporate fraud than their freshly trained counterparts. The same goes for clinical psychologists judging personality disorders, surgeons predicting the length of post-surgery hospital stays, stockbrokers recommending stocks, and college admissions officials judging applicants.
This is why we don’t call them rules
In 2019, the Royal Society of Open Science tried to replicate Ericsson’s 1993 findings and couldn’t. I’m happy to report that they called the lowest group “less accomplished violinists” instead of “music teachers” (points Royal Society of Open Science). They found that the less accomplished violinists practiced significantly less, but that both the good and the best practiced the same average of 11,000 hours.
Yes, there’s a genetic component
In David Epstein’s 2014 book The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance, he cites a study of 400 baseball players. It found their average visual acuity to be 20/13. THE AVERAGE.
Being the best early doesn’t make you the best
In a paper published in Science (literally six days ago!), researchers found some interesting trends among world-class performers. It turns out that young exceptional performers are not the people who turn out to be world-class adult performers. What’s more, world-class athletes are more likely to have had increased multidisciplinary practice early on, meaning they weren’t focused on just one sport as young kids.
So, should you be trying to practice for 10,000 hours? I don’t think that’s the right question. I hate to break it to you, but most of us are not destined to become world-class experts, so let’s stop focusing on the 10,000-hour not-a-rule. Instead, what can all these studies teach us about how to improve our performance in whatever it is we’re doing?
Artist, writer, and environmental psychologist Anne Kearney has some recommendations. She uses mental models to explain how we learn. Mental models are internal frameworks, the physical circuitry of the brain that encodes information about our experiences with things and ideas, and how they are all interrelated. She gives the example of a chess grandmaster. When this person looks at the board, even with the thousands of moves they could make and the thousands of countermoves their opponent can take, they can see what their next move should be. They have a very sophisticated mental model of the game.
Here’s what Kearney says are the best ways to build and sharpen your mental model.
Dedicate the time. Maybe not 10,000 hours of time, but there’s no other way to build a mental model without doing the work.
Work with a teacher. Or coach. Or mentor. Someone whose mental model of the skill you’re developing is much more sophisticated than your own. Especially because you need to…
Get feedback. A mentor or coach is great for this, but you can also practice your pitch in front of a mirror or record yourself and watch it like a game tape.
Forget muscle memory. You need to maintain an awareness of what you’re doing.
Focus on your weak spots. We all have them. You won’t have a sophisticated mental model if you don’t fill in the gaps where you’re lacking knowledge or skill. Focusing on weak spots also makes you…
Get out of your comfort zone. You can’t get better if you don’t push yourself. You can’t expand your mental map if you’re not willing to expand your comfort zone.
Maybe you’re a rock star in sales, or at leadership, or at doing the Thriller dance. Maybe you’re good with your mental model as it is. But there’s always more to master. And there might be things you need to unlearn and adjust. We’re not all going to be grand masters, but we can all keep learning.
Are you ready for deliberate sales practice? How about some roleplays and call reviews with the Maestro team? Email us at mastery@maestrogroup.co if you’re interested in learning more.
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