I first heard about the 10,000 hours rule from the president of my sons soccer club. He would tell me that the 3-5 hours most teams practice was only enough time to produce average players. He strongly suggested that if I wanted my boys to be the best they needed considerably more training than they could get from any club in the area.
His conclusion was that in order for them to be peaking when they hit their prime, they needed get a head start on putting in the 10,000 hours required to be the best.
Naturally, I started hearing about 10,000 hours everywhere I turned... Malcolm Gladwell's book, NPR, and even Forbes magazine. So naturally I started thinking... I wonder if the 10,000 hour rule applies to trading.
Here is the excerpt from Forbes.com
10,000 Hours
Matt Barney, Infosys
How often have you been told that experience is the best teacher, and that most of leadership development is all about what you’ll do next? It turns out that rule of thumb is roughly right – but only when it comes to concerted, deliberate practice. The work of Ericsson is seminal in helping us engineer better kinds of performance and development. He and his colleagues have done dozens of studies on what distinguishes novices from experts, and consistently find that it takes about 10 years or 10,000 hours of concerted practice before one becomes an expert (Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996). They’ve found this to be true in every field they’ve ever studied, from musicians, to writers, scientists and my friend David Day suggests this applies to leaders as well (Day, Harrison & Halpin, 2009).
[/size]But only deliberate practice actually develops this expertise. It takes much more than 10,000 hours to achieve the highest levels of eminence, such as a Nobel Prize (Ericsson, Prietula & Cokely, 2007). With Ericsson’s musician studies, for example, expert musicians had studied for 10 years also practiced for 25 hours per week, three times more than the less accomplished musicians – and amateurs only practiced 2 hours per week (Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer, 1993). The elites who serve as the teachers and admired role models of gurus have invested multiples of decades in themselves to be able to perform at such incredibly high levels.
And practicing easy things you’ve already mastered isn’t going to grow you either. There is plenty of evidence that experts become proficient by consistently practicing at ever-more-difficult levels of achievement. This is a key reason I’m convinced you can’t do good leader development – to match the right level of challenge to the leader – unless you have good, Rasch Measurement-based assessments of leaders.
Doesn’t this make good intuitive sense? If everyone were investing considerable, deliberate and sustained effort to grow their proficiency levels at their own personal “sweet spot”, then leaders like Steve Jobs wouldn’t be so incredible rare. When I coach leaders, I remind them that if they can’t do something well, or at all, they better invest time and effort to grow it, or not be surprised with their subsequent disappointment. How much time are you investing in your own development?
References
Day, D.V., Harrison, M.M., & Halpin, S.M. (2009). An integrative approach to leader development: Connecting adult development, identity and expertise. New York: Routledge.
Ericsson, K.A. & Krampe, R.T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Pychological Review, 100, 363-406.
Ericsson, K.A., & Lehmann, A.C. (1996). Expert and exceptional performance: Evidence of maximal adaptation to task constraints. Annual Review of Psychology, 47, 273-305.
His conclusion was that in order for them to be peaking when they hit their prime, they needed get a head start on putting in the 10,000 hours required to be the best.
Naturally, I started hearing about 10,000 hours everywhere I turned... Malcolm Gladwell's book, NPR, and even Forbes magazine. So naturally I started thinking... I wonder if the 10,000 hour rule applies to trading.
Here is the excerpt from Forbes.com
10,000 Hours
Matt Barney, Infosys
How often have you been told that experience is the best teacher, and that most of leadership development is all about what you’ll do next? It turns out that rule of thumb is roughly right – but only when it comes to concerted, deliberate practice. The work of Ericsson is seminal in helping us engineer better kinds of performance and development. He and his colleagues have done dozens of studies on what distinguishes novices from experts, and consistently find that it takes about 10 years or 10,000 hours of concerted practice before one becomes an expert (Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996). They’ve found this to be true in every field they’ve ever studied, from musicians, to writers, scientists and my friend David Day suggests this applies to leaders as well (Day, Harrison & Halpin, 2009).
[/size]But only deliberate practice actually develops this expertise. It takes much more than 10,000 hours to achieve the highest levels of eminence, such as a Nobel Prize (Ericsson, Prietula & Cokely, 2007). With Ericsson’s musician studies, for example, expert musicians had studied for 10 years also practiced for 25 hours per week, three times more than the less accomplished musicians – and amateurs only practiced 2 hours per week (Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer, 1993). The elites who serve as the teachers and admired role models of gurus have invested multiples of decades in themselves to be able to perform at such incredibly high levels.
And practicing easy things you’ve already mastered isn’t going to grow you either. There is plenty of evidence that experts become proficient by consistently practicing at ever-more-difficult levels of achievement. This is a key reason I’m convinced you can’t do good leader development – to match the right level of challenge to the leader – unless you have good, Rasch Measurement-based assessments of leaders.
Doesn’t this make good intuitive sense? If everyone were investing considerable, deliberate and sustained effort to grow their proficiency levels at their own personal “sweet spot”, then leaders like Steve Jobs wouldn’t be so incredible rare. When I coach leaders, I remind them that if they can’t do something well, or at all, they better invest time and effort to grow it, or not be surprised with their subsequent disappointment. How much time are you investing in your own development?
References
Day, D.V., Harrison, M.M., & Halpin, S.M. (2009). An integrative approach to leader development: Connecting adult development, identity and expertise. New York: Routledge.
Ericsson, K.A. & Krampe, R.T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Pychological Review, 100, 363-406.
Ericsson, K.A., & Lehmann, A.C. (1996). Expert and exceptional performance: Evidence of maximal adaptation to task constraints. Annual Review of Psychology, 47, 273-305.
