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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
"10,000 hour rule" called into question.
"10,000 hour rule" called into question.
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isaacullah
2688 posts
Mar 19, 2014
10:00 AM
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New research has potentially shown that the so called "10,000 hour rule" may not be as absolute as it was first made out to be: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140310-gladwell-expertise-practice-debate-intelligence/.
For those that don't know what this rule is, the crib notes version is that, according to some research into how various "expert-level" musicians/athletes/chess players/etc. got to be so good at what they do, it seemed that there was a commonality in that all had at least practiced their craft for 10,000 hours or more. Thus it was interpreted that if you put in 10,000 hours of practice over several years, you could achieve mastery. There have been several threads on this forum about this, and we even had a member (MichaelAndrewLo) attempt it for awhile (and post some YouTube vids of his improvements).
While there is still no doubt that practice helps you improve, the new research suggests that practice doesn't help everyone equally. That is, some people can practice less than others and still achieve similar results. This is due to many different cultural and biophysical reasons (age, mental acuity, social pressure, sleep habits, etc.), and is in line with what much recent socio-medical research is finding (i.e., that individual variation among humans is a lot higher than once thought).
I post this here not to discourage those that feel like they aren't getting anywhere despite loads of practice, but to help explain why that might be occurring. While one shouldn't compare oneself to the progress of others, in reality it is very difficult not to do so (believe me, I know!). This new data might make it easier to understand why some folks appear to get good "overnight", while others may struggle for years before achieving similar improvements.
Thoughts?
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arzajac
1313 posts
Mar 19, 2014
10:07 AM
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Can you measure mojo? What about "chops?"
I'm not being cheeky. If you want to use evidence-based tools to get results, you first need to start with deciding what you are going to measure to follow the improvement.
I haven't read the background, but what is considered mastery? Being able to sight-read? Playing by ear? What about the ability to get up and stage and get people out of their seats to dance? What are you aiming for?
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Last Edited by arzajac on Mar 19, 2014 10:09 AM
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Honkin On Bobo
1194 posts
Mar 19, 2014
10:31 AM
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Loved the book by Gladwell in which 10,000 hour rule appeared (Outliers I think?). I never took Gladwells position to be that 10,000 hrs. was some magical number which turned anyone into a master, but as sort of a general analysis in support of the idea that those people we admire for being at the peak of a field, put quite a bit of work into getting there. And more broadly, Gladwell also addresses the idea that unseen factors, for lack of a better term, good fortune, also often plays a role.
I remember that experiment by MAL, and the major discusssion here of talent vs. practice that sprung up around it. My own experience from competitive sports is that while hard work and luck are probably pre-requisites for reaching the absolute pinnacle of some endeavor, innate talent can't be completely excluded from the equation. This is, of course, a long winded way of saying talent, work ethic, luck all play roles..... to which most people would respond ....well,duh.
But I seem to remember it being impossible for me to pursuade either MAL or Buddha (may he rest in peace), that talent had anything at all to do with success. They essentially held the position that with enough practice/training anyone could be Einstein, Beethoven, (pick a genius).
That's not my position, but then again mastery at a level beneath genius can still be a helluva lot of fun.
Edited to add: arzajac was posting as I was typing, but I agree with everything he said. Measurement is problematic for a number of undertakings. In the book, Gladwell talks about all the hours the Beatles spent in Germany's red light district perfecting their craft, but how would an aspiring musician measure himself against them? The ability to play their songs? The number of records sold? The influence/effect on popular culture and zeitgeist? In a certain sense isn't their success almost iimpossible to replicate simply because we're living in a different time?
Last Edited by Honkin On Bobo on Mar 19, 2014 11:14 AM
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STME58
682 posts
Mar 19, 2014
10:41 AM
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I would expect one major factor in determining hours to mastery would be the quality of the teaching or coaching you are getting. Working with a good teacher you are going to progress much faster than if you struggle to figure out things on your own. Of course the best teacher in the world won't help if you don't practice the concepts delivered to you.
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mr_so&so
795 posts
Mar 19, 2014
11:55 AM
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I agree that it is a "duh" to note that variability exists in predisposition (talent) and that environmental factors (luck, culture, wealth, health, etc.) definitely enter into the equation. However, I find the 10000-hour theory to be both motivating and humbling. I've been slugging away for 6+ years now and am continuing to make steady progress. I've seen others on this forum do the same. There seems to be some truth to it.
edited: for clarity
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Last Edited by mr_so&so on Mar 19, 2014 2:08 PM
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isaacullah
2689 posts
Mar 19, 2014
12:54 PM
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Interesting commentary/views so far. I've no real dog in this "fight", per se, since I never was a proponent nor an antagonist of the 10k rule, but I do think it's important to have as good an understanding as possible about the way we learn as a species (I am an anthropologist, as you all know). This stuff is not just trivial - it matters when trying to understand our evolutionary trajectory, and how our ability to have and use culture in affected this (the theory is called "dual-inheritance", or bio-cultural evolution). If there are major differences between individuals in the way/speed at which we learn things, then there might be an evolutionary explanation for that (off the top of my head, I can think that having both fast and slow learners in a human social grouping could provide it the ability to adapt quickly to new circumstances, but not be so flexible as to loose old habits, which could come in handy in the future).
In terms of music making - I think there's no need to throw the baby out with the bath water. Practice is good for you! Of course it is. But perhaps there's a better way of going about it than simply trying to accumulate hours. This also suggests that there are multiple pathways, and perhaps knowing this can help when we are (for example) trying to teach music to others or to ourselves. Maybe it is that you really need to only have 5 minutes of very focused practicing a day (i.e., the Iceman approach). Perhaps that's all wrong for you, and you are the kind of person that needs several hours in a row, once or twice a week. The point is, a "one size fits all" approach is clearly not the best one. Having this knowledge arms us to choose the best strategy possible.
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mr_so&so
796 posts
Mar 19, 2014
2:07 PM
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Maybe I'm weird, but I like to practice. Actually, I don't really differentiate that much between "practice" and "making music". To me they are the same thing. My routine lets me work in almost an hour of playing most weekdays. I'd do more though if I could, because I enjoy it. If I was motivated to play only 5 minutes per day, I'd probably give it up and do something else. The theory doesn't really deal with motivation.
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nacoran
7629 posts
Mar 19, 2014
2:37 PM
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Talking about mojo, or athletes being in the zone, or confidence, I think even within a sample size of one person, I think there is a lot of variance in learning. I've had days when I just don't have it in me, and I can sit and play and don't make any progress, and maybe I'm just filling out hours towards getting better, but I've had days when I just feel sharper, and I can focus on something and learn it quickly. One of the tricks I think is useful is learning to recognize the different states in our own mind. Sometimes you can't change it, but sometimes you can, and maybe, sometimes, instead of practicing 1/2 and hour, spending 25 minutes will help you find that focus and those five minutes left will be more valuable.
Case in point, I still consider myself more of a lyricist than a harp player, but I went through a stretch where I could sit down and try to write and nothing came out. When I have a rough lyric sketched out, I can use the tools I've learned, and teach myself new tricks, but when there is nothing there, well, there is nothing there.
I'd was in one of those funks a few years back and a friend called and we started going to open mics. Exposing myself to different people, different styles, different levels of skills and different ideas... well, every night when I'd go home I'd write, not because it was part of my practice, but because I had things in me that needed to get out- new ideas, new ways of doing things. Technically, going to the open mic wasn't practice, and I would have practiced anyway, but it lead to a much more productive level of practice.
Sometimes I get that way with harp. If I'm having one of those moments, it's important to go with it, but it's easy, if you are forcing practice, to get in a rut and lose your mojo. Maybe a way to look at it isn't as hours practiced, but points accumulated. If you are in the zone, maybe you accumulate 10 hypothetical mind points per hour, but when you don't have your mojo it's 1 per hour. The trick then, is to figure out how to practice when you have your mojo. Maybe it's practicing when well rested, or maybe when your mind is so far gone that you break out of bad habits. Maybe it's after listening to music, or maybe it's when you are music starved. The trick, I think, is figuring out when it works for you and maximizing it. Maybe structure is your mojo.
I've met people who will never be good at something. I tutored someone a bit in math once, and I suspect they had a learning disability. They were an adult who was very good at social things, but they couldn't even do their multiplication tables. That's fine. Math wasn't their thing. (And no, Einstein wasn't really bad at math).
As a kid, from about 8th grade on I wanted to be a ballplayer (well, I knew I'd never be a ballplayer, but I loved going outside and throwing a ball against the wall and pretending I was a ballplayer). I'd practice from when I got home from school until it was too dark to see, regardless of the weather. What did it get me? A fastball in the low sixties and the ability, on a good day, to hit the broadside of a barn, elbow problems and a screwed up shoulder. It's quite likely I made it to the 10,000 hour level, but I was never in danger of reaching the 'mastery' level, and even if it had been better quality practice, I just don't have the genes for it.
Thing is though, in a backyard pickup game with my nerdy friends, I'm Nolan fricken Ryan. And that's the thing. I enjoyed the journey (except the lasting injuries) and I did, in fact, get a lot better than when I started. And did I mention I enjoyed the journey? (I still like to pretend that the fairgrounds radar gun was broken and 61 was really 81 and 59 was 99.) :)
I kind of meandered a bit there, and I overlapped with Isaac quite a bit I think.
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STME58
684 posts
Mar 19, 2014
2:59 PM
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Has anyone else read "Guitar Zero" by Gary Marcus. I think I got the recommendation for that book on this site. It discusses this topic from the perspective of a neuroscientist learning the guitar at age 40.
Mr so&so, your comment about practice and making music reminds me of what I have heard a few pro cyclists say, "I don't train to race, I race to train", meaning they pick out as many races as they can to sharpen their skills as there is nothing like the real thing to set the mind right. In sports and music, it is more the mind than the muscles we are training. In music I believe an hour of performance is worth many hours of practice.
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Komuso
295 posts
Mar 19, 2014
5:59 PM
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Gladwell, the pop sci mind candy writer;-)
Debunking the Myth of the 10,000-Hours Rule: What It Actually Takes to Reach Genius-Level Excellence
What we're talking about is skill development, and it obviously varies depending on the skills to be acquired and, more importantly, the process and techniques used to learn and practice the new skills.
New tools are always being developed to help speed this learning curve "problem". I say "problem" in inverted comma's because sometimes it's not a problem to also take things more slowly and let the subconscious do its work as well.
Watch this:
then read this:
Fundamentals of learning: the exploration-exploitation trade-off
and probably the ultimate example of successful simulation based learning/training:
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Paul Cohen aka Komuso Tokugawa
HarpNinja - Your harmonica Mojo Dojo
Bringing the Boogie to the Bitstream
Last Edited by Komuso on Mar 19, 2014 6:09 PM
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jbone
1548 posts
Mar 19, 2014
9:48 PM
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I've spent a lot more than that over 40+ years. While I am pretty damn good I have never done the usual technical stuff. So on one hand I could be an exception to the rule, having sort of limited myself in one way. I have yet to do a scale or learn what the descriptions are for what I do. I just do it.
Perhaps I am a bit of a savant.
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Komuso
297 posts
Mar 20, 2014
1:23 AM
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The point is not how long you have been doing it, or how many hours you have done something in total.
It's how long it takes you to become competent to perform to a high standard under pressure.
You will never stop learning, but getting to a baseline level of recognized skill faster is the goal.
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Paul Cohen aka Komuso Tokugawa
HarpNinja - Your harmonica Mojo Dojo
Bringing the Boogie to the Bitstream
Last Edited by Komuso on Mar 20, 2014 1:26 AM
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isaacullah
2690 posts
Mar 20, 2014
5:56 AM
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Interesting article, Komuso. I'll watch the vids at a later point, but I think there's definitely something to the idea that a) individuals vary ion their abilities, goals, and circumstances, and all that translates to very different learning needs for each person.
Certainly it is hard to put an absolute measure on "mastery", but I think we can all agree that we know it when we see it (and say stuff like "damn, that was GOOD!"). So the real question is, if we want that for ourselves and/or our students, how do we best facilitate that. Again, I think the whole point of this thread is to suggest that there is no single "way to do it", but instead many many ways to achieve it. In one sense, this greatly complicates things for us (we need to try a lot of things!), but in another, it frees us from the frustrations of trying the "accepted" method, but not getting anywhere with it. For me, THAT'S the take home message...
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