"I think that it is also a mistake to assume that the ten-thousand-hour idea applies to every domain.
...
The point of Simon and Chase’s paper years ago was that cognitively complex activities take many years to master because they require that a very long list of situations and possibilities and scenarios be experienced and processed. There’s a reason the Beatles didn’t give us “The White Album” when they were teen-agers. And if the surgeon who wants to fuse your spinal cord did some newfangled online accelerated residency, you should probably tell him no. It does not invalidate the ten-thousand-hour principle, however, to point out that in instances where there are not a long list of situations and scenarios and possibilities to master—like jumping really high, running as fast as you can in a straight line, or directing a sharp object at a large, round piece of cork—expertise can be attained a whole lot more quickly."
It's asinine to write about and promote such a result as "10,000 hours"[1] when the result was really that it varies a lot from skill to skill. Using some constant number like 10,000 gives exactly the idea that there is some hard-and-fast rule to the amount of time needed to practice in order to attain some skill in some endeavour.
[1] Whether that was the author himself or the various people that that wrote second/third hand articles about it.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2013/08/...
"I think that it is also a mistake to assume that the ten-thousand-hour idea applies to every domain.
...
The point of Simon and Chase’s paper years ago was that cognitively complex activities take many years to master because they require that a very long list of situations and possibilities and scenarios be experienced and processed. There’s a reason the Beatles didn’t give us “The White Album” when they were teen-agers. And if the surgeon who wants to fuse your spinal cord did some newfangled online accelerated residency, you should probably tell him no. It does not invalidate the ten-thousand-hour principle, however, to point out that in instances where there are not a long list of situations and scenarios and possibilities to master—like jumping really high, running as fast as you can in a straight line, or directing a sharp object at a large, round piece of cork—expertise can be attained a whole lot more quickly."