You can practice something for 10,000 hours and still be a bit crap at it

[noblegiraffe]

Interesting research challenging the '10,000 hours' claim that hard work is sufficient to be great at something.

digest.bps.org.uk/2014/06/30/exploding-the-10000-hours-myth-its-no-guarantee-for-greatness/

The hours practised by grandmasters in a chess study went from 832 to over 24,000 and there were players at intermediate level who had practised for longer than the average grandmaster.

I think people already knew this really, but the whole 'growth mindset' fad of recent years has been promoting the idea that anyone can be great at anything. Obviously if you work hard at something, you can get better at it, but there are also other factors at play.

iirrc The 10,000 was also linked to having some talent OR being at the right place at the right time.

But I agree it needs to be reflective practice.

25ish years ago I went on a software course at Carnegie Mellon (sp?)University. The guy running it said some programmers in the industry for 20years had 20 years of experience, and others had 1 years of experience repeated 20 times.
We then went through a series of exercises to help focus our learning through experience, and broadly speaking it worked. (Really noticing where time went, learning what bugs errors we put into code etc).

So yes I think a positive mental attitude helps. And that practice helps. But innate ability, reflective practice, guidance etc all come into play too.

My DD practiced bassoon for 10,000 hours (to my ears) and yeah, she was still crap.

It’s racehorses and donkeys
Train a donkey like a racehorse and it will be the fastest donkey around but it won’t be a racehorse

"innate ability" can be acquired by basically getting feedback and guidance at an early age though.

Was told a meeeeelllion times how innately talented sibling was - fact was, she was interested, got early feedback and guidance from a (trained) parent which gave her the structure to examine her own work (in a babyish way initially), spent many many hours practising that skill (just playing) with guidance from parent. But all of it casual, this is just what we're playing with today, oh can you see this here? Try this? So apparently invisible, because not formal, not heavy, just pretty much daily for years from infancy.

By the time any of her peers started any kind of formal lessons she already had years of a head start on them plus just "knew" how to work at it.

"innate ability" can be acquired by basically getting feedback and guidance at an early age though.

No it really can’t. Feedback and practice at an early age is just a jump start on the ten thousand hours of practice. It still wouldn’t do any good without aptitude. You do need both.

You do need both

Yup.

I will never ever be an operatic soprano. I can read music, sight sing, sing harmonies etc, because I play a couple of musical instruments and had singing instrustion as part of music lesson. But I make a terrible noise! Not even 100,000 hours of practice would make me good enough even for amateur dramatics

I agree. I run and I'm crap at it.

The thread seems to mostly be (myself included) arguing by anecdote, which is kinda likely to go in the "yes it is, no it isn't" direction cos everyone has different anecdotes.

So - trying to get away from that:

Do you believe "innate aptitude" is more important in some fields than others? (And if so, which fields & why would be interesting?)

Practice doesn't make perfect. It makes permanent.

I could practice playing piano for hours and not get any better because all i would be doing is doing the same bad habits.

It's how you get y10s who seem to forget how to use capital letters but when you remind them they know it. It's not that they can't do it. It's that they've gone through y7-9 where small things slide anf they aren't made to do it so sloppy writing becomes their norm.

It depends what they're actually doing with the time

Yeah, I remember reading this (I think in Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink"), where he says "There are no 'grinds' in classical music" (i.e. people who've put in loads of practice but remain mediocre) and thinking "well, actually, me, over here..." By the end of my teens I was doing 4 hours practice a day, desperately wanted to be a professional musician, just wasn't quite good enough (good amateur, and that was where I topped out).

There's a very good corrective to this "growth" mindset in "Fever Pitch" by Nick Hornby (the book, not the film) - the chapter on Gus Caesar is basically about how you can have a lot of natural talent and put in a lot of hard work, but in the end still not have what it takes to become really top flight.

Though I do agree that properly understood, it's about debunking the myth of innate talent coming effortlessly - pretty much anything worthwhile requires hard work as well as innate talent.

No,no,no, *Maisy it's because no one ever taught them full stops even though you taught most of that class in yr 7 and know damn well you did

Maisy

Yes, Don't practice it wrong, practice it right.

Now it's hurting me that you're all using practice as a verb. Unless you're American; in which case, as you were.

I'm so sorry, I'm dyslexic and I try to remember the example of advice and advise, but can't remember.
Tell somebody to practise?
She is going to practice?

Gilly in UK English practice is the noun, practise is the verb (but annoyingly unlike advice/advise, they don't sound different, so I can see that would be a total nightmare for someone with dyslexia - my DS is dyslexic and would be all over the place with this one).

Huge derail, Hairy give me some examples purlllllllllease.
My dh grammar school education, helps me a lot, but can confuse me.

"I did an hour's practice last night" - practice is being used as a noun.
(C.f. "I got an hour's free advice from a solicitor." Noun)

"I don't practise nearly often enough" - practise is being used as a verb.
(Cf "Most people who are actually lawyers will tell you that solicitors will not advise you for free." Verb)

I’m going to netball practice.
I need to practise my netball.

Advice/advise is a good cross check if you’re unsure;

I need some advice.
Can you advise me?

Ha x post

Sorry Hairy, I thought you’d gone.

"I did an hour's practice last night" - practice is being used as a noun
So practice makes perfect.
Practice being the name for rehearsing and refining stuff.

But ignore my stupid mistakr on the pianio one. Wasn't thining.

Gladwell also argues that The Beatles were not more talented performers than other pop guitar bands in the 60s but that they got more practice when they were playing 3 sets a night in a nightclub in Hamburg and it was simply the additional hours of performance that gave them an adage. Personally I am not even a Beatles fan and I find that preposterous.

The Marholm Gladwell book is 'outliers'. It's interesting but not that great. The most interesting bit is about age and being picked for school teams. If you are younger in the year you don't get picked due to physical size and maturity, then you get less practice and then hey presto, you never get as good as your older peers who've had more practice.

The more interesting stuff about practice is in a book called Peak by Anders Ericsson, where he talks about the type of practice you need to do to get better. Focused and deliberate.

A bit like practising when to use practice and practise. (Hope I've got that right because now I'm doubting myself...)

DC tried BMX racing.
In cycling, the oldest kids in each age class have January birthday, the youngest are December.

Two lads, age 5/6 & 6/7 yo, December birthdays, both raced with the year ABOVE where they often won their events. They were that good already, such was their outlier status. They hadn't even been riding bikes for more than 2-3 yrs, never mind squeezed 10,000 hours in.

I do love this thread, but will be scared to get my practice and practise wrong. Thanks so much more the help btw.

I can tell of our experience with dd, although I don't like the word gifted really.
From being little she was interested in music. A very slow developer ito speech, but would echo everyday sounds she heard, from being in her pram. Things like traffic, birdsong, etc.
She'd follow dh around and ask to join in with his music making and have to be physically removed from the room if he had a student.
She could literally sing before she could talk, so although a bit extreme, nobody thought much about it.
She announced at 3 that she wanted to be an opera singer when she grew up, we have no idea where it came from as we don't listen to opera or much classical music tbh. She started violin at about 6 and then went on to sing in choirs, where we were soon told about choirs further afield that would be good for her.
Then she started saxophone and progressed very quickly, told us she wanted to leave school at 8 as school was getting in the way of her career.
Can I say at this point we have 2 much older grown up dc who are quite normal, doing normal jobs They were encouraged with music when younger, but preferred sport.
So dd was H.ed for 3 years during primary and attended an open day at the most famous specialist music school, where she announced she would be attending.
Long story short, she auditioned and was offered a place, we were gob smacked.
She is relentless and works so hard, even xmas day, as it isn't work for her.
It has to be a mix of innate talent and hard work, plus being relentless and single minded imo, if a talented/gifted person is to realise their potential.
She tells me of kids who are trying to get into practice? rooms very early in the morning, hours before they are supposed to. Even with most of their day consisting of music, some want even more.
I'm not sure if she will reach her goals and ambition, but she hasn't wavered from that 3 year old who wants to sing opera.

will be scared to get my practice and practise wrong

I got it wrong in the thread title. An English teacher got it wrong in a post. There's a pretty low bar on this thread

I was just reading about Armenia having more chess grandmasters per head of population than any other country. Chess is on their school curriculum between the age of 6 and 8. Starting early is obviously key, but how many do they pick up who just wouldn't have been exposed to it in other countries?