Paul Ollinger
The Thing Malcolm Gladwell Forgot to Mention
Why 10,000 hours doesn’t guarantee the success of your dream
In his 2008 bestselling book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell delivered to the mainstream the theory that gaining mastery of any craft requires 10,000 hours of dedicated practice — as he calls it, “the magic number of greatness.”
The trade you’re in doesn’t matter much, he argued, because what all skill-based pursuits have in common is that repetition — at the scale of years of your life — is the only path to proficiency. Similarly, the actual number of hours may vary, but that’s not the point. In this controversial model, “10,000 hours” plays the same symbolic role as “40 years in the desert” did for the Israelites: a long, arduous journey through a wilderness beset with strife and dream-killing doubt.
But while Gladwell is right that even the most naturally gifted cannot succeed without putting in the time, his maxim lacks a crucial caveat: 10,000 hours of sincere, focused training in a craft is just the price of admission. You can put in the…
