Briefly, Dan is testing the hypothesis that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is what it takes to become an expert (in this case, at golf).
I've been following his blog with interest, and he's now crossed the 20% mark. Honestly, I'm pretty impressed with where he is, given so much time to go.
Golf may be a terrible example for trying to prove out this rule. There are many folks with near perfect golf swings who never make it in the sport. Golf is largely a mental battle, and if you can't hold up under pressure you are not going to be able to compete. I'm not sure how he is practicing, but I'm guessing he has no where near the pressure you get in competition, and unless you have the experience he would likely crack in a competitive situation. In a tour event a single bad judgment or mental lapse can ruin 4 days of hard work. That's if you caused the issue, golf is not a fair game and a bad bounce could also ruin your day. It is a very tough game mentally, and most recreational golfers are not prepared consistent performance required for competitive golf.
The other thing most people don't realize is how much exponentially better the different levels are. A club champ is not much compared with a mini tour player. Mini tour players are no where near the nationwide tour guys, and the PGA players who can win, or finish top 10 consistently are really really good. If you look at the difference between the #1 world ranked Luke Donald vs John Daly currently ranked #652 there is a very small difference in key stats. Lukes scoring average is 69.47, Daly's is 72. Greens in regulation has Luke at 67.04% and Daly at 61.36%.
One big event in your personal life could totally shake up your ability to compete at these highest levels. Sergio Garcia had to take a year off after being dumped by Natalie Gulbis, and look at the downward spiral of Tiger. He may never gain the confidence to compete again.
I wish him luck but I would bet he couldn't break par on a reasonably tough course from a respectable tee after his 10k hours.
I'm not sure I'm following your argument. Are you suggesting it is highly unlikely Dan won't be comparable to a player ranked #652? That is, you are saying, on average, his key stats won't be comparable?
I don't think Dan is planning on becoming a top-10 contender on the PGA, I think he would just like to play a competitive game with them.
I would suggest that anyone who is ranked on the PGA, #652 on up, could be considered an expert in golf.
> The other thing most people don't realize is how much exponentially better the different levels are.
I hate that people so abuse the term exponential, but putting that aside, you're looking at this wrong. The skill gap between levels is smaller as you progress. The effort to hit the next level may grow drastically, but the acquired skills diminish.
Think about someone who's never played teeing off against a casual golfer. How horribly will they lose, while they struggle with the basics? Now the casual golfer against the serious amateur. How will the casual golfer fare? Now serious amateur vs club pro. And so on. At each stage, the more advanced person has a major advantage, but that advantage decreases as the levels advance.
As someone progresses through the learning process, they go from learning the basics, through competence, and eventually to mastery. During this they initially learn gross skills and finally learn the most delicate refinements. It's this way with every skill. If you had to wager on the underdog in a casual golfer vs club pro face-off or a club pro vs a national pro face-off, who would you pick?
If his is not playing a lot, the problem with his approach is that the "mastery" component of the game has a lot to do with non mechanical aspects. It is hard to practice good course management on the range. It is hard to practice getting up and down to save par. It is hard to practice finishing, and this may be the hardest thing to practice.
I've played 14 holes of golf at even par, and once you start to approach a place you've never been before you tend to put immense pressure on yourself and make mistakes. The self awareness of achieving a new best score can prevent you from doing it. This gets harder over time as you improve. Breaking 80, breaking 75, breaking 70 are difficult not only because it is a tough game, but because it is easy to change the way you play depending on the circumstance and it is very hard to practice scoring, harder to practice not making a stupid triple bogy.
If you think i'm using exponential poorly, take a look at the USGA percentages for golfers better than scratch.
He is practicing on course as well, not just the range. Part of starting from the hole backwards and not bringing a driver to the course is teaching him course management.
This argument doesn't make much sense to me, though. Why do you feel that the mental side of the game can't be taught or you can't practice getting better at strengthening that part of your game? Simply recognizing that there is a mental side to the game (like every sport) means that you can to try and control it and thereby practice managing it. This can be learned, every athlete learns it for every sport they play. The mental component is a large part to every sport. I have played several sports competitively and I can't think of a single sport that it isn't a component. One major failure caused me to be mentally timid in one sport I competed at a very high level in - could I have progressed past it? Yes, and I did at times but it still required work. But I could get passed it and perform.
For anyone with both passion and time I am sure they can achieve expert status. People are adaptable, if they really want to do it and have the time to spend they will do what it takes to succeed. That includes finding their own way to cope with the mental pressures.
He has a lot of time left and nothing I've seen seems to indicate he couldn't get it done - minus the one thing I'm still unclear on, if he truly has a passion for the game.
Just watched a few of the videos and I think I've been able to answer my own question. He doesn't have a real passion for the game as he states in one of his videos. For that reason I don't think he will, or can become elite (on Tour) but I don't doubt that he can still get to expert level after a few more years of dedicated practice.
I think that passion part is key to becoming truly great. The passion drives the desire to practice, and practice well with large gains. During his time Hogan was known for practicing more than any other golfer, when he began to do really well on tour the other golfers started joining him so they could keep up. When asked how he was able to work so hard and practice so much he replied that he hard a hard time getting to sleep because he couldn't wait to get to the range in the morning to practice. Hogan was and still is known as the greatest ball striker ever.
Again, I believe that Talent = Passion + Time Spent. A component of passion is dedication and perseverance which he seems to have but there's something else that really drives it. Without it I think he's limited to what he can achieve.
Perhaps it's idealistic but I don't think anyone who lacks passion can hit like Hogan no matter how much time they spend. I'm sure they can become very good, but not like Hogan.
Interesting top response in the previous discussion. I disagree almost completely with him.
A majority of people who play a sport (or learn any skill for that matter) are specifically not deliberate about their practice, and hence never surpass mediocrity. Within the first 50 hours or so (varies greatly depending on complexity of the skill), many of the actions required for a majority of the skill become automatic and learning slows significantly as a result. People highly skilled in something naturally (or consciously) never fully sink down in comfort and automatism, and remain deliberate and conscious about becoming better at every sub-skill within the greater.
The guy attempting the 10,000 hours (supposedly, I haven't been following him to determine if it's true) is specifically talking about this latter form of practice. The person commenting may not fully understand how much more can be accomplished with heightened focus, determination, discernment, and deliberation.
The guy attempting the 10,000 hours (supposedly, I haven't been following him to determine if it's true) is specifically talking about this latter form of practice.
Yes, he's very deliberate about it. IIRC, he has a top coach guiding all of his training, and the plan has been careful working away from the hole. So the first couple hundred hours (!) were all putting and then some chipping, doing careful drill after drill. Finally he can play most of the hole, albeit with only shorter distance clubs so far.
That is a very interesting approach. I wish I had done that when I started playing.
I have been playing the game for 20 years. My father was a semi-pro tournament player and I picked up a lot from watching him. I quickly became a "natural" (I really don't like that term, I just had a good base line to start learning from).
For years I just went out and played and did fairly good. Better than average. This year I decided to really focus on practicing so I can get to scratch and the gains I've seen in the last two months are huge. This year I have gone from hitting a 5 iron about 170 yards to 200+, consistently.
Starting to learn the game from the hole backwards is a great idea. When my game dropped off for a few years I stopped hitting anything longer than a 5 iron.
I hope he succeeds. I haven't read a real passion for the game in the posts I've read, though. Does he love it? I believe talent = passion + time spent.
What I would love to understand is where exactly he was mentally prior to starting this challenge. Is he naturally a person who strives to grow even when tasks become automatic, or has the change of mindset been part of his training, and if so how did he make the mindshift change.
Interesting experiment. But the 10,000 hours rule is a myth [1]. The variance in deliberate practice needed is huge: some top performers need 3,000 hours while others need 24,000 hours. Some never get to the top no matter how much they practice. Success is probably due to many different factors. Just focusing on the deliberate practice is neither necessary nor sufficient.
This is amazing. It's hard to believe someone is capable of being that dedicated to something they've never really done before. I could understand how an amateur golfer who is in love with the game might set this lofty goal, but it seems Dan really had no feelings toward the game either way. More or less, he's doing it just to see if he can do it. And he's willing to dedicate 5 years of his life to this!
If his experiment works out moderately well I could see a great consulting business in training and self-improvement. If it works out really well he is now a professional athlete which seems pretty cool too.
I really wonder how being an amateur golfer would change the 10,000 hours - would it be a head start or would it hold someone back?
In theory, it might be a detriment. The brain is fairly plastic (i.e., can be reshaped and rewired constantly), but reinforced behaviors get pretty firmly hardwired. This is why "old habits die hard," and "you can't teach an old dog new tricks." Quite literally, the neural pathways we use most frequently and automatically become the hardest to rewire.
Ergo, if you've learned the game up to a certain skill level -- and then coasted at that skill level for decades -- you're going to need to rewire significantly engrained neural pathways in order to relearn the game and break through your plateau.
It also helps to be able to start young. Not only do you have more time on your hands when you're younger, but you learn more quickly. Your brain is much more plastic in childhood. Interestingly, in most of the "10,000 hours" case studies I've seen, the subject started practicing as a young kid. It's entirely possible that the learning curve is steepened or elongated for people who start as adults. A child might be able to go from beginner to master in 10,000 hours, but an adult might need many times that number of hours.
Kudos to him. Only 1 year and 5 months to reach 2000 hours! I'm impressed.
I began dancing Lindy Hop on 31st August 2009 and have been counting my hours (swing classes and dancing, not just lindy but also related styles) and I am not yet at the 1000 hour (almost there). I'm one of the most active dancers in the local scene and at 2nd or 3rd tier of the local dancers, the first being really good, so I have still lots of room to improve (not counting that I also go abroad).
He does about 4 hours a day of practice, that's 28 a week. Only in the most intensive workshops I have made those hours, and that wasn't deliberate practice.
I'll have to follow him just to motivate myself a bit more :D
This is a fantastic idea, and I have enjoyed following it. I just hope Dan knows that there are lots of people who put in 10,000 hours and don't make it to the highest level (sports, music, math, art, anything...), despite becoming veritable masters. Its always a suprise how many people are amazingly good at something, without being the best or among the best. In my experience, there are such things as innate gifts. But hey, maybe I'm wrong! I hope so :) Makes this project that much more interesting.
The other caveat is that you need that much practice to become an "expert". It's not clear to me exactly what "expert" means, but it can't be relative to others because others could just as easily put in 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.
So at the end of all this, he could end up a magnificent golfer, but still not win any PGA tours because the other golfers there are also magnificent players. I still have high hopes for him, though, and can't wait to see how it ends up!
Even if it wasn't he still has one important thing under his belt: a conscious decision to go on for the 10000 hours, made before he even started practicing. This is, as far as I know, rather unique.
It's unique now, but people are cost/benefits calculators. Right now, most people do not think that they could become among the best at something through a definite and discrete amount and type of training. If someone succeeds in a highly public way, it will adjust many more peoples' cost/benefits calculations.
This is why the "10,000 hours" thing is stupid. It's unfalsifiable. If this guy fails people will just make various excuses like "his practice wasn't 'deliberate'."
No, it's pretty clear (if you've been following this story) that this guy is being about as deliberate as anyone can be within reason. If he fails, the "10,000 hours" claim will indeed be in serious jeopardy. One data point, sure, but if the first data point is hard-won and correlates to "theory==wrong", few will take it seriously enough to make the second data point happen.
I'm doing something similar with trying to learn how to program. I call it Brute Force Learning which is not exactly deliberate practice but more akin to just doing it and hoping it sticks. The reason is because I've always wanted to learn how to program, going back to wanting to build my own BBS door back in the day which gives you a reference of how long I've been around computers without learning to program. I know the reason was never an issue of mental capacity but just a question of will, which is why I'm now carefully keeping track of my learning time log.
I just started the experiment and do not have much online but if you're interested you can follow at http://theoutliers.com
Another neat side of this is that as he gets better, the people he will be competing with will be able to dedicate more of their lives to practice. For example, I'd imagine PGA pros practice at the same level (time and dedication) as Dan is, but they've been doing it for years already and have a big head start on him. Beating his competitors will get exponentially harder as he gets better even with the amazing work ethic he seems to be putting in. That's cool.
Also, now I'm slightly inspired to work harder at getting better at things I care about by using deliberate practice. Granted, I won't stick with it even for 1000 hours. I'm very impressed with what he is doing.
At the higher levels of play, StarCraft II is both skill and strategy. If your skill is what's holding you back, then yes, all you need is more practice. If it's your strategy, you could grind for a lifetime without improvement.
Couldn't strategic skill be improved? (Serious question. Don't know much about Starcraft. But for a game like chess, it was considered very possible to improve your skill in strategy)
I'm stuck in plat as well, but I really don't put that much time into best practices. Somehow my PvT has gotten better while my other two matches have gone down the drain.
It's too easy to watch top KR GM's stream and the hours just pass by.
If a random guy with no prior training became a PGA Tour golfer with 10,000 hours of deliberate practice and it was not considered highly persuasive because it was "just a single data point" then I'd suggest our methods need revisiting.
True, but the entire self help industry and large portions of the business literature is based on single or very few data points, and they are thriving.
I've been following his blog with interest, and he's now crossed the 20% mark. Honestly, I'm pretty impressed with where he is, given so much time to go.
Previous discussion:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2438300