> Are there any real-world examples that we can point at of people who actually did spend 10,000 hours at something and did not become superb at it?
Are there any real-world examples that we can point at of people who actually completed 10,000 hours of deliberative practice that weren't already far ahead of the of their equally-practicing peers in terms of skill with, say, 2,000 hours of practice? Even if we assume that Malcolm Gladwell's inability to find people in one domain that had done 10,000 hours of deliberate practice but not become superb is accurate and generalizable [1], what evidence is there to suggest that the relation involved isn't "People who don't excel in a domain before long before 10,000 hours of deliberate practice tend to stop pushing themselves before reaching 10,000 hours of deliberate practice"?
Are there any real-world examples that we can point at of people who actually completed 10,000 hours of deliberative practice that weren't already far ahead of the of their equally-practicing peers in terms of skill with, say, 2,000 hours of practice? Even if we assume that Malcolm Gladwell's inability to find people in one domain that had done 10,000 hours of deliberate practice but not become superb is accurate and generalizable [1], what evidence is there to suggest that the relation involved isn't "People who don't excel in a domain before long before 10,000 hours of deliberate practice tend to stop pushing themselves before reaching 10,000 hours of deliberate practice"?
[1] And there is at least some reason to believe that the impact of deliberate practice on performance is strongly domain dependent, not general, e.g., http://www.businessinsider.com/new-study-destroys-malcolm-gl...