Science

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Covering psychology the past several years, I’ve grown used to reading about how classic, viral experiments in the field are failing in rigorous retests.

He dubbed it the “10,000-hour rule.” “Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness,” Gladwell wrote, drawing on anecdotes from famous success-havers (like Bill Gates and the Beatles), but also on the 1993 paper (which according to Google Scholar has been cited more than 9,800 times).

The replication — conducted by Brooke Macnamara and Megha Maitra of Case Western Reserve University — included a somewhat larger sample size and tighter study controls, and was preregistered (meaning that the scientists locked their methods and analysis plans in place before they collected any data, preventing them from retroactively changing their premise to fit their findings).

Because implied in the rule (at least, to me) is a deeply self-deprecating message: that if we fail to achieve greatness, it’s our own damn fault.

The 10,000-hour rule is compelling in a world that clings to the idea that people rise up through society based on merit.

The debunking studies do provide an optimistic takeaway of their own: We can all improve when we put our mind to it, but we don’t have to hold ourselves to an impossible standard.

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