Everyone tries to work a smart as they can. You can't get an advantage over your competitors by working smarter if they're smarter than you are.
If you truly believe that working harder, while still working as smart as you can, doesn't significantly aid your efforts, you're simply deluding yourself, and self-delusion always leads to suboptimal results.
The public record is rife with minutely detailed cases of hard work leading to out-sized success. Hard work by people who were already working very smart, as smart as they could.
Yes, other people can work really hard, too, and so it can be an unwinnable race. Sadly (perhaps), that's life. That doesn't change the fact that working harder is under your control, being smarter isn't.
Yes, some people get burned out. Yes, taking a break can help some people find insights they wouldn't have otherwise. However, some people don't get burned out. If you don't realize this, you're fooling yourself.
Bobby Fischer is the only American to be world chess champion. Read about the complete immersion in chess that was required to achieve this.
It takes 10,000 hours of directed practice (directed practice means "working smarter") to become an expert at something. No amount of working smarter makes the 10,000 hours go away.
It takes 10,000 hours of directed practice (directed practice means "working smarter") to become an expert at something. No amount of working smarter makes the 10,000 hours go away.
This claim is:
1) unevidenced
2) untestable
3) curiously specific (10,000, but not 9,000, nor 12,000, those being numbers less than and more than required, because the number required is 10,000)
4) claimed to be totally undeniable
5) claimed to accurately cover every field of human endeavor from cooking hamburgers to designing circuits to pole vaulting to understanding the intricacies of canon law
Yep, I'm pretty sure it's not exactly 10,000 in all cases. Your complaint is a "gotcha", not a real argument.
Unevidenced? Did you not read the rest of the comments in this thread?
Actually, you're being curiously specific about the strength of the claims. I didn't realize hackernews comments were to be written as peer reviewed journal articles, but I note that your own have not risen to that standard either.
Peter Norvig refers to research showing 10 years of work required to hit expert level in his essay "Teach Yourself Programming in 10 years" (http://norvig.com/21-days.html).
No references to "10,000hours" other than Gladwell I think.
I've never read the Gladwell you refer to, although I know who he is. Over the last several years, I believe several studies have come out claiming it takes 10 years to build up expertise. Just a couple years ago there was a survey study that purported to review the literature and found the consensus to be 10 years/10,000 hours, although I can't find it with a cursory search and don't make a habit of tracking citations of things I read.
If you truly believe that working harder, while still working as smart as you can, doesn't significantly aid your efforts, you're simply deluding yourself, and self-delusion always leads to suboptimal results.
The public record is rife with minutely detailed cases of hard work leading to out-sized success. Hard work by people who were already working very smart, as smart as they could.
Yes, other people can work really hard, too, and so it can be an unwinnable race. Sadly (perhaps), that's life. That doesn't change the fact that working harder is under your control, being smarter isn't.
Yes, some people get burned out. Yes, taking a break can help some people find insights they wouldn't have otherwise. However, some people don't get burned out. If you don't realize this, you're fooling yourself.
Bobby Fischer is the only American to be world chess champion. Read about the complete immersion in chess that was required to achieve this.
It takes 10,000 hours of directed practice (directed practice means "working smarter") to become an expert at something. No amount of working smarter makes the 10,000 hours go away.