More Than 10,000 Hours

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, he talked about the 10,000-hour rule as the basis for a person becoming an expert in a given area. I was fascinated with the book and have always loved his writing. He told a number of stories demonstrating that experts in various areas gave 10,000 hours of effort and practice to get to their level of expertise. But when you read between the lines of the stories, you see a few additional patterns that these experts followed.

The first pattern was that their environment was consistent during the practice. Michael Jordan did free throws at the basketball court, not in a waste paper basket. Bill Gates practiced in a computer lab, not on a park bench. Each of the stories demonstrated a consistent environmental setup which helps with conditioning. The environment creates anticipated response patterns and therefore allows the subconscious and the habit layer of the brain to take over.

The second pattern was that each of the stories of experts demonstrated the repetition of the same skill or solving the same problem. By tuning into the exact same problem over and over again, the patterns of the path to the problem are illuminated. If you solve the same people problem over and over again, you begin to recognize when the problem is about to happen and can get in front of it.

The third pattern relates to the feedback loop. The more quickly you can recognize whether or not your actions created the desired outcome, the easier it is to make micro-adjustments. Feedback from a sales manager after each sales call for the first 90 days can create expertise through effective adjustment. Each of the experts discussed by Gladwell was open to and sought out feedback. From a leadership perspective, this would be like seeking out an executive coach to help build your awareness on a regular basis.

The fourth pattern was intentional growth. Once a particular skill was mastered, our experts built off of the skill and intentionally advanced their capabilities. Jordan did not stop at only free throws, nor did he stop practicing free throws. He would master the shot from every angle he could, but he mastered them, then learned what worked, and used that knowledge on the next shot. In adult learning, this would be referenced as scaffolding.

If you want to become an expert at anything, it requires a consistent environment, lots of repetition, solid feedback, and intentional growth.