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10,000 Hour Rule Debunked?
A friend of mine on facebook posted this Ted talk, and I think that's it's important to point out a few things before you think that in 1month you'll be shooting in the 80's.
First, a quick summary of the video. Basically, he argues that the 10,000 hour rule is required to develop mastery, but to get "good enough for most people" you only need to put in 20 hours. However, not all hours are created equally, so here are his four keys to quality practice:
- Deconstruct the skill
- Learn enough to self correct
- Remove practice barriers
- Practice at least 20 hours
Seems simple enough...and his jam on the ukelele was pretty impressive for only 20 hours. But how can we apply this to golf?
Not to be johnny raincloud, but number 1 and 2 are complicated and difficult. Deconstructing the skill sounds easy. And it's what I've done with my program. For example, if you look at transition, I've broken it down into it's key pieces that can be chunked together into the movement. But, when Josh talks about the "skill", what are the skills of golf?
My argument is that to play golf well enough to break 90, you need to be proficient at a number of skills. You need to have good club face control. Good club path control. And good distribution of power sources, which don't interfere with club face or club path control. In addition, each of those skills is slightly different for each of the major swings (Driver, Iron, Distance Wedge, Finesse Wedge, Bunker, Putting). Think about it, if you spent 20 hours on starting a putt online, would that transfer to your driver? Probably not. His example of music, or drawing is a bit different. The C cord is the same regardless of what song you're playing, so learning a C will have a broad range of transfer.
Again, I like this video a lot because it highlights the importance of focused practice and paints a picture of realistic skill acquisition for the average golfer. However, part of the reason that golf is hard is because it relies on multiple skills of precision and control. That blend of skills makes breaking down "the skill of golf" and identifying cause and effect somewhat tricky. If you're not sure about how to breakdown each skill, then check out our programs on the full swing, hitting long drives, hitting solid irons, or developing a deft short game to learn logical step-by-step ways to do it.
A friend of mine on facebook posted this Ted talk, and I think that's it's important to point out a few things before you think that in 1month you'll be shooting in the 80's.
First, a quick summary of the video. Basically, he argues that the 10,000 hour rule is required to develop mastery, but to get "good enough for most people" you only need to put in 20 hours. However, not all hours are created equally, so here are his four keys to quality practice:
- Deconstruct the skill
- Learn enough to self correct
- Remove practice barriers
- Practice at least 20 hours
Seems simple enough...and his jam on the ukelele was pretty impressive for only 20 hours. But how can we apply this to golf?
Not to be johnny raincloud, but number 1 and 2 are complicated and difficult. Deconstructing the skill sounds easy. And it's what I've done with my program. For example, if you look at transition, I've broken it down into it's key pieces that can be chunked together into the movement. But, when Josh talks about the "skill", what are the skills of golf?
My argument is that to play golf well enough to break 90, you need to be proficient at a number of skills. You need to have good club face control. Good club path control. And good distribution of power sources, which don't interfere with club face or club path control. In addition, each of those skills is slightly different for each of the major swings (Driver, Iron, Distance Wedge, Finesse Wedge, Bunker, Putting). Think about it, if you spent 20 hours on starting a putt online, would that transfer to your driver? Probably not. His example of music, or drawing is a bit different. The C cord is the same regardless of what song you're playing, so learning a C will have a broad range of transfer.
Again, I like this video a lot because it highlights the importance of focused practice and paints a picture of realistic skill acquisition for the average golfer. However, part of the reason that golf is hard is because it relies on multiple skills of precision and control. That blend of skills makes breaking down "the skill of golf" and identifying cause and effect somewhat tricky. If you're not sure about how to breakdown each skill, then check out our programs on the full swing, hitting long drives, hitting solid irons, or developing a deft short game to learn logical step-by-step ways to do it.
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Video Transcript
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Hi, everyone.
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Two years ago, my life changed forever.
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My wife Kelsey and I welcomed our daughter Lila into the world.
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Now, becoming a parent is an amazing, amazing experience.
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Your whole world changes overnight, and all of your priorities change
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immediately, so
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fast that it makes it really difficult to process sometimes.
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Now, you also have to learn a tremendous amount about being a parent, like, for
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example, how
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to dress your child.
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This was new to me.
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This is an actual outfit.
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I thought this was a good idea.
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And even Lila knows that it's not a good idea.
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So there was so much to learn and so much craziness all at once.
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And to add to the craziness, Kelsey and I both work from home.
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We're entrepreneurs.
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We run our own businesses.
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So Kelsey develops courses online for yoga teachers.
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I'm an author.
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And so I'm working for home.
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Kelsey's working for home.
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We have an infant, and we're trying to make sure that everything gets done,
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that needs
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done, and life is really, really, really busy.
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And a couple weeks into this amazing experience, when the sleep deprivation
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really kicked
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in, like around week eight, I had this thought, and it was the same thought
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that parents crossed
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the ages internationally that everybody has had this thought, which is I am
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never going
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to have free time ever again.
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And somebody said it's true.
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Yeah.
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It's not exactly true, but it feels really, really true in that moment.
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And this was really disconcerting to me because one of the things that I enjoy
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more than anything
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else is learning new things, getting curious about something and diving in and
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fiddling
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around and learning through trial and error, and eventually becoming pretty
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good at something.
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And without this free time, I didn't know how I was ever going to do that ever
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again.
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And so I'm a big geek.
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I want to keep learning things.
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I want to keep growing.
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And so what I decided to do was go to the library and go to the bookstore and
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look at
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what research says about how we learn and how we learn quickly.
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And I read a bunch of books, I read a bunch of websites, and trying to answer
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this question,
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how long does it take to acquire a new skill?
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You know what I found?
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10,000 hours.
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Have you ever heard this?
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It takes 10,000 hours.
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If you want to learn something new, if you want to be good at it, it's going to
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take
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10,000 hours to get there.
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And I read this in book after book and website after a website, and my mental
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experience
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of reading all of this stuff was like, no, I don't have time.
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I don't have 10,000 hours.
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I am never going to be able to learn anything new ever again.
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But that's not true.
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So 10,000 hours, just to give you a rough order of magnitude, 10,000 hours is a
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full-time
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job for five years.
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That's a long time.
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And we've all had the experience of learning something new, and it didn't take
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us anywhere
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close to that amount of time, right?
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So what's up?
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There's something kind of funky going on here.
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But the research says, and what we expect and have experiences, they don't
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match up.
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And what I found, here's the wrinkle.
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The 10,000-hour rule came out of studies of expert level performance.
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There was a professor at Florida State University, his name is K. Anders Eriks
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en.
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He's the originator of the 10,000-hour rule.
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And where that came from is he studied professional athletes, world-class
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musicians.
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Chess grandmasters, all of these ultra-competitive folks in ultra-high-
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performing fields, and
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he tried to figure out how long does it take to get to the top of those kinds
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of fields.
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And what he found is the more deliberate practice, the more time that those
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individuals spent
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practicing the elements, whatever it is that they do, the more time you spend,
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the better
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you get.
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The folks at the tippy top of their fields put in around 10,000 hours of
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practice.
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Now, we're talking about the game of telephone a little bit earlier.
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Here's what happened.
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An author by the name of Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book in 2007 called Outliers,
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the story
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of success.
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And the centerpiece of that book was the 10,000-hour rule.
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Practice a lot, practice well, and you will do extremely well.
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You reach the top of your field.
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So the message, what Dr. Erickson was actually saying is, it takes 10,000 hours
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to get the
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top of an ultra-competitive field in a very narrow subject.
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That's what that means.
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But here's what happened.
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Ever since Outliers came out, immediately came out, reached the top of the best
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cellular
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list, stayed there for three solid months.
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All of a sudden, the 10,000-hour rule was everywhere.
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And a society-wide game of telephone started to be played.
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So this message, it takes 10,000 hours to reach the top of an ultra-competitive
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field,
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became, it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something.
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Which became, it takes 10,000 hours to become good at something.
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Which became, it takes 10,000 hours to learn something.
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But that last statement, it takes 10,000 hours to learn something, it's not
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true.
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It's not true.
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So what the research actually says, if I spent a lot of time here at the CSU
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library in the
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cognitive psychology stacks, because I'm a geek, and when you actually look at
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the studies
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of skill acquisition, you see over and over and over a graph like this.
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Now, researchers, whether they're studying a motor skill, something you do
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physically,
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or a mental skill, they like to study things that they can time, because you
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can quantify
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that, right?
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So they'll give research participants a little task, something that requires
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physical arrangement
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or something that requires learning a little mental trick.
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And they'll time how long a participant takes to complete the skill.
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And here's what this graph says, when you start, so when researchers gave
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participants
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a task, it took them a really long time, because it was new and they were
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horrible.
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With a little bit of practice, a bit better and better and better, and that
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early part
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of practice is really, really efficient.
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People get good at things with just a little bit of practice.
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Now what's interesting to note is that if, you know, we don't really, for
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skills that
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we want to learn for ourselves, we don't care so much about time, right?
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We just care about how good we are, whatever good happens to me.
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So if we relatable performance time to how good you are, the graph flips, and
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you get
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this famous and widely known, this is the learning curve.
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And the story of the learning curve is when you start, you're grossly
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incompetent and
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you know it, right?
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With a little bit of practice, you get really good, really quick, so that early
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level of
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improvement is really fast.
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And then at a certain point, you reach a plateau and the subsequent gains
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become much harder
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to get, they take more time to get.
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Now, my question is, I want that, right?
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How long does it take from starting something and being grossly incompetent and
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knowing it
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to being reasonably good in, hopefully, a short period of time as possible?
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So how long does that take?
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Here's what my research says, 20 hours.
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That's it.
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You can go from knowing nothing about any skill that you can think of.
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Want to learn a language?
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Want to learn how to draw?
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Want to learn how to juggle flaming chainsaws?
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If you put 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice into that thing, you will
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be astounded,
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astounded at how good you are.
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20 hours is doable.
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That's about 45 minutes a day for about a month, even skipping a couple days
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here and
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there.
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20 hours isn't that hard to accumulate.
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Now there's a method to doing this because it's not like you can just start f
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iddling around
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for about 20 hours and expect these massive improvements.
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There's a way to practice intelligently.
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There's a way to practice efficiently that will make sure that you invest those
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20 hours
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in the most effective way that you possibly can.
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And here's the method.
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It applies to anything.
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The first is to deconstruct the skill, decide exactly what you want to be able
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to do when
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you're done and then look into the skill and break it down into smaller and
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smaller pieces.
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Most of the things that we think of as skills are actually big bundles of
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skills that require
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all sorts of different things.
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The more you can break apart the skill, the more you're able to decide, what
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are the parts
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of the skill that will actually help me get to what I want, and then you can
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practice
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those first.
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And if you practice the most important things first, you'll be able to improve
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your performance
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in the least amount of time possible.
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The second is learn enough to self-correct.
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So get three to five resources about what it is you're trying to learn.
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Could be books, could be DVDs, could be courses, could be anything.
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But don't use those as a way to procrastinate on practice.
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I know I do this, right?
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Get like 20 books about the topic.
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It's like I'm going to start learning how to program a computer when I complete
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these
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20 books.
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No, that's procrastination.
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What you want to do is learn just enough that you can actually practice and
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self-correct
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or self-edit as you practice.
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So the learning becomes a way of getting better at noticing when you're making
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a mistake and
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then doing something a little different.
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The third is to remove barriers to practice, distractions, television, internet
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.
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All of these things that get in the way of you actually sitting down and doing
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the work.
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And the more you're able to use just a little bit of willpower to remove the
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distractions
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that are keeping you from practicing, the more likely you are to actually sit
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down and
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practice, right?
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And the fourth is to practice for at least 20 hours.
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Now most skills have what I call a frustration barrier.
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The grossly incompetent knowing it part, that's really, really frustrating.
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We don't like to feel stupid.
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And feeling stupid is a barrier to us actually sitting down and doing the work.
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So by pre-committing to practicing whatever it is that you want to do for at
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least 20
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hours, you will be able to overcome that initial frustration barrier and stick
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with the practice
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long enough to actually reap the rewards, right?
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That's it.
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That's science.
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Four very simple steps that you can use to learn anything.
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Now this is easier to talk about in theory, but it's more fun to talk about in
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practice.
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So one of the things that I've wanted to learn how to do for a long time is
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play the
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ukulele.
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As anybody seeing Jake Shimabukuro's TED talk where he plays the ukulele and
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makes it sound
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like he's like an ukulele god.
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It's amazing.
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I saw that.
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It's like that is so cool.
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It's such a neat instrument.
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I would really like to learn how to play.
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And so I decided that to test this theory I wanted to put 20 hours into
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practicing the
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ukulele and see where we got.
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And so the first thing about playing the ukulele is in order to practice you
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have to
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have one, right?
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So I got an ukulele and my lovely assistant.
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Thank you, sir.
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I think I need the chord here.
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It's not just an ukulele, it's an electric ukulele.
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Yeah.
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So the first couple hours, or just like the first couple hours of anything, you
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have
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to get the tools that you're using to practice.
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You have to make sure that they're available.
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My ukulele didn't come with strings attached.
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I had to figure out how to put those on.
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That's kind of important, right?
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And learning how to tune and learning how to make sure that all of the things
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that need
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to be done in order to start practicing get done, right?
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Now one of the things when I was ready to actually start practicing was I
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looked in online
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to the bases and songbooks for how to play songs and they say, okay, ukuleles
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you can
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play more than one string at a time so you can play chords, that's cool, you're
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accompanying
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yourself.
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Yeah, you.
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And when I started looking at songs, I had an ukulele chord book that had like
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hundreds
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of chords looking at the same, whoa, that's intimidating.
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But when you look at the actual songs, you see the same chords over and over,
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right?
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So, as it turns out, playing the ukulele is kind of like doing anything.
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There's a very small set of things that are really important and techniques
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that you'll
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use all the time.
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And so in most songs, you'll use four, maybe five, chords, and that's it.
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That's the song.
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You don't have to know the hundreds as long as you know the four or the five.
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So while I was doing my research, I found a wonderful little medley of pop
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songs by
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a band called Axis of Awesome.
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And somebody knows it.
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And what Axis of Awesome says is that you can play pretty much any pop song
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over the
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past five decades if you know four chords.
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And those chords are G, D, E minor, C. Four chords pump out every pop song ever
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, right?
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So I thought this is cool.
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But I would like to play every pop song ever, so that was the first song I
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decided to learn.
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And I would like to actually share it with you.
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Ready?
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[APPLAUSE]
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All right.
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Hi, everyone.
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Two years ago, my life changed forever.
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My wife Kelsey and I welcomed our daughter Lila into the world.
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Now, becoming a parent is an amazing, amazing experience.
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Your whole world changes overnight, and all of your priorities change
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immediately, so
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fast that it makes it really difficult to process sometimes.
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Now, you also have to learn a tremendous amount about being a parent, like, for
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example, how
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to dress your child.
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This was new to me.
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This is an actual outfit.
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I thought this was a good idea.
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And even Lila knows that it's not a good idea.
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So there was so much to learn and so much craziness all at once.
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And to add to the craziness, Kelsey and I both work from home.
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We're entrepreneurs.
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We run our own businesses.
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So Kelsey develops courses online for yoga teachers.
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I'm an author.
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And so I'm working for home.
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Kelsey's working for home.
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We have an infant, and we're trying to make sure that everything gets done,
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that needs
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done, and life is really, really, really busy.
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And a couple weeks into this amazing experience, when the sleep deprivation
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really kicked
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in, like around week eight, I had this thought, and it was the same thought
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that parents crossed
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the ages internationally that everybody has had this thought, which is I am
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never going
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to have free time ever again.
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And somebody said it's true.
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Yeah.
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It's not exactly true, but it feels really, really true in that moment.
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And this was really disconcerting to me because one of the things that I enjoy
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more than anything
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else is learning new things, getting curious about something and diving in and
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fiddling
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around and learning through trial and error, and eventually becoming pretty
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good at something.
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And without this free time, I didn't know how I was ever going to do that ever
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again.
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And so I'm a big geek.
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I want to keep learning things.
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I want to keep growing.
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And so what I decided to do was go to the library and go to the bookstore and
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look at
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what research says about how we learn and how we learn quickly.
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And I read a bunch of books, I read a bunch of websites, and trying to answer
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this question,
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how long does it take to acquire a new skill?
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You know what I found?
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10,000 hours.
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Have you ever heard this?
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It takes 10,000 hours.
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If you want to learn something new, if you want to be good at it, it's going to
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take
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10,000 hours to get there.
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And I read this in book after book and website after a website, and my mental
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experience
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of reading all of this stuff was like, no, I don't have time.
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I don't have 10,000 hours.
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I am never going to be able to learn anything new ever again.
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But that's not true.
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So 10,000 hours, just to give you a rough order of magnitude, 10,000 hours is a
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full-time
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job for five years.
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That's a long time.
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And we've all had the experience of learning something new, and it didn't take
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us anywhere
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close to that amount of time, right?
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So what's up?
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There's something kind of funky going on here.
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But the research says, and what we expect and have experiences, they don't
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match up.
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And what I found, here's the wrinkle.
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The 10,000-hour rule came out of studies of expert level performance.
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There was a professor at Florida State University, his name is K. Anders Eriks
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en.
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He's the originator of the 10,000-hour rule.
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And where that came from is he studied professional athletes, world-class
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musicians.
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Chess grandmasters, all of these ultra-competitive folks in ultra-high-
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performing fields, and
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he tried to figure out how long does it take to get to the top of those kinds
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of fields.
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And what he found is the more deliberate practice, the more time that those
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individuals spent
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practicing the elements, whatever it is that they do, the more time you spend,
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the better
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you get.
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The folks at the tippy top of their fields put in around 10,000 hours of
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practice.
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Now, we're talking about the game of telephone a little bit earlier.
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Here's what happened.
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An author by the name of Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book in 2007 called Outliers,
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the story
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of success.
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And the centerpiece of that book was the 10,000-hour rule.
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Practice a lot, practice well, and you will do extremely well.
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You reach the top of your field.
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So the message, what Dr. Erickson was actually saying is, it takes 10,000 hours
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to get the
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top of an ultra-competitive field in a very narrow subject.
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That's what that means.
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But here's what happened.
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Ever since Outliers came out, immediately came out, reached the top of the best
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cellular
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list, stayed there for three solid months.
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All of a sudden, the 10,000-hour rule was everywhere.
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And a society-wide game of telephone started to be played.
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So this message, it takes 10,000 hours to reach the top of an ultra-competitive
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field,
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became, it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something.
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Which became, it takes 10,000 hours to become good at something.
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Which became, it takes 10,000 hours to learn something.
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But that last statement, it takes 10,000 hours to learn something, it's not
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true.
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It's not true.
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So what the research actually says, if I spent a lot of time here at the CSU
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library in the
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cognitive psychology stacks, because I'm a geek, and when you actually look at
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the studies
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of skill acquisition, you see over and over and over a graph like this.
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Now, researchers, whether they're studying a motor skill, something you do
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physically,
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or a mental skill, they like to study things that they can time, because you
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can quantify
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that, right?
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So they'll give research participants a little task, something that requires
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physical arrangement
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or something that requires learning a little mental trick.
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And they'll time how long a participant takes to complete the skill.
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And here's what this graph says, when you start, so when researchers gave
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participants
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a task, it took them a really long time, because it was new and they were
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horrible.
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With a little bit of practice, a bit better and better and better, and that
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early part
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of practice is really, really efficient.
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People get good at things with just a little bit of practice.
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Now what's interesting to note is that if, you know, we don't really, for
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skills that
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we want to learn for ourselves, we don't care so much about time, right?
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We just care about how good we are, whatever good happens to me.
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So if we relatable performance time to how good you are, the graph flips, and
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you get
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this famous and widely known, this is the learning curve.
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And the story of the learning curve is when you start, you're grossly
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incompetent and
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you know it, right?
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With a little bit of practice, you get really good, really quick, so that early
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level of
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improvement is really fast.
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And then at a certain point, you reach a plateau and the subsequent gains
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become much harder
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to get, they take more time to get.
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Now, my question is, I want that, right?
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How long does it take from starting something and being grossly incompetent and
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knowing it
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to being reasonably good in, hopefully, a short period of time as possible?
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So how long does that take?
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Here's what my research says, 20 hours.
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That's it.
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You can go from knowing nothing about any skill that you can think of.
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Want to learn a language?
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Want to learn how to draw?
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Want to learn how to juggle flaming chainsaws?
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If you put 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice into that thing, you will
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be astounded,
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astounded at how good you are.
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20 hours is doable.
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That's about 45 minutes a day for about a month, even skipping a couple days
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here and
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there.
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20 hours isn't that hard to accumulate.
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Now there's a method to doing this because it's not like you can just start f
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iddling around
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for about 20 hours and expect these massive improvements.
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There's a way to practice intelligently.
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There's a way to practice efficiently that will make sure that you invest those
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20 hours
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in the most effective way that you possibly can.
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And here's the method.
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It applies to anything.
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The first is to deconstruct the skill, decide exactly what you want to be able
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to do when
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you're done and then look into the skill and break it down into smaller and
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smaller pieces.
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Most of the things that we think of as skills are actually big bundles of
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skills that require
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all sorts of different things.
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The more you can break apart the skill, the more you're able to decide, what
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are the parts
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of the skill that will actually help me get to what I want, and then you can
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practice
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those first.
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And if you practice the most important things first, you'll be able to improve
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your performance
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in the least amount of time possible.
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The second is learn enough to self-correct.
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So get three to five resources about what it is you're trying to learn.
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Could be books, could be DVDs, could be courses, could be anything.
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But don't use those as a way to procrastinate on practice.
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I know I do this, right?
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Get like 20 books about the topic.
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It's like I'm going to start learning how to program a computer when I complete
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these
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20 books.
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No, that's procrastination.
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What you want to do is learn just enough that you can actually practice and
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self-correct
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or self-edit as you practice.
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So the learning becomes a way of getting better at noticing when you're making
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a mistake and
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then doing something a little different.
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The third is to remove barriers to practice, distractions, television, internet
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.
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All of these things that get in the way of you actually sitting down and doing
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the work.
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And the more you're able to use just a little bit of willpower to remove the
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distractions
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that are keeping you from practicing, the more likely you are to actually sit
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down and
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practice, right?
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And the fourth is to practice for at least 20 hours.
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Now most skills have what I call a frustration barrier.
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The grossly incompetent knowing it part, that's really, really frustrating.
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We don't like to feel stupid.
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And feeling stupid is a barrier to us actually sitting down and doing the work.
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So by pre-committing to practicing whatever it is that you want to do for at
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least 20
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hours, you will be able to overcome that initial frustration barrier and stick
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with the practice
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long enough to actually reap the rewards, right?
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That's it.
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That's science.
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Four very simple steps that you can use to learn anything.
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Now this is easier to talk about in theory, but it's more fun to talk about in
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practice.
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So one of the things that I've wanted to learn how to do for a long time is
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play the
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ukulele.
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As anybody seeing Jake Shimabukuro's TED talk where he plays the ukulele and
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makes it sound
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like he's like an ukulele god.
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It's amazing.
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I saw that.
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It's like that is so cool.
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It's such a neat instrument.
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I would really like to learn how to play.
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And so I decided that to test this theory I wanted to put 20 hours into
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practicing the
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ukulele and see where we got.
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And so the first thing about playing the ukulele is in order to practice you
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have to
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have one, right?
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So I got an ukulele and my lovely assistant.
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Thank you, sir.
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I think I need the chord here.
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It's not just an ukulele, it's an electric ukulele.
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Yeah.
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So the first couple hours, or just like the first couple hours of anything, you
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have
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to get the tools that you're using to practice.
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You have to make sure that they're available.
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My ukulele didn't come with strings attached.
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I had to figure out how to put those on.
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That's kind of important, right?
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And learning how to tune and learning how to make sure that all of the things
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that need
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to be done in order to start practicing get done, right?
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Now one of the things when I was ready to actually start practicing was I
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looked in online
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to the bases and songbooks for how to play songs and they say, okay, ukuleles
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you can
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play more than one string at a time so you can play chords, that's cool, you're
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accompanying
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yourself.
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Yeah, you.
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And when I started looking at songs, I had an ukulele chord book that had like
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hundreds
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of chords looking at the same, whoa, that's intimidating.
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But when you look at the actual songs, you see the same chords over and over,
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right?
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So, as it turns out, playing the ukulele is kind of like doing anything.
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There's a very small set of things that are really important and techniques
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that you'll
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use all the time.
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And so in most songs, you'll use four, maybe five, chords, and that's it.
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That's the song.
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You don't have to know the hundreds as long as you know the four or the five.
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So while I was doing my research, I found a wonderful little medley of pop
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songs by
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a band called Axis of Awesome.
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And somebody knows it.
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And what Axis of Awesome says is that you can play pretty much any pop song
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over the
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past five decades if you know four chords.
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And those chords are G, D, E minor, C. Four chords pump out every pop song ever
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, right?
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So I thought this is cool.
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But I would like to play every pop song ever, so that was the first song I
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decided to learn.
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And I would like to actually share it with you.
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Ready?
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[APPLAUSE]
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All right.
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Have questions?
Ask Mulligan for help
Tyler Ferrell is the only person in the world named to Golf Digest's list of
Best
Young Teachers in
America AND its list of Best Golf Fitness Professionals in America.
Meet your new
instructor.
10,000 Hour Rule Debunked?
A friend of mine on facebook posted this Ted talk, and I think that's it's important to point out a few things before you think that in 1month you'll be shooting in the 80's.
First, a quick summary of the video. Basically, he argues that the 10,000 hour rule is required to develop mastery, but to get "good enough for most people" you only need to put in 20 hours. However, not all hours are created equally, so here are his four keys to quality practice:
- Deconstruct the skill
- Learn enough to self correct
- Remove practice barriers
- Practice at least 20 hours
Seems simple enough...and his jam on the ukelele was pretty impressive for only 20 hours. But how can we apply this to golf?
Not to be johnny raincloud, but number 1 and 2 are complicated and difficult. Deconstructing the skill sounds easy. And it's what I've done with my program. For example, if you look at transition, I've broken it down into it's key pieces that can be chunked together into the movement. But, when Josh talks about the "skill", what are the skills of golf?
My argument is that to play golf well enough to break 90, you need to be proficient at a number of skills. You need to have good club face control. Good club path control. And good distribution of power sources, which don't interfere with club face or club path control. In addition, each of those skills is slightly different for each of the major swings (Driver, Iron, Distance Wedge, Finesse Wedge, Bunker, Putting). Think about it, if you spent 20 hours on starting a putt online, would that transfer to your driver? Probably not. His example of music, or drawing is a bit different. The C cord is the same regardless of what song you're playing, so learning a C will have a broad range of transfer.
Again, I like this video a lot because it highlights the importance of focused practice and paints a picture of realistic skill acquisition for the average golfer. However, part of the reason that golf is hard is because it relies on multiple skills of precision and control. That blend of skills makes breaking down "the skill of golf" and identifying cause and effect somewhat tricky. If you're not sure about how to breakdown each skill, then check out our programs on the full swing, hitting long drives, hitting solid irons, or developing a deft short game to learn logical step-by-step ways to do it.
A friend of mine on facebook posted this Ted talk, and I think that's it's important to point out a few things before you think that in 1month you'll be shooting in the 80's.
First, a quick summary of the video. Basically, he argues that the 10,000 hour rule is required to develop mastery, but to get "good enough for most people" you only need to put in 20 hours. However, not all hours are created equally, so here are his four keys to quality practice:
- Deconstruct the skill
- Learn enough to self correct
- Remove practice barriers
- Practice at least 20 hours
Seems simple enough...and his jam on the ukelele was pretty impressive for only 20 hours. But how can we apply this to golf?
Not to be johnny raincloud, but number 1 and 2 are complicated and difficult. Deconstructing the skill sounds easy. And it's what I've done with my program. For example, if you look at transition, I've broken it down into it's key pieces that can be chunked together into the movement. But, when Josh talks about the "skill", what are the skills of golf?
My argument is that to play golf well enough to break 90, you need to be proficient at a number of skills. You need to have good club face control. Good club path control. And good distribution of power sources, which don't interfere with club face or club path control. In addition, each of those skills is slightly different for each of the major swings (Driver, Iron, Distance Wedge, Finesse Wedge, Bunker, Putting). Think about it, if you spent 20 hours on starting a putt online, would that transfer to your driver? Probably not. His example of music, or drawing is a bit different. The C cord is the same regardless of what song you're playing, so learning a C will have a broad range of transfer.
Again, I like this video a lot because it highlights the importance of focused practice and paints a picture of realistic skill acquisition for the average golfer. However, part of the reason that golf is hard is because it relies on multiple skills of precision and control. That blend of skills makes breaking down "the skill of golf" and identifying cause and effect somewhat tricky. If you're not sure about how to breakdown each skill, then check out our programs on the full swing, hitting long drives, hitting solid irons, or developing a deft short game to learn logical step-by-step ways to do it.
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Video Transcript
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Hi, everyone.
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Two years ago, my life changed forever.
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My wife Kelsey and I welcomed our daughter Lila into the world.
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Now, becoming a parent is an amazing, amazing experience.
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Your whole world changes overnight, and all of your priorities change
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immediately, so
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fast that it makes it really difficult to process sometimes.
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Now, you also have to learn a tremendous amount about being a parent, like, for
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example, how
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to dress your child.
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This was new to me.
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This is an actual outfit.
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I thought this was a good idea.
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And even Lila knows that it's not a good idea.
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So there was so much to learn and so much craziness all at once.
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And to add to the craziness, Kelsey and I both work from home.
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We're entrepreneurs.
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We run our own businesses.
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So Kelsey develops courses online for yoga teachers.
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I'm an author.
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And so I'm working for home.
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Kelsey's working for home.
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We have an infant, and we're trying to make sure that everything gets done,
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that needs
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done, and life is really, really, really busy.
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And a couple weeks into this amazing experience, when the sleep deprivation
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really kicked
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in, like around week eight, I had this thought, and it was the same thought
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that parents crossed
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the ages internationally that everybody has had this thought, which is I am
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never going
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to have free time ever again.
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And somebody said it's true.
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Yeah.
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It's not exactly true, but it feels really, really true in that moment.
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And this was really disconcerting to me because one of the things that I enjoy
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more than anything
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else is learning new things, getting curious about something and diving in and
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fiddling
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around and learning through trial and error, and eventually becoming pretty
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good at something.
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And without this free time, I didn't know how I was ever going to do that ever
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again.
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And so I'm a big geek.
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I want to keep learning things.
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I want to keep growing.
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And so what I decided to do was go to the library and go to the bookstore and
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look at
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what research says about how we learn and how we learn quickly.
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And I read a bunch of books, I read a bunch of websites, and trying to answer
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this question,
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how long does it take to acquire a new skill?
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You know what I found?
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10,000 hours.
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Have you ever heard this?
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It takes 10,000 hours.
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If you want to learn something new, if you want to be good at it, it's going to
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take
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10,000 hours to get there.
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And I read this in book after book and website after a website, and my mental
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experience
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of reading all of this stuff was like, no, I don't have time.
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I don't have 10,000 hours.
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I am never going to be able to learn anything new ever again.
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But that's not true.
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So 10,000 hours, just to give you a rough order of magnitude, 10,000 hours is a
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full-time
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job for five years.
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That's a long time.
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And we've all had the experience of learning something new, and it didn't take
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us anywhere
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close to that amount of time, right?
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So what's up?
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There's something kind of funky going on here.
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But the research says, and what we expect and have experiences, they don't
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match up.
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And what I found, here's the wrinkle.
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The 10,000-hour rule came out of studies of expert level performance.
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There was a professor at Florida State University, his name is K. Anders Eriks
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en.
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He's the originator of the 10,000-hour rule.
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And where that came from is he studied professional athletes, world-class
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musicians.
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Chess grandmasters, all of these ultra-competitive folks in ultra-high-
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performing fields, and
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he tried to figure out how long does it take to get to the top of those kinds
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of fields.
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And what he found is the more deliberate practice, the more time that those
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individuals spent
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practicing the elements, whatever it is that they do, the more time you spend,
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the better
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you get.
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The folks at the tippy top of their fields put in around 10,000 hours of
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practice.
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Now, we're talking about the game of telephone a little bit earlier.
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Here's what happened.
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An author by the name of Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book in 2007 called Outliers,
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the story
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of success.
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And the centerpiece of that book was the 10,000-hour rule.
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Practice a lot, practice well, and you will do extremely well.
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You reach the top of your field.
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So the message, what Dr. Erickson was actually saying is, it takes 10,000 hours
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to get the
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top of an ultra-competitive field in a very narrow subject.
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That's what that means.
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But here's what happened.
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Ever since Outliers came out, immediately came out, reached the top of the best
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cellular
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list, stayed there for three solid months.
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All of a sudden, the 10,000-hour rule was everywhere.
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And a society-wide game of telephone started to be played.
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So this message, it takes 10,000 hours to reach the top of an ultra-competitive
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field,
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became, it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something.
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Which became, it takes 10,000 hours to become good at something.
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Which became, it takes 10,000 hours to learn something.
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But that last statement, it takes 10,000 hours to learn something, it's not
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true.
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It's not true.
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So what the research actually says, if I spent a lot of time here at the CSU
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library in the
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cognitive psychology stacks, because I'm a geek, and when you actually look at
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the studies
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of skill acquisition, you see over and over and over a graph like this.
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Now, researchers, whether they're studying a motor skill, something you do
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physically,
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or a mental skill, they like to study things that they can time, because you
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can quantify
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that, right?
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So they'll give research participants a little task, something that requires
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physical arrangement
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or something that requires learning a little mental trick.
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And they'll time how long a participant takes to complete the skill.
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And here's what this graph says, when you start, so when researchers gave
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participants
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a task, it took them a really long time, because it was new and they were
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horrible.
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With a little bit of practice, a bit better and better and better, and that
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early part
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of practice is really, really efficient.
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People get good at things with just a little bit of practice.
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Now what's interesting to note is that if, you know, we don't really, for
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skills that
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we want to learn for ourselves, we don't care so much about time, right?
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We just care about how good we are, whatever good happens to me.
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So if we relatable performance time to how good you are, the graph flips, and
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you get
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this famous and widely known, this is the learning curve.
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And the story of the learning curve is when you start, you're grossly
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incompetent and
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you know it, right?
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With a little bit of practice, you get really good, really quick, so that early
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level of
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improvement is really fast.
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And then at a certain point, you reach a plateau and the subsequent gains
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become much harder
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to get, they take more time to get.
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Now, my question is, I want that, right?
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How long does it take from starting something and being grossly incompetent and
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knowing it
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to being reasonably good in, hopefully, a short period of time as possible?
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So how long does that take?
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Here's what my research says, 20 hours.
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That's it.
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You can go from knowing nothing about any skill that you can think of.
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Want to learn a language?
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Want to learn how to draw?
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Want to learn how to juggle flaming chainsaws?
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If you put 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice into that thing, you will
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be astounded,
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astounded at how good you are.
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20 hours is doable.
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That's about 45 minutes a day for about a month, even skipping a couple days
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here and
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there.
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20 hours isn't that hard to accumulate.
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Now there's a method to doing this because it's not like you can just start f
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iddling around
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for about 20 hours and expect these massive improvements.
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There's a way to practice intelligently.
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There's a way to practice efficiently that will make sure that you invest those
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20 hours
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in the most effective way that you possibly can.
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And here's the method.
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It applies to anything.
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The first is to deconstruct the skill, decide exactly what you want to be able
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to do when
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you're done and then look into the skill and break it down into smaller and
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smaller pieces.
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Most of the things that we think of as skills are actually big bundles of
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skills that require
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all sorts of different things.
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The more you can break apart the skill, the more you're able to decide, what
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are the parts
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of the skill that will actually help me get to what I want, and then you can
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practice
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those first.
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And if you practice the most important things first, you'll be able to improve
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your performance
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in the least amount of time possible.
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The second is learn enough to self-correct.
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So get three to five resources about what it is you're trying to learn.
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Could be books, could be DVDs, could be courses, could be anything.
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But don't use those as a way to procrastinate on practice.
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I know I do this, right?
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Get like 20 books about the topic.
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It's like I'm going to start learning how to program a computer when I complete
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these
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20 books.
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No, that's procrastination.
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What you want to do is learn just enough that you can actually practice and
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self-correct
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or self-edit as you practice.
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So the learning becomes a way of getting better at noticing when you're making
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a mistake and
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then doing something a little different.
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The third is to remove barriers to practice, distractions, television, internet
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.
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All of these things that get in the way of you actually sitting down and doing
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the work.
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And the more you're able to use just a little bit of willpower to remove the
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distractions
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that are keeping you from practicing, the more likely you are to actually sit
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down and
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practice, right?
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And the fourth is to practice for at least 20 hours.
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Now most skills have what I call a frustration barrier.
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The grossly incompetent knowing it part, that's really, really frustrating.
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We don't like to feel stupid.
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And feeling stupid is a barrier to us actually sitting down and doing the work.
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So by pre-committing to practicing whatever it is that you want to do for at
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least 20
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hours, you will be able to overcome that initial frustration barrier and stick
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with the practice
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long enough to actually reap the rewards, right?
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That's it.
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That's science.
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Four very simple steps that you can use to learn anything.
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Now this is easier to talk about in theory, but it's more fun to talk about in
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practice.
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So one of the things that I've wanted to learn how to do for a long time is
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play the
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ukulele.
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As anybody seeing Jake Shimabukuro's TED talk where he plays the ukulele and
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makes it sound
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like he's like an ukulele god.
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It's amazing.
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I saw that.
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It's like that is so cool.
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It's such a neat instrument.
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I would really like to learn how to play.
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And so I decided that to test this theory I wanted to put 20 hours into
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practicing the
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ukulele and see where we got.
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And so the first thing about playing the ukulele is in order to practice you
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have to
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have one, right?
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So I got an ukulele and my lovely assistant.
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Thank you, sir.
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I think I need the chord here.
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It's not just an ukulele, it's an electric ukulele.
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Yeah.
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So the first couple hours, or just like the first couple hours of anything, you
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have
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to get the tools that you're using to practice.
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You have to make sure that they're available.
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My ukulele didn't come with strings attached.
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I had to figure out how to put those on.
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That's kind of important, right?
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And learning how to tune and learning how to make sure that all of the things
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that need
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to be done in order to start practicing get done, right?
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Now one of the things when I was ready to actually start practicing was I
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looked in online
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to the bases and songbooks for how to play songs and they say, okay, ukuleles
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you can
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play more than one string at a time so you can play chords, that's cool, you're
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accompanying
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yourself.
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Yeah, you.
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And when I started looking at songs, I had an ukulele chord book that had like
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hundreds
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of chords looking at the same, whoa, that's intimidating.
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But when you look at the actual songs, you see the same chords over and over,
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right?
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So, as it turns out, playing the ukulele is kind of like doing anything.
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There's a very small set of things that are really important and techniques
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that you'll
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use all the time.
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And so in most songs, you'll use four, maybe five, chords, and that's it.
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That's the song.
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You don't have to know the hundreds as long as you know the four or the five.
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So while I was doing my research, I found a wonderful little medley of pop
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songs by
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a band called Axis of Awesome.
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And somebody knows it.
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And what Axis of Awesome says is that you can play pretty much any pop song
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over the
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past five decades if you know four chords.
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And those chords are G, D, E minor, C. Four chords pump out every pop song ever
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, right?
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So I thought this is cool.
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But I would like to play every pop song ever, so that was the first song I
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decided to learn.
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And I would like to actually share it with you.
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Ready?
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[APPLAUSE]
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All right.
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Hi, everyone.
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Two years ago, my life changed forever.
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My wife Kelsey and I welcomed our daughter Lila into the world.
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Now, becoming a parent is an amazing, amazing experience.
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Your whole world changes overnight, and all of your priorities change
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immediately, so
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fast that it makes it really difficult to process sometimes.
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Now, you also have to learn a tremendous amount about being a parent, like, for
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example, how
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to dress your child.
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This was new to me.
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This is an actual outfit.
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I thought this was a good idea.
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And even Lila knows that it's not a good idea.
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So there was so much to learn and so much craziness all at once.
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And to add to the craziness, Kelsey and I both work from home.
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We're entrepreneurs.
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We run our own businesses.
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So Kelsey develops courses online for yoga teachers.
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I'm an author.
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And so I'm working for home.
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Kelsey's working for home.
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We have an infant, and we're trying to make sure that everything gets done,
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that needs
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done, and life is really, really, really busy.
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And a couple weeks into this amazing experience, when the sleep deprivation
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really kicked
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in, like around week eight, I had this thought, and it was the same thought
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that parents crossed
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the ages internationally that everybody has had this thought, which is I am
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never going
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to have free time ever again.
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And somebody said it's true.
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Yeah.
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It's not exactly true, but it feels really, really true in that moment.
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And this was really disconcerting to me because one of the things that I enjoy
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more than anything
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else is learning new things, getting curious about something and diving in and
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fiddling
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around and learning through trial and error, and eventually becoming pretty
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good at something.
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And without this free time, I didn't know how I was ever going to do that ever
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again.
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And so I'm a big geek.
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I want to keep learning things.
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I want to keep growing.
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And so what I decided to do was go to the library and go to the bookstore and
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look at
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what research says about how we learn and how we learn quickly.
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And I read a bunch of books, I read a bunch of websites, and trying to answer
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this question,
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how long does it take to acquire a new skill?
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You know what I found?
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10,000 hours.
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Have you ever heard this?
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It takes 10,000 hours.
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If you want to learn something new, if you want to be good at it, it's going to
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take
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10,000 hours to get there.
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And I read this in book after book and website after a website, and my mental
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experience
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of reading all of this stuff was like, no, I don't have time.
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I don't have 10,000 hours.
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I am never going to be able to learn anything new ever again.
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But that's not true.
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So 10,000 hours, just to give you a rough order of magnitude, 10,000 hours is a
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full-time
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job for five years.
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That's a long time.
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And we've all had the experience of learning something new, and it didn't take
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us anywhere
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close to that amount of time, right?
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So what's up?
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There's something kind of funky going on here.
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But the research says, and what we expect and have experiences, they don't
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match up.
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And what I found, here's the wrinkle.
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The 10,000-hour rule came out of studies of expert level performance.
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There was a professor at Florida State University, his name is K. Anders Eriks
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en.
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He's the originator of the 10,000-hour rule.
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And where that came from is he studied professional athletes, world-class
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musicians.
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Chess grandmasters, all of these ultra-competitive folks in ultra-high-
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performing fields, and
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he tried to figure out how long does it take to get to the top of those kinds
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of fields.
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And what he found is the more deliberate practice, the more time that those
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individuals spent
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practicing the elements, whatever it is that they do, the more time you spend,
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the better
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you get.
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The folks at the tippy top of their fields put in around 10,000 hours of
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practice.
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Now, we're talking about the game of telephone a little bit earlier.
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Here's what happened.
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An author by the name of Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book in 2007 called Outliers,
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the story
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of success.
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And the centerpiece of that book was the 10,000-hour rule.
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Practice a lot, practice well, and you will do extremely well.
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You reach the top of your field.
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So the message, what Dr. Erickson was actually saying is, it takes 10,000 hours
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to get the
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top of an ultra-competitive field in a very narrow subject.
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That's what that means.
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But here's what happened.
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Ever since Outliers came out, immediately came out, reached the top of the best
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cellular
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list, stayed there for three solid months.
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All of a sudden, the 10,000-hour rule was everywhere.
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And a society-wide game of telephone started to be played.
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So this message, it takes 10,000 hours to reach the top of an ultra-competitive
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field,
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became, it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something.
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Which became, it takes 10,000 hours to become good at something.
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Which became, it takes 10,000 hours to learn something.
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But that last statement, it takes 10,000 hours to learn something, it's not
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true.
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It's not true.
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So what the research actually says, if I spent a lot of time here at the CSU
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library in the
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cognitive psychology stacks, because I'm a geek, and when you actually look at
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the studies
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of skill acquisition, you see over and over and over a graph like this.
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Now, researchers, whether they're studying a motor skill, something you do
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physically,
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or a mental skill, they like to study things that they can time, because you
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can quantify
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that, right?
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So they'll give research participants a little task, something that requires
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physical arrangement
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or something that requires learning a little mental trick.
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And they'll time how long a participant takes to complete the skill.
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And here's what this graph says, when you start, so when researchers gave
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participants
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a task, it took them a really long time, because it was new and they were
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horrible.
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With a little bit of practice, a bit better and better and better, and that
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early part
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of practice is really, really efficient.
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People get good at things with just a little bit of practice.
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Now what's interesting to note is that if, you know, we don't really, for
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skills that
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we want to learn for ourselves, we don't care so much about time, right?
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We just care about how good we are, whatever good happens to me.
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So if we relatable performance time to how good you are, the graph flips, and
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you get
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this famous and widely known, this is the learning curve.
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And the story of the learning curve is when you start, you're grossly
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incompetent and
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you know it, right?
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With a little bit of practice, you get really good, really quick, so that early
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level of
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improvement is really fast.
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And then at a certain point, you reach a plateau and the subsequent gains
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become much harder
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to get, they take more time to get.
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Now, my question is, I want that, right?
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How long does it take from starting something and being grossly incompetent and
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knowing it
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to being reasonably good in, hopefully, a short period of time as possible?
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So how long does that take?
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Here's what my research says, 20 hours.
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That's it.
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You can go from knowing nothing about any skill that you can think of.
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Want to learn a language?
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Want to learn how to draw?
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Want to learn how to juggle flaming chainsaws?
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If you put 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice into that thing, you will
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be astounded,
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astounded at how good you are.
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20 hours is doable.
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That's about 45 minutes a day for about a month, even skipping a couple days
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here and
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there.
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20 hours isn't that hard to accumulate.
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Now there's a method to doing this because it's not like you can just start f
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iddling around
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for about 20 hours and expect these massive improvements.
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There's a way to practice intelligently.
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There's a way to practice efficiently that will make sure that you invest those
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20 hours
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in the most effective way that you possibly can.
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And here's the method.
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It applies to anything.
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The first is to deconstruct the skill, decide exactly what you want to be able
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to do when
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you're done and then look into the skill and break it down into smaller and
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smaller pieces.
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Most of the things that we think of as skills are actually big bundles of
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skills that require
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all sorts of different things.
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The more you can break apart the skill, the more you're able to decide, what
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are the parts
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of the skill that will actually help me get to what I want, and then you can
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practice
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those first.
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And if you practice the most important things first, you'll be able to improve
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your performance
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in the least amount of time possible.
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The second is learn enough to self-correct.
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So get three to five resources about what it is you're trying to learn.
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Could be books, could be DVDs, could be courses, could be anything.
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But don't use those as a way to procrastinate on practice.
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I know I do this, right?
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Get like 20 books about the topic.
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It's like I'm going to start learning how to program a computer when I complete
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these
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20 books.
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No, that's procrastination.
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What you want to do is learn just enough that you can actually practice and
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self-correct
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or self-edit as you practice.
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So the learning becomes a way of getting better at noticing when you're making
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a mistake and
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then doing something a little different.
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The third is to remove barriers to practice, distractions, television, internet
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.
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All of these things that get in the way of you actually sitting down and doing
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the work.
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And the more you're able to use just a little bit of willpower to remove the
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distractions
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that are keeping you from practicing, the more likely you are to actually sit
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down and
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practice, right?
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And the fourth is to practice for at least 20 hours.
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Now most skills have what I call a frustration barrier.
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The grossly incompetent knowing it part, that's really, really frustrating.
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We don't like to feel stupid.
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And feeling stupid is a barrier to us actually sitting down and doing the work.
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So by pre-committing to practicing whatever it is that you want to do for at
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least 20
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hours, you will be able to overcome that initial frustration barrier and stick
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with the practice
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long enough to actually reap the rewards, right?
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That's it.
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That's science.
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Four very simple steps that you can use to learn anything.
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Now this is easier to talk about in theory, but it's more fun to talk about in
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practice.
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So one of the things that I've wanted to learn how to do for a long time is
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play the
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ukulele.
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As anybody seeing Jake Shimabukuro's TED talk where he plays the ukulele and
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makes it sound
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like he's like an ukulele god.
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It's amazing.
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I saw that.
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It's like that is so cool.
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It's such a neat instrument.
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I would really like to learn how to play.
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And so I decided that to test this theory I wanted to put 20 hours into
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practicing the
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ukulele and see where we got.
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And so the first thing about playing the ukulele is in order to practice you
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have to
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have one, right?
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So I got an ukulele and my lovely assistant.
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Thank you, sir.
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I think I need the chord here.
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It's not just an ukulele, it's an electric ukulele.
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Yeah.
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So the first couple hours, or just like the first couple hours of anything, you
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have
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to get the tools that you're using to practice.
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You have to make sure that they're available.
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My ukulele didn't come with strings attached.
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I had to figure out how to put those on.
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That's kind of important, right?
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And learning how to tune and learning how to make sure that all of the things
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that need
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to be done in order to start practicing get done, right?
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Now one of the things when I was ready to actually start practicing was I
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looked in online
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to the bases and songbooks for how to play songs and they say, okay, ukuleles
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you can
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play more than one string at a time so you can play chords, that's cool, you're
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accompanying
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yourself.
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Yeah, you.
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And when I started looking at songs, I had an ukulele chord book that had like
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hundreds
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of chords looking at the same, whoa, that's intimidating.
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But when you look at the actual songs, you see the same chords over and over,
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right?
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So, as it turns out, playing the ukulele is kind of like doing anything.
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There's a very small set of things that are really important and techniques
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that you'll
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use all the time.
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And so in most songs, you'll use four, maybe five, chords, and that's it.
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That's the song.
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You don't have to know the hundreds as long as you know the four or the five.
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So while I was doing my research, I found a wonderful little medley of pop
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songs by
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a band called Axis of Awesome.
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And somebody knows it.
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And what Axis of Awesome says is that you can play pretty much any pop song
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over the
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past five decades if you know four chords.
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And those chords are G, D, E minor, C. Four chords pump out every pop song ever
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, right?
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So I thought this is cool.
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But I would like to play every pop song ever, so that was the first song I
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decided to learn.
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And I would like to actually share it with you.
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Ready?
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[APPLAUSE]
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All right.
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