Is The 10,000 Hour Rule A Lie?

I explore the truth behind the famous 10,000-hour rule, popularised by Malcolm Gladwell. Today, Prof Alex Edmans uncovers why the rule persists despite its flaws and dives into the psychological biases that make misinformation so believable.

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Sources:

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success. Little, Brown, and Company.

Edmans, A. (2024). May contain lies: How stories, statistics, and studies exploit our biases—and what we can do about it. University of California Press.

Kaplan, Jonas T., Sarah I. Gimbel and Sam Harris (2016): ‘Neural correlates of maintaining one’s political beliefs in the face of counterevidence’, Scientific Reports 6, 39589.

Wong, Nathan Colin (2015): ‘The 10,000-hour rule’, Canadian Urological Journal 9, 299.

Staw, Barry M. (1975): ‘Attribution of the “causes” of performance: a general alternative interpretation of cross-sectional research on organizations’, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 13, 414–32.