Practice and Improvement (2) - A Common Fallacy

It is often stated that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert in a skill.  This tends to reinforce the myth that if you do something for long enough, you will get better at it.  Let's take a closer look at this fallacy.

One of the biggest bodies of evidence to support this theory is the pool of failed guitarists, ie. those who never really got anywhere with the instrument, despite initial best intentions.  We could even include the huge number of bedroom players who stopped improving after reaching an intermediate level.  These days they dabble a little, but gave up on any thoughts of becoming experts a long time ago.

One thing these millions of players have in common, is that they didn't devote 10,000 hours to practising guitar.  Of these millions, none is an expert, therefore we have a very strong correlation between not practising for 10,000 hours, and not being an expert.

On the surface, this is a reasonably convincing argument, and one which can perpetuate the self-satisfying belief that one's lack of improvement is down to a lack of available time for dedication to the instrument.  However it falls horribly apart when considered to a deeper level.

Using terms borrowed from Frederic Bastiat's  "That Which is Seen and That Which is Not Seen",

That which is seen - is the pool of millions of non expert players who failed to become experts because they didn't devote the required 10,000 hours to practising guitar.

That which is not seen - is the much smaller number of players who, despite investing 10,000 hours and many more, are not expert guitarists.

 That which is not seen - is the much smaller number of players who, despite investing less than 10,000 hours, *are* expert guitarists.

Examining these two "unseen" and mutually exclusive groups will be the topic of my next post.

Practice and Improvement (1) - An Overview

Each of us has a limited amount of time to practise our instrument.  For some, that can be eight hours a day or more.  For most it's substantially less than that.

There is a common mistaken tendency to infer that improvement is proportional to hours of practice.  In addition there is an resigned undercurrent of belief, that practice ought to be along the lines of the routine demonstrated in the above video.

Now, I'm not suggesting that there is no truth to these ideas.  However, I would claim that there are certainly times when these ideas have absolutely zero relevance to a student's progress, and that consequently, a more elegant approach to the topic is warranted.