have you ever heard of the 10000 hour rule? In a nutshell, you have to spend 10000 hours in any given activity to achieve mastery. I heard about this a lot when I read about language learning and I also know of some studies conducted in sports and music, which prove that the professionals spend 10000 hours and more in their respective activities. So when I looked up a fitting quote for TL I read this article on the the 10000 hour rule and it hit me, why not have a discussion here on TL about what you think. Do you agree? What about talent? Is there a way around spending 10000 hours playing SC:BW or SC2? People like Day[9] always remind us to practice a lot and analyse a lot and in detail. Does his way work as he intuitively has this rule of thumb in mind? Or what about the Koreans who spend tons of hours playing? Did Nada amount to 10000 hours? I guess so! So what do you guys think?
(I would've loved to put this topic in the strategy section, but was way unsure if it belongs anywhere near there. If a mod thinks this topic belongs there, please move it. Thanks!)
Regards ionize
[EDIT] My bad, it's supposed to be mastery not perfection. Don't get confused about that. If any mod could rename the topic accordingly please, that'd be nice! [EDIT2] Thanks GHOSTCLAW!
On April 09 2011 01:25 NexUmbra wrote: 10000 hours would be 417 days...
So I don't think nada did that much If he practiced for 12 hours a day straight he would have to have done it for 834 days to get that much time in :p
Let's say Nada practice an average of 8 hours a day so that amounts to 1250 days which is roughly 3 years and a half. Given his SC:BW career I would doubt he couldn't have practiced that much.
10000 hours is 416 days. Considering sleep, let's say a full-time freak gets a quarter of his life time put into something, you end up at around 5 years. if you count the real freaks, who really do nothing else you maybe get this down to 4 years.
I actually think, no one ever achieves "absolute" perfection. So i think it's pointless to use this term. You can always do something better, so the term "perfection" as you use it is not a final value. Thus, it really depends on how high you set the marker for something to be perfect. 5 years can be enough for that, but it can just as well not be. It really depends on how high you set the bar.
On April 09 2011 01:28 MisterD wrote: 10000 hours is 416 days. Considering sleep, let's say a full-time worker gets a quarter of his life time put into something, you end up at around 5 years. if you count the real freaks, you maybe get this down to 4 years.
I actually think, no one ever achieves "absolute" perfection. So i think it's pointless to use this term. You can always do something better, so the term "perfection" as you use it is not a final value. Thus, it really depends on how high you set the marker for something to be perfect. 5 years can be enough for that, but it can just as well not be. It really depends on how high you set the bar.
On April 09 2011 01:28 MisterD wrote: 10000 hours is 416 days. Considering sleep, let's say a full-time worker gets a quarter of his life time put into something, you end up at around 5 years. if you count the real freaks, you maybe get this down to 4 years.
I actually think, no one ever achieves "absolute" perfection. So i think it's pointless to use this term. You can always do something better, so the term "perfection" as you use it is not a final value. Thus, it really depends on how high you set the marker for something to be perfect. 5 years can be enough for that, but it can just as well not be. It really depends on how high you set the bar.
Korean pros practice 8 hours a day... Given their career length, I imagine the top guys definitely practice that much. Look at JD, he plays more than 8 hours and he is amazing. Flash as well, and NaDa played for how long? 3-4 years? He difinitely could have hit 1000
I would say in e-sports physical condition is largely irrelevant, meaning if anyone can put the time in anyone can be great. Sure some will be more inclined to perform better especially in stressful situations, but thats something that can be directly accounted for with dedication and play time. 10,000 hours sounds about right.
This has been discussed to death, search the word "talent" to find the discussions.
I would believe this rule except its not just 10,000 raw hours practicing, its 10,000 hours of "deliberate practice" there is a huge difference between the two. Google deliberate practice to see what it is.
Years ago, when Darts became a big hype here I heard a famous Darts player say that any new player has to throw 1 million darts to throw an 180, which is pretty logical, when you think about it. Throwing a million darts gets you the practice you need to reach that goal. This type of brute force approach can be applied to most goals.
I never heard of the 10000 hour rule that you mentioned, but I kind of figured something like that already long ago, as I am sure many people have. The only real question for me is what are you going to spend your 10000+ on? Is Starcraft a good option? To be honest I think there are activities that yield better rewards.
Well it's wrong because different things require different amounts of time to become completely fluent in. But something resembling that amount of time would probably be considered necessary to become high level in a very competitive industry (music, art, languages, gaming, chess). If you work it out most progamers probably manage to get there in 3 1/2 years, and some who practice for 5 years are worse than people who have played for 2 etc. So you can still improve beyond the 10k hour thresh hold, and it comes down more to technique of improvement, as some are obviously better than others.
So it's just a way of motivating people to work harder, no magic number of hours for anything.
In terms of BW/SC2 I would say no because everyone's skill ceiling is different, method of practice and training is different and we're all limited.
This type of mastery has too many variables and is highly subjective. I've known tons of people who have played Brood War for well over 8 years and while I can say some are 'good' others would still fall into D+ or C on ICCUP. ;/
On April 09 2011 01:37 Jayve wrote: Malcolm Gladwell - Outliers That's where the theory is from.
Basically with 10.000 hours you can reach the top of anything, not be #1 in the world, but at least "be in the same league"
Same league? Hogwash.
10,000 hours applies more to mastering a trade than anything else.
Not sure how this is revolutionary, I think anyone could of deduced that if you put 10,000 hours into something and have no other limitations you are going to be pretty damn good at it. I guess the guy who did the study put a arbitrary number on it it, but this isn't exactly something that nobody knew before. I think with 10000s hours into something if they are focused and include time to analyze how to get better you should be in the top .5 percentile or so.
I have a friend that played over 500 game and hes still in bronze. It takes more than just putting time into an activity.You need a drive to better yourself.
I've never bought into this, as it certainly makes no sense...
You can't apply the same scale to every skill? It's as simple as that... Some skills are harder to master than others. 'Mastering' something is a bit tough to define anyway. I'd say I'm a 'master' of tic-tac-toe. But who isn't? And we certainly didn't spend 10,000 hours earning that distinction.
It's interesting to read your opinion on the whole topic.
For languages I think 10000 hours is a good notion to get an idea how long it takes to get realy proficient. Listen to any language 10000 hours and be immersed in a language environment for 10000+ hours (inculding, reading, playing, eating, etc) and you will eventually be proficient.
Also another gaming example: I played UT for well over 10 years, let's say 8 years raw time. If I am mild I'd average my hours spend per day to about two and a half. Which would mean 8*365*2.5=7300 hours. It's a good enough calculation. My skill level was decent and I still got beaten many times over. The simple difference was the hours spent, most of my clanmates and duel partners would've an average of 3-4 hours over 8 years which would be 8760 and 11680 hours respectively.
On April 09 2011 01:39 chenchen wrote: There are lots of things that take far longer than 10,000 hours to reach the "highest levels".
Piano would be the most obvious example.
Most people simply aren't capable. I know from a lot of FFR and DDR/ITG experience when you come down to it people aren't actually physically capable of moving that fast.
Most people aren't physically capable of hitting arrows at a speed of 12 steps per second for a full 2-3 minutes, which is what you need to be able to do to become a world class player.
So to become a master of tic-tac-toe I have to spend 10k hours on it?
And to be an expert on all the knowledge in the universe all I have to do is spend 10k hours on it?
Come on, man! Instead of some random number how about we say this: If you want to get better than other people at a particular skill, you'll probably have to spend a lot of time practicing.
And some people will be able to practice less and still be better...
the trouble with applying 10k hours to something like starcraft is that we don't entirely know how to train in a most efficient and productive way. there's speculation, sure, and some more legitimate than others. compare this to mastering the violin, which is pretty well grounded in terms of technique and performance style.
On April 09 2011 01:39 chenchen wrote: There are lots of things that take far longer than 10,000 hours to reach the "highest levels".
Piano would be the most obvious example.
Most people simply aren't capable. I know from a lot of FFR and DDR/ITG experience when you come down to it people aren't actually physically capable of moving that fast.
Most people aren't physically capable of hitting arrows at a speed of 12 steps per second for a full 2-3 minutes, which is what you need to be able to do to become a world class player.
It only requires a person to be moderately fit to pass streamy 14s or 15s, and FA comes from practice. If you're healthy and under 35, you should be able to reach the top levels of ITG without too much trouble from training alone.
On April 09 2011 01:43 feanor1 wrote: I think anyone could of deduced that if you put 10,000 hours into something [...] you are going to be pretty damn good at it.
I think people overlook that this is assuming your doing it PROPERLY. You can't just half-ass something for 10000 hours and expect to be a master. You have to spend 10000 hours trying to master it, to master it in 10000 hours.
There's more to it than just 10,000 hours. I can play custom games in Starcraft for 10,000 hours, it doesn't make me as good as the pros. The actual rule is 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. And this rule applies to anything and everything that has a level of mastery. It's not just the quantity of work you put into something, but the quality as well.
There are a lot of unknown factors in all this for games, such as what an hour put into something constitutes. Do they mean focused practice? What is focused practice for games? Is it sufficient to ladder for fun in SC2 for example?
I've heard of this rule before, and I wouldn't dismiss it. Also, I think people should remember that related activities contribute to each other. For example, people sitting down to play SC2 will be very different skill-wise the first time if they come from different backgrounds. Someone who's played RTS games for his entire life will automatically have what we call a "talent" for SC2, while someone who's spent his days writing poetry, most likely won't. There probably also exists a "real" concept of talent, but doing research on this is nigh impossible. In any case, when you ask if there's some way to circumvent it, the only answer I can come up with is; play other RTS games. Having played a lot of RTS games before a given RTS game is released will automatically make you better at it, because they are immensely similar.
This "rule" or "theory" is completely bogus. The reason is, even if the premise of the theory is true, that 10,000 hours magically makes you 'masterful' at something, it doesn't account for the fact that competition always seems to come into play.
Imagine a world where Starcraft was the #1 sport and 80%+ of people all literally played at least 8 hours a day. It would take a little over three and a half years for someone to reach 10,000 hours. So the number of 'master' players in the world would be astonishingly high, essentially every person over the age of 16 who began playing at 12 or younger, would be a 'master'. The odds of one 'master' player beating another would not make much difference. With a huge number of players with 20,000, 30,000, or even 40,000 hours total SC time, the line would begin to skew, and 10,000 hours might make someone an amateur, 20,000 might become the new standard for 'mastery'. Competition always makes things relative.
Besides this 'theory' completely ignores talent and the occasional miraculous virtuosos who take to a sport faster than anyone else (the Bruce Lees, Michael Jordans, Tiger Woodses, Yo-yo Mas, and Lee Young Hos of the world).
yea i heard this on the news and they said the young generations are going to be masters at video games, but what skill do they really have for the real world? it was interesting to watch. still dont think they have figured it out.
The 10000 hour rule isn't supposed to be taken literally. It's meant for shock value.
The first time I heard it used was when I was talking to a teacher about what field I wanted to go in to. He told me that if I wasn't prepared to spend 10000 hours at it, then I should probably pick something else.
Ya, I think the 10,000 rule almost never applies. Some things are just inherently easy, and will take 1000's less, and some will be hard enough that you can never "master" them.
Take just speaking English. People have probably spent 100,000 hours practicing it by the time they hit 20, yet still speak like retards. lol
This "rule" or "theory" is completely bogus. The reason is, even if the premise of the theory is true, that 10,000 hours magically makes you 'masterful' at something, it doesn't account for the fact that competition always seems to come into play.
Imagine a world where Starcraft was the #1 sport and 80%+ of people all literally played at least 8 hours a day. It would take a little over three and a half years for someone to reach 10,000 hours. So the number of 'master' players in the world would be astonishingly high, essentially every person over the age of 16 who began playing at 12 or younger, would be a 'master'. The odds of one 'master' player beating another would not make much difference. With a huge number of players with 20,000, 30,000, or even 40,000 hours total SC time, the line would begin to skew, and 10,000 hours might make someone an amateur, 20,000 might become the new standard for 'mastery'. Competition always makes things relative.
Besides this 'theory' completely ignores talent and the occasional miraculous virtuosos who take to a sport faster than anyone else (the Bruce Lees, Michael Jordans, Tiger Woodses, Yo-yo Mas, and Lee Young Hos of the world).
I think you're reading too much inot this. Of course exactly 10.000 hours is not magically turning you into a master, that's a figure that sells books. What I get from this is that LOTS of practice are the most important thing to become good at something, and that's true I guess. I don't have the source from last thread ready, but someone showed pretty convincingly that "talent" has yet to proven to exist.
This 10,000 hour rule is mentioned in Malcome Gladwells book Outliers. He discussed how Bill Gates had 10,000 hours of programming experience from Highschool through college, and when computers started getting smaller he was able to capitalize on the opportunity through his experience. I believe this rule has merit in many different aspects of life.
Goal: achieving a made up level of skill, called mastery, which equals to ... well.. being pretty damn good. Better than a layman, better than an amateur, and better than most professionals in the same field.
How to achieve it: 1) have the required amount of talent 2) work more than most people will... 10K hours should be enough
I agree that it's not just "spending" 10000 hours, but how you spend them. In case of a game, you will need analysis of your own play and that of better players, the insight of better players (coaches) and peers to see problems and work on those. There are a lot of factors that come into play and still I would stick with a total of 10000 well spent hours to become a master at any competetive game.
@Prodegees and idols like Jordan, Mozart and the like: We should consider their fail ratio as well. I would love to know how many times Michael Jordan failed in his career before he was where he is now.
If i practiced music one hour a day since I started playing (I think my average is higher than that by now, but I don't know) then I would almost be there, I think I'm around the 230 day mark or so of playing music.
The important question of course is how many brood war hours = an SC2 hour? I mean BW players are generally better than new players, signifying a head start, same with WC3. However, I don't think it's a 1-1 ratio or anything near that.
Someone's been reading too much Malcolm Gladwell. You shouldn't believe everything you read, and you really should be extra skeptical of Gladwell, he dumps out books every 6 weeks and most of them are conclusions drawn from coincidences.
On April 09 2011 01:34 Leviwtf wrote: This has been discussed to death, search the word "talent" to find the discussions.
I would believe this rule except its not just 10,000 raw hours practicing, its 10,000 hours of "deliberate practice" there is a huge difference between the two. Google deliberate practice to see what it is.
Think of all the people that are driving cars and how many hours they have put into it. The local 12 year old go karter is a better driver than most people on the road.
Obviously the rule has significant limitations, but what is missing in many of the counter-arguments (but was mentioned by a previous poster) is that the practice has to be focused and deliberate. Spamming games for 12 hours a day in SC is not going to be focused and deliberate for each of those 12 hours. When you speak English, you aren't consciously trying to improve your grammar or expand your vocabulary, so the practice is not as effective. Try to think about this being more a rule of thumb than an exact, scientific number.
Has anyone mentioned it was Malcolm Gladwell's coinage actually? Some media sponsored american express digestible information scheme. In short, if you want something done, just do it :p
Some of you are still missing the point. There is a skill ceiling in games like Brood War and SC2. Everyone's skill level will be different even after the 10,000+ hours.
Completely random number. It's just a higher number saying that if you practice something a lot, you can achieve mastery...possibly.
But it means nothing unless you take the proper procedures to learn your craft. For example, with art (drawing/painting), you can't just draw from your head for 10,000 hours and expect to make anything recognizable. It takes years of studying books, being taught (self-taught or not), and gaining knowledge from things discovered over the centuries of history (such as perspective, or even more obscure things like skyholes in trees being darker than the open sky). It's an enormous amount of information you have to consume on-top of gaining physical dexterity.
Then you have to consider talent. Talent is just another word for aptitude. Some will learn faster than others, not everyone is equal. It's quite genetic. In this case, it's the ability to see correctly and to consume the information that's out there and apply it to your artwork.
And after that learning, you have to have emotional sensitivity. Something that's probably born in us genetically or modified as we age. Some folk out there just...aren't creative. Probably because they didn't spend their childhood doing much creative craft.
As you can see, there is an enormous amount of stuff that factors into the rate at which you can achieve mastery. Some people will never achieve it no matter how many hours they put in. As long as you're seeing progress every few weeks and you're working hard, then you should be fine.
So 10,000 hours could be about right for most people. But not everyone. It's not like someone's measured 10,000 hours until they achieved mastery before.
Check out this guy. Go from page one to page 30 (after looking at the artwork on both). That's about half a year's worth of progress. Yes, someone made THAT much progress in half a year. You could be that person, or maybe half a year with his intense studying would only get you a fourth of where he's at. He's an example of talent.
On April 09 2011 03:59 Vapaach wrote: So if a game lasts about 7 mins average, that means that you have to play 85714 games to get 10000 hours of gameplay. Holy sheet.
If a game lasts 7 minutes each on average, you need to stop cheesing =P
I think that that is a bit of a vague expression though, what is defined as "mastery"?
"you have to spend 10000 hours in any given activity to achieve mastery" is a generalization. All generalizations are false, including this one. There are people who can learn more things faster than others, so for them it would take considerably less time to become a master of something. There's also the variable of the activity they are trying to master. Some things are much more difficult than others and will require more time to master than easier things.
Putting a number like 10000 hours on it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Did they keep track of somebody who was trying to master something, and then when he hit "mastery" did they stop the clock, and it was at 10000 hours? Did they do this multiple times to test the theory? No.
The more time you spend practicing something, the better you will get at it. Calling something like the 10000 hour thing a "rule" is stupid.
depends on how you define mastery, if it is defined as "spend a fuckton of hours on so you have to be pretty damn good", then it's a no brainer.
The whole thing is silly, basically the idea is, to be the best at something, you need to spend a significant portion of your life devoted to it. If you have talent, you'll get there quicker. 10000 or 9999 or 20000 is just a number.
kind of an arbitrary rule. I'd probably need to spend less than 10,000 hours peeling potatoes to achieve mastery in it. I would probably have to commit far more than 10,000 hours to becoming a master historian. Starcraft is an incredibly complex, variable and evolutionary pursuit. You cannot 'master' it in any true sense of the word.
Of course you are going to be very skilled at something if you put that much time in to it. 10000 seems like an arbitrary number though. I would say you have obtained "mastery" in much less time than that in many cases.
I have never heard of this but 10000 hours is a hell of a long time. Think about it in relation to other activities. If I spent 10000 hours on golf, I would have an amazing swing assuming that I started off correctly. I would say 10000 is just a number to signify a solidification of the skill set.
Depending on what you do it could take much more/less. I would probably be an expert salesman in under 200 if I started well. A good pilot always has around 20,000 flying hours (confirmation pls?). Professional atheletes/gamers have more natural talent and spend more time tweaking smaller things than us, which makes them better.
The 10,000 hour rule was actually found in a study of numerous disciplines, the person who did it was named Ereckson IIRC and I studied it a bit at one point for school and it's definitely a thing. They looked at chess, music, academics, some sports I think, now as to the above poster I think most sports are probably a different story because there are genetic factors that have a bigger effect than with most things (I don't mean people that are just naturally better at the sport I mean things like being bigger/taller as a kid. There's a book by Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers and it actually shows that kids who are bigger or born earlier in the year have a big advantage in sports because they're a little bigger as little kids but that small size difference means their played more so they get better faster so they're played even more etc.. etc... The book also actually mentions this very rule and for non-sports even things you would think are very much based on natural ability like music the original study found that there wasn't ANYONE in the pretty large group of violinists that they were looking at who worked much harder or much less hard than the others to achieve similar results
You opened a parenthesis and never closed it. Just wanted to point that out.
For music, what about perfect pitch? I know some people who got very good at piano without perfect pitch and just hard work, but I know more people who worked just as hard, have perfect pitch, and are THAT much better.
On April 09 2011 01:44 nitram wrote: I have a friend that played over 500 game and hes still in bronze. It takes more than just putting time into an activity.You need a drive to better yourself.
yet that is only 500 games matters how he played the games and what not.. you need more than evidence than that ^^ time=experience=game sense= you play better in reacting to your opponent (: that is a lot of time though... i havent had mastery over life yet D:
So what happens if we reverse the process. Instead of counting down from 10000 hours as a goal to achieve mastery, we count upwards and check every 50/100/x (any arbitrary number of hours) on our improvement? I mean, when talent and proper training come into play, when do they? Don't you need a basic grasp of a game like SC2 first before you can profit from proper coaching or intense 1on1 with training partners? When do you start looking at your demos? I feel like not looking on my demos for the first 100+ games at all, as I'm still in learning mode and don't have a sense for what exactly is going on, so when do I start?
It's interesting to put your gaming life into the 10000 hours perspective. I don't they "you gotta fuck'n apply it. NOW!", but take a look at yourself, with all your effort and all your methods. At what point are you and how far have you gone? I played UT against bots for a long time and it honed my reflexes and aim, but nothing more. When I had a duel against a competetive player for the first time he manhandled me, but I was able to learn fast, because I had grasped the game to a certain point and was ready to move on. But what about a complete newbe? Would he be able to learn proper duels right from the spot? Doesnt he need to learn some basics first?
I don't actually think that 9k hrs would be bad either ... It's simple enough time and you can achieve mastery with anything , there's isn't a point where you can say DING ... Master of this ... You constantly improve on what you do .... Even after 40k hrs
The way I learned about this when it passes by in a book about Industrial Organization is that it isn't mastery, it's expertise and makes one an official expert.
Qoute taken from the source linked in OP seems to agree: "In addition, other studies have also shown that excellence at a complex task requires a minimum level of practice, and experts have settled on 10,000 hours as the magic number for true expertise".
An expert is simply a formal way of indicating someone is most likely more than qualified to do certain things. Be it mental or physical or whatever. It's not an answer to a certain field, it's not an end goal since the fields one can become an expert in are infinite in depth and it's nothing to strife for since it doesn't give you anything except for possible credit. What matters is all the build up you do.
EPT
If he practiced for 12 hours a day straight he would have to have done it for 834 days to get that much time in :p
... It's simple enough time and you can achieve mastery with anything , there's isn't a point where you can say DING ... Master of this ... You constantly improve on what you do .... Even after 40k hrs
