Scott Young

And so it looks like they have talent, but what they really have is background knowledge.

I mean, the truth of the 10,000 hour rule is that and I think what is true from the research is that becoming world class, like, you know, reaching the pinnacle of a skill in almost any profession does require an enormous amount of time.

So that case, it's probably true.

But I think two things that I think we're missing there.

One is just the idea that, well, not everyone is going to learn at exactly the same rate.

Not everyone is going to reach exactly the same level.

So this idea that practice is the only thing that matters is a little bit too much.

But then the other thing is that it kind of created this impression that just doing something a lot was the key to getting better at it.

And the underlying research, Andrew Erickson's research of deliberate practice was that, well, no, that's not the case.

That it's actually a very specific type of practice of working with a coach with direct feedback, making deliberate conscious kind of striving efforts to make small improvements in your skills.

That was the thing that actually led to growth.

I mean, I've spent thousands of hours driving a car, but I certainly wouldn't want to get on the racetrack.

I mean, I think it's certainly the case you can spend a lot of time doing something, but if you're not striving to improve it, if you're not under taking steps to deliberately improve small aspects of your performance, it typically plateaus.

It typically reaches a level where, you know, you're making very slight improvements, but you're not making these kind of large shifts in how you perform things.

Well, I think the value of a coach in this particular context where you're talking about like you're kind of a better performer than the coach itself.

That's not usually the case.

Usually you go to a class and the teacher knows more than you do.

But if you're in a situation where you are actually a better performer, the thing the coach can do is they are able to monitor and observe what you're doing, whereas you have to actually do it.

So there's this concept in psychology called working memory, which is this

basically this bottleneck where all your thoughts and experiences have to go through.