Some dog owners underestimate the amount of work they need to apply to have a well-trained, mannerly adult dog.
Just taking lessons is not enough, regardless of the program. Skill development, even with the best methods, require lots of repetitions, time and maintenance. Every trainer has had students that quit the lessons after a few lessons and little homework. That is just not being fair to the dog.
Ever heard of the 10,000 hours, 10 years claims about what it takes for a human to become an expert? Here is an analysis of that work.
Where did the "10,000 hours / 10 years" rule come from? The popular idea comes from a 1993 research paper by K. Anders Ericsson and two colleagues (Ralf Thiede Krampe and Clemens Tesch-Römer) titled "The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance" published in Psychological Review (Vol. 100, No. 3).They studied elite violin students at the Music Academy of Berlin and found that by age 20, the best violinists had accumulated roughly 10,000 hours of solitary practice over their lifetimes, compared to about 7,500 hours for good (but not world-class) students and 5,000 hours for those planning to teach music.
Malcolm Gladwell popularized this in his 2008 book Outliers, where he turned it into the catchy "10,000-hour rule" and claimed that 10,000 hours (roughly 10 years of intense work) is what separates world-class experts from everyone else in almost any field (he cited the Beatles, Bill Gates, etc.). Is it really 10,000 hours / 10 years? No - not exactly. The original research and later work by Ericsson and others show important caveats:
It was never a universal rule. Ericsson himself repeatedly said Gladwell oversimplified and misrepresented his work. There is no magic threshold of exactly 10,000 hours. The number varies enormously by domain Later meta-analyses and studies (including Ericsson's own follow-ups) show:
Chess: top grandmasters average ~11,000-25,000 hours
Music (classical): ~15,000-25,000+ hours by age 20-30 for elite performers
Sports: often 5,000-15,000 hours (some Olympic athletes reach expertise faster)
Dart throwing or typing sometimes only a few hundred hours can get you to very high levels because the skill ceiling is lower.
Not all hours are equal - it must be deliberate practice
Ericsson's key point: just putting in time is worthless. The hours must be deliberate practice, which means:
Focused, goal-oriented training with immediate feedback
Constantly pushing just beyond your current ability (not mindless repetition)
Usually designed and supervised by a coach or teacher
Mentally taxing and not inherently enjoyable most of the time
Playing golf for fun for 10,000 hours won't make you Tiger Woods. Practicing specific weaknesses with a top coach might.
Genetics and starting age matter
Recent large-scale studies (e.g., Macnamara et al., 2014, 2016; Hambrick et al.) found that deliberate practice explains:
~20-25% of the variance in performance in music
~18% in sports
~4% in education/academia
<1% in some professions
Height in basketball, perfect pitch in music, working-memory capacity in chess, reaction time in esports - innate factors set both the ceiling and the speed of improvement.
Starting age is critical in many domains
In classical music, gymnastics, figure skating, or chess, the very best almost always started extremely early (age 3-7). Starting at 15 makes reaching the absolute top almost impossible, no matter how many hours you put in later.
Factor | Relative Importance (rough estimate) |
|---|---|
Deliberate practice (quality) | High (20–50% depending on field) |
Starting age | Very high in “early-peak” domains |
Quality of coaching/mentors | Extremely high |
Genetic/talent factors | Moderate to very high |
Total hours (quantity) | Important but secondary |
Motivation & grit | Necessary but not sufficient |
Luck (right place, right time) | Often decisive at the very top |
Bottom line
The "10,000-hour rule" is a myth/misinterpretation.
10,000 hours of deliberate practice can get you to a very high professional level in many fields, but reaching true world-class expertise usually takes more hours, better coaching, earlier starting age, and favorable genetics - and even then, there are no guarantees.
Ericsson's own phrase (which never caught on like Gladwell's) was closer to:
"Expert performance is the result of prolonged, effortful, and highly structured practice, guided by expert teachers, sustained over many years."
No round number, no promise, just a lot of very hard, smart work - plus the right circumstances and biology.
So, what about dogs? Can you have a well-trained, mannerly dog without focused, quality work, especially without consulting or working with experts?
You know the answer. It is very unlikely.
What are the take aways for dog ownership?
Ask an expert.
No comments:
Post a Comment