An Important Thing to Know About the '10,000-Hour Rule'

By now most people have heard about the "10,000-hour rule." This idea, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell and others, suggests that it requires about 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery at just about anything. But as Daniel Goleman writes in his book, "Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence," that rule only tells half the story. Here is a crucial passage from the book:

"If you are a duffer at golf, say, and make the same mistakes every time you try a certain swing or putt, 10,000 hours of practicing that error will not improve your game. You'll still be a duffer, albeit an older one.

"No less an expert than Anders Ericsson, the Florida State University psychologist whose research on expertise spawned the 10,000-hour rule of thumb, told me, "You don't get benefits from mechanical repetition, but by adjusting your execution over and over to get closer to your goal …

"Ericsson argues that the secret of winning is 'deliberate practice,' where an expert coach takes you through well-designed training over months or years, and you give it your full concentration...

"Smart practice always includes a feedback loop that lets you recognize errors and correct them—which is why dancers use mirrors. Ideally that feedback comes from someone with an expert eye and so every world-class sports champion has a coach. If you practice without such feedback, you don't get to the top ranks."

I can testify to the accuracy of this observation when it comes to dentistry. I have seen thousands of dentists over the years from all parts of the country and all kinds of backgrounds. I have found that you can usually predict the levels of success they will reach simply by observing how open they are to using a "feedback loop" to continue to improve. We see that all the time in our hands-on workshops, where we find that the more a participant has the capacity to engage with real-time feedback from instructors and mentors, the more likely they are to experience career changing breakthroughs.

You will always see a huge difference in results between the dentist who seeks out challenges and invites growth opportunities—in clinical, practice management and team leadership skills— over the course of a career, and one who spends 20 years basically repeating the same moves. In other words, it's not just the hours you put in; it's what you put in to those hours.