The 10,000-hour rule for learning a skill
10,000 hours of practice takes 27.4 years at 1 hour a day. Research finds that the hours you need depend on the skill.
10,000 hours of practice takes 27.4 years at 1 hour a day, 13.7 years at 2 hours a day and 9.1 years at 3 hours a day. The number comes from a 1993 study of violin students. The best students had practiced about 10,000 hours by age 20. Later research found that the hours you need depend on the skill and on how good you want to get. For most personal goals, you need far fewer than 10,000.
Use the 10,000 hours calculator to see when you'll reach 20, 100, 1,000 and 10,000 hours at your own pace.
What is the 10,000-hour rule?
The 10,000-hour rule says that you need about 10,000 hours of practice to become world-class at a skill.
The number comes from a 1993 study by Anders Ericsson, Ralf Krampe and Clemens Tesch-Römer. The researchers asked violin students at a music academy in Berlin to estimate how many hours they had practiced alone at each age. By age 20, the best students had practiced about 10,000 hours on average. The students their teachers rated lower had practiced less.
Malcolm Gladwell made the rule famous in his 2008 book Outliers, with examples such as the Beatles and Bill Gates.
How many years is 10,000 hours?
Divide 10,000 by the hours you practice in a year. At 1 hour a day, that's 10,000 ÷ 365 = 27.4 years.
| Practice time | Hours per year | Years to 10,000 hours |
|---|---|---|
| 30 minutes a day | 183 | 54.8 |
| 1 hour a day | 365 | 27.4 |
| 2 hours a day | 730 | 13.7 |
| 3 hours a day | 1,096 | 9.1 |
| 4 hours a day | 1,461 | 6.8 |
| 20 hours a week | 1,043 | 9.6 |
| 40 hours a week, no time off | 2,087 | 4.8 |
If you have a job or go to school, 1 to 2 hours of practice a day is already a big commitment. At that pace, 10,000 hours takes 14 to 27 years.
How many hours a day for 10,000 hours in 10 years?
You'd need 2.7 hours a day, every day. 10 years is 3,652 days, and 10,000 hours ÷ 3,652 days = 2.74 hours a day. If you take weekends off, you'd need 3.8 hours on each practice day.
| Finish in | Hours a day, 7 days a week | Hours a day, 5 days a week |
|---|---|---|
| 5 years | 5.5 | 7.7 |
| 10 years | 2.7 | 3.8 |
| 15 years | 1.8 | 2.6 |
| 20 years | 1.4 | 1.9 |
Is the 10,000-hour rule true?
Partly. In every field researchers have studied, people who practice more get better. But nothing special happens at 10,000 hours, and practice is only part of why some people are better than others.
Ericsson said the rule oversimplifies his research. In an excerpt from his 2016 book Peak, he wrote that 10,000 hours was an average at age 20. Some of the best violinists had practiced more and some less. Other fields need different amounts, and what you do in practice matters more than the total.
Practice matters more in some fields than others. A 2014 meta-analysis of 88 studies by Brooke Macnamara, David Hambrick and Frederick Oswald compared how much people practiced with how good they were. In games like chess, practice accounted for about a quarter of the gap between stronger and weaker players. In most jobs, it accounted for almost none of the gap.
| Field | Share of the skill gap linked to practice |
|---|---|
| Games (chess, Scrabble) | 26% |
| Music | 21% |
| Sports | 18% |
| Education | 4% |
| Professions | less than 1% |
Practice mattered most in activities that stay the same from one try to the next, such as a chess game or a piece of music. It mattered less where conditions change from moment to moment.
Among elite athletes, practice hours barely matter. A 2016 follow-up on sports by the same group found that at the elite level, practice accounted for about 1% of the differences between athletes.
A second violin study found a different answer. In a 2019 replication, Macnamara and Megha Maitra ran the Berlin study again with a new group of violinists. This time, the best players hadn't practiced much more than the good ones.
Researchers still disagree on how much practice matters. Ericsson's group argued that the 2014 meta-analysis counted casual practice along with focused practice. In their view, that made focused practice look less important than it is. Both sides agree that focused practice makes you better.
What counts as an hour of practice?
Ericsson counted only deliberate practice. In deliberate practice, you work on one specific weakness. You focus fully, and you get feedback on how you did. His 1993 paper says this kind of practice is hard work and isn't much fun. Playing songs you already know, or a casual game with friends, counts for less.
So when you log hours, log the focused ones. A 2-hour band rehearsal might include 40 minutes of real work on hard passages. Log the 40 minutes.
A session counts if:
- You picked one thing to improve before you started.
- The work is hard enough that you make mistakes.
- You get feedback from a teacher, a recording, a score or a test.
- You stop once you can't focus anymore.
How many hours do you need to get good at a skill?
For most personal goals, you need far fewer than 10,000 hours.
| Goal | Hours | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Learn the basics of a new skill | about 20 | Josh Kaufman, The First 20 Hours |
| Spanish, French or Norwegian, well enough to use at work (for an English speaker) | 552–690 class hours | US Foreign Service Institute |
| Arabic, Mandarin, Japanese or Korean, well enough to use at work | about 2,200 class hours | US Foreign Service Institute |
| Top violin students by age 20 | about 10,000 | Ericsson and colleagues, 1993 |
At 1 hour a day, 20 hours takes 3 weeks, 690 hours takes 1.9 years and 2,200 hours takes 6 years. For the hours for each language, see how long it takes to learn a language. Pick a goal you can reach this year, and set the next one when you get there. The 10,000 hours calculator shows when you'd reach each goal.
How do you track your practice hours?
Time each session and keep a running total. Without a log, you'll be guessing your total a few months from now.
- Pick one skill and one goal, for example 100 hours of guitar.
- Use the calculator to set a weekly target, for example 7 hours.
- Start a timer when you begin focused work and stop it when you take a break.
- Once a month, enter your real total in the calculator to see when you'll reach your goal.
In timespent, create a Timed Activity for the skill and give it a weekly goal of 7 hours. Start the timer on your iPhone or Mac when you sit down to practice. timespent adds up your time for each week and for all time, so you can see how close you are to your next milestone.
Common questions
Who came up with the 10,000-hour rule?
The number comes from a 1993 study of violin students by psychologist Anders Ericsson and his colleagues. Malcolm Gladwell named the rule and made it popular in Outliers (2008). Ericsson later said the rule oversimplified his findings.
Is 10,000 hours the same as 10 years?
Only if you practice about 20 hours a week, or 2.7 hours a day. At 1 hour a day, 10,000 hours takes 27.4 years.
How many days is 10,000 hours?
10,000 hours equals 416.7 days (10,000 ÷ 24). At 3 hours of practice a day, it takes 3,333 days, or about 9.1 years.
Does the 10,000-hour rule apply to every skill?
No. In the 2014 meta-analysis, practice accounted for about a quarter of the skill gap in games and a fifth in music, but less than 1% in professions. Practice matters most in activities that stay the same from one try to the next.
How long does it take to get good at something at 1 hour a day?
About 3 weeks for the basics (20 hours), 2.7 years for 1,000 hours and 27.4 years for 10,000 hours. For most personal goals, you need far fewer hours.