10,000 Hours of Deliberate Practice Toward Expert Performance

In "The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance" by K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer, it is stated that expert performance is the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 years. Others say 10,000 hours of practice. Not just any practice; however, but Deliberate Practice.

Differences Between Work, Play and Deliberate Practice

"The external rewards of work activities include social recognition and, most important, money in the form of prizes and pay, which enables performers to sustain a living. In play and deliberate practice, external rewards are almost completely lacking."

"In contrast to play, deliberate practice is a highly structured activity, the explicit goal of which is to improve performance. Specific tasks are invented to overcome weaknesses, and performance is carefully monitored to provide cues for ways to improve it further. We claim that deliberate practice requires effort and is not inherently enjoyable. Individuals are motivated to practice because practice improves performance. In addition, engaging in deliberate practice generates no immediate monetary rewards and generates costs associated with access to teachers and training environments. Thus, an understanding of the long-term consequences of practice is important."

In "Expert Performance and Deliberate Practice" Erocsson goes on to say:

"Furthermore, experts have acquired domain-specific memory skills that allow them to rely on long-term memory (Long-Term Working Memory, Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995) to dramatically expand the amount of information that can be kept accessible during planning and during reasoning about alternative courses of action. The superior quality of the experts' mental representations allow them to adapt rapidly to changing circumstances and anticipate future events in advance. The same acquired representations appear to be essential for experts' ability to monitor and evaluate their own performance (Ericsson, 1996; Glaser, 1996) so they can keep improving their own performance by designing their own training and assimilating new knowledge."

We can conclude that experts are highly motivated people who dedicate a lot of time and energy to attain a long-term goal of expertise in some field. Expertise takes more than just ordinary practice and experience. Expertise requires a motivation to acquire a long-term goal, the ability to know where performance needs to be improved, and a structured plan to constantly evaluate performance toward the goal of improving performance.

Additional Links:

Setting Effective Trading Goals
Thoughts On Goal Setting for 2009
Freakonomics
SSK Day Trading Futures (use of videos for self-evaluation)
"Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else"

Charles