The Separation Of Professionals And Amateurs In The 10, 000-Hour Rule

In chapter two of Outliers, The 10,000-Hour Rule, Gladwell demonstrates the separation of professionals and amateurs. What separate professionals from amateurs is the dedication of time and work put into any type of skill. Another separation is the creation of, or the giving of, extraordinary opportunities. One must practice 10,000 hours and have opportunities in order to become an expert at any skill. In this chapter, psychologist K. Anders Ericsson and his two colleagues compares amateurs pianists with professional pianists. “ The amateurs never practiced more than about three hours a week over the course of their childhood, and by the age of twenty they had totaled two thousand hours of practice” (Gladwell