Guide
Is the 10,000 hour rule real, and what actually builds mastery?
No. 10,000 hours was a number Malcolm Gladwell chose, not a finding. Dr. Alex Auerbach explains what actually separates good from great.
The short answer
No, not as a rule. On The Nick Standlea Show, performance psychologist Dr. Alex Auerbach, who has worked with the Toronto Raptors, the Jacksonville Jaguars, Olympians and elite military operators, calls 10,000 hours an arbitrary number Malcolm Gladwell selected because it was catchy and made sense to people. Anders Ericsson, whose expertise research the book drew on, never named that figure, and in his own commentary he described finding experts at 1,500 hours, at 2,500, at 7,000, which is Auerbach's way of saying there is no one number. Auerbach points instead to a paper on Olympic swimmers called The Mundanity of Excellence, which found that moving up a level came not from more time but from different techniques, more sophisticated use of skills and more efficient movement. What builds expertise, he says, is coaching, experimenting, failing, and borrowing tools from outside your own field. Hard work still matters, but hard work alone is not going to get you to the peak of whatever it is that you want to achieve.
Step by step
Stop counting hours and start looking at what the hours contain
Auerbach's problem with the rule is not that practice is useless. It is that the number tells you nothing about what you were doing. He points to a paper on Olympic swimmers called The Mundanity of Excellence, which asked how a swimmer climbs from the lowest recreational level up to world class. The answer was not more time. It was different technique, more sophisticated use of skills, more efficient movement.
Get coaching, because you cannot see your own technique
Auerbach's short list of what actually builds expertise starts with coaching. You are going to need coaching, you are going to need to experiment, and you are going to need to fail. Most people can name someone who poured years into something and never got where they wanted. They worked hard. Nobody ever showed them what to fix.
Let a kid play more than one thing
For every Tiger Woods story there is a Roger Federer, who played several sports into his early teens before focusing on tennis and still credits those sports with transferable skill. Ball coordination is ball coordination, as Auerbach puts it. He adds that early specialization is a main driver of burnout and also carries a much higher risk of injury and of mental health problems. The fix is simple. Let them play multiple sports.
Treat failing as part of the work, not evidence you are behind
Auerbach mentions an article on what its authors called sporting genius, which asked what makes an athlete that good. It came down to confidence, creativity and innovation in the way they perform. That kind of innovation comes from being willing to risk failing, which has nothing to do with how many hours you put in.
Find the one thing you are unusually good at and push it
Auerbach's favorite example is Steph Curry, a complete basketball player whose edge is one elite skill he kept doubling down on. Picture a bell curve. Grinding on everything below average drags the whole curve forward slowly. Take what is already a little above average and push it to the edge and the middle moves faster. Weaknesses still get addressed. They just are not where the leverage is.
Build a confidence resume
Auerbach says most of us spend far more time on our failures than our wins, so he has people keep a written bank of things they have succeeded at and how they made it happen. You come back to it before hard moments. Confidence, he says, is one of the most robust predictors of good performance we know of, and that bank plus real preparation is what produces it.
Practice the self-talk long before you need it
Nick brings up the footage of Cristiano Ronaldo talking himself through a penalty kick for Portugal, telling himself this is normal, you always show up in these big moments. Auerbach's point is that it was not the first time Ronaldo had said it. He rehearsed it in practice, in empty stadiums, for decades, which is why it shows up automatically with 90,000 people screaming. Statements like that work because they are built on evidence, not because they sound positive.
Pick one mental skill and actually start
This is how Auerbach closes the episode. Mindfulness, breath work, self-talk, visualization, goal setting. Just do one. Pick one thing, try it, and find out what works for you. Treat yourself the way you would treat any elite athlete, because the mind is trainable and almost nobody bothers to train it.
“10,000 hours is an arbitrary number that Malcolm Gladwell selected when he wrote the book.”
Alex Auerbach, in the episode
Key moments
- ▶44:00Stress is neither good nor bad, it's your brain preparing to act
- ▶26:48Why 10,000 hours is a story, not a rule for mastery
- ▶27:15Roger Federer's multi-sport youth as proof variety beats early specialization
- ▶53:38Ronaldo's pre-kick self-talk loop that world champions actually use
- ▶59:28Building a confidence resume, a bank of past wins to draw on
- ▶69:48Why a fixed mindset isn't bad, growth and fixed beliefs coexist
Questions people ask
is the 10,000 hour rule real
No, not as a rule. Dr. Alex Auerbach calls it a cute guide and an arbitrary number that Malcolm Gladwell selected when he wrote the book, chosen because it was sticky and made sense to people. Nick's own read is that it is true as a story and not literally true. Practice matters. The number does not.
where did the 10,000 hour rule come from
Gladwell built the claim on the work of Anders Ericsson, the psychologist who studied how expertise develops. Auerbach's point is that the idea was attractive because it is catchy. If you just put in enough time, you eventually become an expert. That is the appeal, and that is also the problem.
did Anders Ericsson actually say 10,000 hours
No. Auerbach says nowhere does Ericsson name 10,000 hours, and that in his commentary on Gladwell's work he described finding experts at 1,500 hours, at 2,500, at 7,000. There is no one number. Assuming you cannot be an expert before some threshold is not the solution.
how many hours does it take to become an expert
There is no single figure, and Auerbach says expertise is not even developed in a linear way. Ericsson's own work points to experts appearing at wildly different hour counts. A goal to practice more can be useful. Aiming at a specific number is not what gets you there.
if not hours, what actually makes someone an expert
Auerbach's answer is coaching, experimenting, failing, and borrowing tools from outside your immediate field to make something unique. He cites research on Olympic swimmers showing the jump between levels came from different techniques, more sophisticated skills and more efficient movement, not more time. Hard work alone, he says, will not get you to the peak of anything.
does more practice always make you better
Not automatically. Auerbach calls more is always better a fallacy in American thinking, and notes it is what pushes parents toward piling on volume. He also points to data in his own field showing that psychologists earlier in their careers make fewer mistakes than people who have practiced for a long time. If expertise were purely a function of time, that should not happen.
should my kid specialize in one sport early
Auerbach says early specialization is probably the main driver of youth sports burnout, and that it also carries a much higher risk of injury and a higher risk of mental health concerns. The easiest fix is to let them play multiple sports. He burned out himself as a teenager while playing on three soccer teams at once.
what did Roger Federer do instead of early specialization
Federer played multiple sports until his early teens and only then focused on tennis, and he talks about how those other sports gave him transferable skill like hand eye and ball coordination. Auerbach uses him as the counterweight to the Tiger Woods story. Nick adds that Tiger is a sample of one, so we cannot know the early club was what made the difference.
why do people believe the 10,000 hour rule
Because it feels easy. Auerbach says people like it because it promises that if you just put in enough time you will be as good as you want to be. Nick, who says he is a huge Gladwell fan, thinks the gift is turning complicated ideas into simple stories. A story is not a step by step handbook.
is a fixed mindset bad
Not by itself. Auerbach explains that growth and fixed beliefs are orthogonal, meaning they can coexist independently, and you can be high or low on either. Growth mindset is the belief that effort and persistence produce outcomes. Fixed mindset is the belief that talent does. He argues you want to be high in both, because at the top, working hard is not a separator and you need to know what makes you special.
what is a confidence resume
It is Auerbach's term for a written bank of things you have succeeded at and how you pulled them off. You return to it when you need to remember you have been here before. He says that bank plus real preparation is what makes you feel confident going into almost anything, and confidence is one of the most robust predictors of good performance.
who is Dr. Alex Auerbach
He is a performance psychologist who has worked with the Toronto Raptors, where he served on the executive team for four years, and is now with the Jacksonville Jaguars, along with Olympians, elite military operators and executives. He did his doctorate at the University of North Texas. He wrote the book Called to Greatness and runs Momentum Labs, a mental performance company for youth athletes.
This guide is drawn from a full conversation on the show.