Ericsson and his research team went on to conduct additional studies on athletes, artists, and intellectuals. They found the same thing every time: It isn’t experience that sets top performers apart but the amount of deliberate practice they put in. Although Ericsson would become associated with the Malcolm Gladwell–popularized 10,000-hour rule—the notion that anyone can become an expert at anything by practicing for 10,000 hours—his actual findings represent something quite different. Expertise is not about a certain number of hours practiced. Rather, it’s about the type of work that fills
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