The Road to Success
Dear all
In Monday’s assembly, we considered the debate between two schools of thought on what it takes to excel in any given field.
In a world where many claim to have analysed the ingredients of high performance, there remains debate over two paths to success. On one side lies the 10,000-hour theory, and on the other, the concept of ‘Range’. Both claim to offer the secret to achieving mastery, by which people usually mean elite-level expertise.
The 10,000-hour rule was popularised by the author Malcolm Gladwell, and it suggests that becoming an expert in any given field is a matter of putting in a ‘magic number’ of hours. Perhaps the best example given to support this theory was the golfer Tiger Woods, who first held a putter at the age of 7 months before he could even walk. When he was two, he was swinging a golf club and appeared on TV as a result, and when he was three, he shot a 48 for 9 holes of golf. By the age of 12, he had accumulated 10,000 hours of practice.
There are, however, challenges to this concept, in particular the theory of ‘Range’, presented by the author David Epstein, who argues that breadth and diverse experience lead to higher levels – and more sustainable – levels of performance. Instead of doing one thing for 10,000 hours, generalists develop ‘range’ by trying many different fields. One of the best examples he gives is the tennis legend Roger Federer, whose parents encouraged him to play different sports and to experiment with different approaches to his tennis.
Perhaps the most compelling answer to the question about how people become ‘great’ is that it depends on what it is you’re trying to be great at. One explanation talks about kind and wicked learning environments – kind meaning things that have clear rules and unchanging patterns, such as playing chess or golf, which may benefit from a 10,000 hours approach; on the other hand, wicked environments are those that have fewer rules and less certainty, which in reality applies to most things in life. In those areas, being proficient in a range of things is arguably more likely to help us combine and apply different skills, creating broader roots that can sustain us for longer.
This debate has been going on for some years now, but it is particularly relevant for people of school age. Most schools encourage range, of course – students do the most subjects when they’re in Y7, slightly fewer by Y10, before further specialisation in Sixth Form, hopefully after they have benefited from the range of their younger years. The same is true of sport, or music, or many other activities – the wider our experiences, the more likely we are to make good choices about what we want to specialise in, but also the higher the chances are that we’ll acquire skills from the things we’ve done and dropped that we wouldn’t have if we’d specialised too early.
Overall, the range argument is compelling: deep learning comes from trial-and-error and experimenting with different things, which also helps us bring ideas and solutions from one activity or pursuit to another.
Have a great weekend
Best wishes
Michael Bond
