(2017-11-02) Simmons Forget The10000hour Rule Edison Bezos Zuckerberg Follow The10000 Experiment Rule

Michael Simmons: Forget The 10,000-Hour Rule (TenKHours); Edison, Bezos, & Zuckerberg Follow The 10,000-Experiment Rule. Deliberate experimentation is more important than deliberate practice in a rapidly changing world.

10,000 Experiments Beat 10,000 Hours

A 2014 review of 88 previous studies found that “deliberate practice explained 26% of the variance in performance for games, 21% for music, 18% for sports, 4% for education, and less than 1% for professions. We conclude that deliberate practice is important, but not as important as has been argued.”

Following the 10,000-experiment rule means starting your day with not just a to-do list but a “to-test” list like Leonardo Da Vinci. According to Walter Isaacson, one of Da Vinci’s biographers, “Every morning his life hack was: make a list of what he wants to know. Why do people yawn? What does the tongue of a woodpecker look like?”

following the 10,000-experiment rule means constantly looking for opportunities to collect data rather than just doing what you need to do. It means adding a deliberate reflection process based on reviewing data before the day ends.

To achieve 10,000 hours of deliberate practice requires three hours of deliberate practice per day for 10 years. I argue that the 10,000-experiment rule is just as difficult, yet doable, requiring three experiments per day.

Dean Keith Simonton has spent his career studying the world’s preeminent creative achievers

Two fascinating insights have emerged from Simonton’s (and others’) research. The first is that most innovative ideas are generated by a small number of superstars. In any given field, the top 10% of performers produce more than 50% of breakthroughs.

The second lesson to learn from Simonton’s research is that superstars produce just as many bad ideas as everyone else — they just produce more ideas overall. Having many more ideas means they have more failures but also more hits.