I’m sure you’ve heard of Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers. You’ve almost certainly heard his well known theory from the book, where he posits that it takes 10,000 hours of intensive practice to achieve mastery of an art or skill. He arrives at this nice round number by citing a piece of research about a violin school in Berlin, where the students were estimated to have put in these kind of hours to master their instrument.

The theory has been picked apart by several critics. It even turns out that the number is slightly arbitrary according to the original researcher K. Anders Ericsson, but the central premise nevertheless still holds true. Great mastery of a creative artform takes a huge amount of time. The investment in one’s craft is as vital as one’s creative ability.

Some years after the release of the book, Gladwell did an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on reddit, where he discussed his work and ideas, and I particularly liked his clarification on the 10,000 hours theory.

“Practice isn’t a sufficient condition for success. I could play chess for 100 years and I’ll never be a grandmaster. The point is simply that natural ability requires a huge investment of time in order to be made manifest.” 

The word investment sticks out to me here. Investing in yourself as a creative person is vital to becoming a more fully realised version of who you want to be. How you want to create. The very act of writing these words is part of my continued investment in my craft. Whether 10, 000 hours is the right number is almost immaterial. The main takeaway is that none of us can get by on pure talent alone, it also takes hard work. And that is as it should be. As it happens, I am fairly certain I have clocked more than 10,000 on the odometer at this point in my creative journey, and I intend to reinvest them and go for another 10,000.