In 2008 Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers was published by Little, Brown and Company. The book quickly gained notoriety and became a New York Times best seller. In the book Gladwell listed many common attributes of highly successful people (the “Outliers,” if you will), but the concept that caught the most interest was his “10,000-hour rule.” Based on the research of Dr. K. Anders Ericsson, the rule states that top performance in any field requires ten thousand hours of deliberate practice.

Gladwell summarized the rule this way: “Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness.” The book pointed to the Beatles, Bill Gates, and others as examples of greatness that was achieved when the 10,000-hour rule was satisfied.

In the years that followed the book’s publication, many celebrities, athletes, and professionals parroted Gladwell’s pithy gem of wisdom. For example, Major League Baseball (MLB) star Alex Rodriguez said, “You first need to acquire your ten thousand hours.”5 Oprah Winfrey chimed in, “I love the theory that there are ten thousand hours behind anybody who ever gets to be successful.”

Ericsson, who authored the original research that was the foundation of Gladwell’s rule, wrote a thorough response to Gladwell. In Ericsson’s book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, he wrote, "No, the 10,000-hour rule isn’t really a rule . . . It is wrong. There is nothing special or magical about 10,000 hours." Ericsson then added, "Gladwell did get one thing right . . . becoming accomplished in any field in which there is a tremendous amount of effort exerted over many years. It may not require exactly ten thousand hours, but it will take a lot."

Further research confirmed Ericsson’s assertion that top performance requires a lot of effort. And the most efficient route is through what Ericsson calls “deliberate practices.” (More on that later.) The amount of effort depends on the individual, but there does not appear to be a shortcut. Consider music as an example. Researchers have found that the finest violinists have spent somewhere between 2,894, and 11,926 hours practicing their craft before reaching the top 5 percent. In chess, some people attain grandmaster status in just three thousand hours of practice, while others require twenty-three thousand hours of practice or more.

Regardless of the number of hours invested, greatness requires much more than ordinary persistence, grit, or leaning in. The top experts are obsessed with what they do and how they do it. They don’t get tired of practicing, and practicing doesn’t make them tired. They persevere, persevere, persevere.