Malcolm Gladwell thinks so. The 10 000-hours concept can be traced back to a 1993 paper written by Anders Ericsson, a Professor at the University of Colorado, called The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance.

It highlighted the work of a group of psychologists in Berlin, who had studied the practice habits of violin students in childhood, adolescence and adulthood.

All had begun playing at roughly five years of age with similar practice times. However, at age eight, practice times began to diverge. By age 20, the elite performers had averaged more than 10 000 hours of practice each, while the less-able performers had only done 4 000 hours of practice or less.

This article was written in 2014. So did Dan reach his goal?

In short, no he didn't. His aim was to reach a golf handicap of 2 or less, but the best he reached was 2.6 in January 2014, and in the end, in January 2015, was back up to 5.5. Dan has quit the plan and started Portland Soda Works with his neighbour, Chris Onstad.

Was the experiment a success? I suppose it is determined by what you consider to be success. Taking your handicap down to 2.6 is an incredible achievement and is far greater than his original 57. He never did make the PGA Tour but he did come close to having the skill level to qualify. He never became an elite level performer but I suppose it could be argued that truly elite level performers in life have a little bit of talent in their fields to begin with.

What do you think?

Take a look at this article to see how the 10 000 hour theory has been debunked.

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