You may or not be familiar with the 10,000 hours rule. It belongs to the American writer Malcolm Gladwell who describes it in his fascinating book Outliers.

The rule is pretty much as follows. If you practice something for at least 10,000 hours then you will have developed your skills to such a level that you are now an expert or at least have expertise in this area.

Gladwell provides some memorable examples to illustrate his point. One is The Beatles. He says that the reason they were able to write and perform such amazing songs is because they had spent so long practicing and performing in their early years in the sweaty Cavern Club in Liverpool or in the bars of Hamburg. Gladwell roughly calculates that this time equated to 10,000 hours.

Another example he gives is Bill Gates. Gates was fortunate to attend a school in the early 1970s which had what was for the time a state-of-the-art computer. He had unparalleled access to a piece of technology which was as sophisticated as it got in those days. He practiced and developed his programming for years as he progressed through high school so that when he left to go to university he was an expert and had a formidable grounding from which he could develop the skills which one day would lead to the formation of Microsoft. Gladwell calculates Gates’ time programming in high school to be around 10,000 hours.

What does this idea tell us? It suggests that practice and hard work and crucial; that it’s about dedication and commitment. It also suggests that we can all be experts, can all be excellent and can all achieve. You may believe that talent is innate – you are born with it and you are therefore just good at something – and this argument can be persuasive. However, in schools we genuinely believe that everyone can be excellent and has the potential to be an expert at anything. This is the optimism which makes all of us who have the privilege of working with young people come to school every day. You may or may not be convinced by the 10,000 hours rule but never doubt that with hard work and commitment any young person can achieve anything.