Ten thousand hours.
You may be familiar with this figure.
Based on research by Anders Ericsson and popularized in Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, it's the average number of hours across disciplines that research shows it takes to become an expert. The average amount of time it takes to master something.
The take-home message from the 10,000-hour rule is that, despite the stories we share as part of our cultural mythology, passion and dedication are the key determinants of mastery. From sculpting to picking, humans get really, really good at stuff through hard work, not through some fortuitous genetic gift of talent.
Now, you can read this two ways.
On the one hand, this is a very encouraging notion, as it means that when it comes to your musical goals, virtually anything is possible. With consistent, focused effort, the sky is the limit.
On the other hand, ten thousand hours is nothing to sneeze at. If you can manage two hours of practice every day, then you'll reach your musical Shangri-La in roughly thirteen years, eight months. To someone strumming their first guitar chords, blowing their first B-flat on the tuba, or plucking their first note on the 5-string banjo, those kind of numbers might be a little discouraging.
But there's more to this story. Specifically, there are a few very important points that are usually overlooked in the ten-thousand-hours conversation.
1. Even more important than how much we practice is how we practice.
Ten thousand hours are an average. If we were to take all the data points and plot them out, we'd get a bell-shaped distribution, with the apex of our bell at the ten-thousand-hours mark.
So some people in this data set have spent a good bit more than ten thousand hours to achieve mastery.
And some have spent a good bit less.
So, what explains this difference? Why do some people take much longer to achieve the same results? And why do some people never reach mastery at all?
It's better genes, of course! Nothing but good ol'-fashioned "natural talent," right?
Wrong! The difference maker is how they practiced.
The rate-limiting factor here, the primary constraint on the learning process, is the pace at which the brain changes. And that pace is largely defined by our biology-in other words, in properties of our nervous system that are common to all of us. Those who reached mastery faster were simply better at changing their brains. They practiced more effectively, in a manner that fully capitalized on the biological mechanisms that support learning.
2. Most people give up.
Most people who set about to master anything, musical instruments included, ultimately end up giving up. There are surely more guitars collecting dust in closets and attics than there are ones being picked lovingly every day by skilled players.
And why do the majority give up? If mastery is just about putting in the hours, is it just because they're lazy?
No.
They don't give up because of a character flaw. They give up because they stop getting better. Research tells us that the single greatest motivator for learning is progress. Progress is the reward that keeps us coming back for more. On the flip side, nobody plods on for long in the face of no progress.
And what causes people to stop progressing? Ineffective practice.
In this age of information, we are blessed with an abundance of learning materials. It's simple to find what we should be learning. But how we should go about learning that material is seldom, if ever, addressed specifically. In spite of the fact that it's the single biggest determinant of success or failure, how to practice is rarely considered or communicated.
That needs to change.
3. The greatest proportion of improvements occurs early in the learning process.
This concept, which applies to all sorts of various phenomena, is often referred to as the "80/20 rule" (or the "Pareto Principle," after the economist who first suggested it).
In this instance, the 80/20 rule states that 80 percent of your results are achieved through 20 percent of your efforts. In other words, provided that we're mindful of our learning process, and that we correctly identify what that 20 percent is, we can achieve most of our gains in those first two thousand hours. After that, we start facing diminishing returns on our time investment. The final stages of mastery, which take up a disproportionate amount of time, are about putting in long hours for gains that are often imperceptible to the casual observer.
THE FIRST LAW OF BRAINJO
Without a doubt, mastering any skill, including a musical instrument, requires focused, consistent effort. That said, ten thousand hours of any-old practice won't magically get us where we want to go. Masters don't become masters through the sheer force of will alone. It's a necessary but not sufficient condition.
Masters become masters because somehow-be it luck, a great mentor, or natural disposition-they've managed to unlock the right process for learning. A process that leads to consistent, rewarding progress.
Replicate this process, and you too can enjoy similar results. Which brings us to the First Law of Brainjo:
To learn to play like the masters, you must learn to play like the masters.
Unlocking the secrets of and maximizing the brain's capacity for growth and change have been intense personal and professional areas interest of mine for two decades now.
In this book, we will continue to extract insights from the fields of learning, mastery, and neuroplasticity to build a set of maxims for effective practice, and, in so doing, create a road map for helping us to mold a musical mind.
Copyright © 2025 by Josh Turknett. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
