Both BoingBoing and Inc. fail in these articles. They erect a straw man and then take it apart, bit by bit.
"Gladwell said it would take 10k hours to become the best at something".
No, dipshits, he didn't.
He said that after looking at a number of successful people across multiple areas of achievement, that people who had achieved a certain level of success had done so after about 3.5 years of dedicated practice/effort/work. Or, if you calculate it out, about 10,000 hours of practice.
To get good.
Not "The Best."
I can't believe that people get paid to write this shit. I write for a living and would be mortified to put out anything as trite and ill-informed as either of these "articles".
<Grumbling incomprehensibly under his breath, the angry troll crawls back under his bridge muttering about fallacies and straw men and the judicious application of fire...>
Hm. I just took it as a twist on the allegorical "10,000 things" from taoism - kinda like 40 years, days/nights just being 'a long time' in other biblical texts (all being similarly repeated over and over).... which in this journalists sense would also fall in line with nit-picking. Not much hard work put into that one. Some of the notions I get from Opportunity seems to attempt at a partial basis of determinism based on life-experience or other 'greats'. Not much a fan. BUUUUT I'm probably just projecting that onto it and doesn't relate at all.
I think the key problem with Gladwell is that people attribute more science to him that he does. He muses about things, posits interesting ideas, finds some data to support them... and then leaves you to draw conclusions, do more research, or whatever. No, his 10,000 hours is just a ballpark figure he came up with when he was looking into "leaders" in different fields: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)
They do because it sells. Jelly :/I can't believe that people get paid to write this shit.
I write for a living
The original researcher who conducted the (very small, very specific) study based around - I think - violinists has already decried the way the world, led by Gladwell, misinterpreted his results. Memorable inaccuracy trumps complex truths. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯