Dr. Anders Ericsson’s research on expertise got attention in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers. Ericsson’s studies suggests that practice leads to extraordinary performance. Gladwell converted Ericsson’s study to a sticky, magical 10,000 hour rule—10,000 hours (20 hours for 50 weeks a year for 10 years) of deliberate practice to become an expert. Though Ericsson has disputed the magical number and this may, at best, be an average for lifelong learning and mastery. And even if there are multiple, magical 4, 5 or 10 hour hacks to learn, mastery does require practice.

In my weekly meetings with product teams I often meet young Designers and Product Managers, maybe onto their first or second jobs—or some who have pivoted from Engineering to Design or from Marketing to Product. And many are hungry to learn faster and do exceedingly better. And this commitment to excel isn’t limited to brand new talent.

So what does the 10,000 hour rule mean in a world that is moving so fast, hungry for 4 hour hacks and changing so frequently? Disciplines with no visibly clear routines to practice unlike sports, flying or music? Here’s some food for thought. This is a mere start of a thread, so welcome your comments and ideas.