Forget the 10,000 Hours—Here’s What Really Leads to Mastery

Key points

Experience alone doesn’t lead to mastery—how you practice is what matters.

The 10,000-hour rule is a myth—quality of practice beats quantity.

Deliberate practice means focused goals, feedback, and targeted effort.

Purposeful practice uses self-review to guide improvement without expert input.

I’ve been an avid rock climber for about 20 years. I’m at the climbing gym at least twice a week. I also get outside on real rock whenever the weather and my schedule permit, and have climbed up and down the west coast of North America and throughout Europe. In short, I’ve put in a lot of time and a lot of practice over the last two decades. You’d think by now I’d be an advanced climber, scaling impressively hard routes.

Sadly, you’d be wrong.

Until recently, I wasn’t a particularly