Anders Ericsson 1947-2020
Professor Ericsson discovered that what separated the
violinists’ skill levels was not natural-born talent but the hours of practice
they had logged since childhood. The future teachers registered around 4,000
hours, the very good violinists 8,000 and the elite performers more than
10,000. The same study was conducted with pianists, with similar results.
Published in 1993 in Psychological Review, the paper
later formed the basis for the so-called 10,000-hour rule described in Malcolm
Gladwell’s best-selling “Outliers” (2008), which holds that it takes roughly
10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery in a skill or field. Mr. Gladwell’s
book popularized Professor Ericsson’s research, even as it irritated him
because he felt it oversimplified his findings.
“Many people think what Anders discovered is that
quantity of practice makes you a champion,” said Angela Duckworth, a professor
of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of “Grit”
(2016), a book about passion and perseverance. “That’s disastrously incomplete.
It’s quantity and quality. One of his insights that I hope will have a lasting
legacy is people need to work hard, but also smart.”
Professor Ericsson focused on what he called “deliberate
practice,” which entails immediate feedback, clear goals and focus on
technique. According to his research, the lack of deliberate practice explained
why so many people reach only basic proficiency at something, whether it be a
sport, pastime or profession, without ever attaining elite status. A Sunday
golfer may whack balls around the course for years, but without incorporating
such methods that player will never become the next Tiger Woods.
Over his career, Professor Ericsson studied conservatory
musicians, chess masters, spelling bee champions, surgeons, ballerinas,
runners, professional baseball players and others, seeking out subjects who demonstrated
what he characterized as “objectively reproducible performance.” He peppered
them with questions, instructed them to keep diaries and studied their routines
in minute detail.
In doing so, Professor Ericsson spearheaded the field of
performance studies and became “the expert on experts,” as he was often called.
Never once did he come across an elite performer who
hadn’t put in the work, he told Larry King in 2016: “This idea that somebody
more or less discovers, suddenly, that they’re extremely good at something,
I’ve yet to find even a single example of that type of phenomenon.”
In providing a scientific framework for Yo-Yo Ma’s
otherworldly cello playing or Michael Jordan’s superhuman basketball moves,
Professor Ericsson removed some of the mystery around genius. He “democratized
excellence,” Ms. Duckworth said. “Anders completely revolutionized our ideas of
what’s possible for most people.”
Excerpted from The New York Times obituary 6 July 2020
Excerpted from The New York Times obituary 6 July 2020
