Yes, according to Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers 10,000 hours is the approximate time that a person must dedicate to practising a skill or learning a subject to reach the highest echelon of proficiency or expertise. The idea was originally expressed by psychologist K. Anders Ericsson who studied violinists. His research revealed that the violinists who reached the highest skill levels had almost all started by five years of age and had acquired at least 10,000 hours of practice.
In Outliers, Gladwell asserted that Mozart did not really perform his best compositions until after he had accumulated his 10,000 hours of writing music. However, the number 10,000 should be taken as a rough approximation, because it would vary significantly, depending on the skill or kind of expertise sought. Furthermore, it is unlikely that someone with an average IQ could become an expert theoretical physicist or pure mathematician by merely working 10,000 or 20,000 hours. Certain proclivities are needed for specific kinds of skills and certain levels of intellectual capacities are prerequisite to mastering specific disciplines. While it is still not known with any precision what part of genius is innate and what part is work, we do know that both components are vital, even for high IQ people.
