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The “10,000 hour rule” – enshrined in Gladwell’s bestselling 2008 book Outliers – holds that mastery in any field can be achieved with 10,000 hours of practice.

But Ericsson, a Florida State University researcher who has spent his career breaking down the science of what makes people extraordinary, says Gladwell missed the point.

“If you’ve been doing your job for 10 years or 10,000 hours, the idea that you magically become a superior performer … is counterproductive,” he told the National Post by phone.

As Ericsson explains in a new book, Peak, it’s not enough to engage in 10,000 hours of a task. Cabbies are not transformed into virtuoso drivers over years of service. What’s critical is “deliberate practice” – a scientific attention to specific improvement goals, a constant drive to move outside one’s comfort zone that is “generally not enjoyable,” and a good coach “to minimize the risk” of wasted, frustrated time.

What Gladwell got right, though, says the book, is that expertise of any kind requires a “tremendous amount of effort exerted over many years.”

Peak argues that innate talent is virtually irrelevant. Prodigies are a myth, Ericsson argues, perfect pitch can be taught and Mario Lemieux was no more gifted than any other Canadian baby raised in a hockey-mad household where the family covered the living room with packed snow to allow the children to continue skating after dark.

“I can’t say that such a thing (as a prodigy) doesn’t exist, but I can say that I’ve been searching for such evidence over 30 years and I’ve yet to find a case that doesn’t allow for an alternative explanation,” said Ericsson.