Ten thousand hour rule
Discussion
The idea that you become good at something just by practising for 10,000 hours rather than by talent is obviously a bit simplistic but there does seem to be an element of truth in it. More for skills like playing musical instruments than for sports.
If so it could apply quite srongly to driving. Like playing an instrument driving looks superficially like a physical skill but is really more a mental one, and you need to practise the physical bit sufficiently to have the spare capacity for the mental bit. The way accident rates decline rapidly with experience would tend to bear this out.
But what constitutes practice at driving? Sitting in a queue or driving down a free moving motorway doesn't count for much. Driving down a challenging road or busy city centre could, but only if you really are concentrating on doing your best and learning from every minor error.
I suspect being an instructor or IAM observer probably counts as practice even when not driving yourself.
Thoughts anybody?
If so it could apply quite srongly to driving. Like playing an instrument driving looks superficially like a physical skill but is really more a mental one, and you need to practise the physical bit sufficiently to have the spare capacity for the mental bit. The way accident rates decline rapidly with experience would tend to bear this out.
But what constitutes practice at driving? Sitting in a queue or driving down a free moving motorway doesn't count for much. Driving down a challenging road or busy city centre could, but only if you really are concentrating on doing your best and learning from every minor error.
I suspect being an instructor or IAM observer probably counts as practice even when not driving yourself.
Thoughts anybody?
I wouldn't agree necessarily, practice makes permanent. With bikes you tend to get guys saying 'I've been riding for 15 years'. If you've been doing things wrong for 15 years, that doesn't really count for much though. Obviously you're going to learn from experience and any mistakes you make along the way (hopefully).
Much like playing an instrument, you're not going to get better unless you change things up, adapt what you're doing, take advice on from others and be willing to constantly improve.
Those who say they're good drivers/riders because they do 50,000 miles a year aren't necessarily all that good.
Much like playing an instrument, you're not going to get better unless you change things up, adapt what you're doing, take advice on from others and be willing to constantly improve.
Those who say they're good drivers/riders because they do 50,000 miles a year aren't necessarily all that good.
I'm with Steve - if you're just practicing the same thing over and over you'll get better at that thing, but are unlikely to acquire new skills.
I've been cooking myself food for over twenty years, but I'm no closer to being a chef. Sure, experience means that I now rarely set the house on fire, but I still have a very limited skillset. If I was to spend a week at one of those residential cookery schools, I'm sure that would teach me stuff that I didn't know I didn't know.
You can get better at most things by practice and a bit of reading, but I'd guess that very few people ever get really good at anything without some outside help or coaching. Even if the '10,000 Hour Rule' was valid, that's still something like twenty years of driving.
Surely an IAM (or similar) course early in a driving career has to be a better bet - learning solely by your mistakes is all well and good, as long as you're lucky enough not to make the wrong kind of mistake.
I've been cooking myself food for over twenty years, but I'm no closer to being a chef. Sure, experience means that I now rarely set the house on fire, but I still have a very limited skillset. If I was to spend a week at one of those residential cookery schools, I'm sure that would teach me stuff that I didn't know I didn't know.
You can get better at most things by practice and a bit of reading, but I'd guess that very few people ever get really good at anything without some outside help or coaching. Even if the '10,000 Hour Rule' was valid, that's still something like twenty years of driving.
Surely an IAM (or similar) course early in a driving career has to be a better bet - learning solely by your mistakes is all well and good, as long as you're lucky enough not to make the wrong kind of mistake.
Edited by S. Gonzales Esq. on Tuesday 2nd November 16:03
There's a sort of term for it - the four stages of competence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_compet...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_compet...
Where does the 10,000 hour rule come from? Applied to driving, most police drivers would probably be nearing retirement, and racing drivers would have been retired for years! And in flying, so would Red Arrows pilots! Now, if you were to knock a nought off and suggest that no drivers are likely to reach a high level of skill in less than 1,000 hours - say 30,000 miles - I think that would have a lot more credibility.
At what age do you think that drivers keen to improve achieve their optimum standard?
At what age do you think that drivers keen to improve achieve their optimum standard?
I didn't invent the 10,000 hour rule. It's been postulated by many people, particularly Malcolm Gladwell in the book 'Outliers', and was originally the idea that musicians become world standard after around 10,000 hours of practice, with apparent talent having little to do with it.
I think quite a lot of drivers would clock up 10,000 hours behind the wheel in 10-15 years or so. But of course most of this would not really count as practice which is why most of us are nowhere near as good as we'd like.
What I'm interested in is what does count as driving experience, what type of driving is really going to improve your ability.
I think quite a lot of drivers would clock up 10,000 hours behind the wheel in 10-15 years or so. But of course most of this would not really count as practice which is why most of us are nowhere near as good as we'd like.
What I'm interested in is what does count as driving experience, what type of driving is really going to improve your ability.
Gladwell does talk about in Outliers pretty well
Its not just the time, its properly structured use of the time with the intent of getting better at specific things: he refers to Beckham spending hours practicing particular free kicks for instance
My view is that you have to practice specifically the skills needed to do the thing you want to do
In driving terms, simply, 10,000 hours in an auto wouldn't make your use of gears a whole lot better.
Its not just the time, its properly structured use of the time with the intent of getting better at specific things: he refers to Beckham spending hours practicing particular free kicks for instance
My view is that you have to practice specifically the skills needed to do the thing you want to do
In driving terms, simply, 10,000 hours in an auto wouldn't make your use of gears a whole lot better.
Practice is good, and what it is all about. I used to play the piano, from age 5 to 17, I'm now 31 and reckon I could still play Moonlight Sonata perfectly after about an hours practice. It's all about muscle memory for piano though, my fingers would just somehow remember what to do - wierd.
Musical instruments are more structured though, every drive you do would be different, different observation needed for different days/situations. A racing driver would be different again, even after 1 lap they would know the circuit - after that the only real variable is traffic. I know weather and safety cars etc would affect it, but the circuit wouldn't suddenly create another corner, or random lorry.
10,000 hours is quite a lot though, in any walk of life.
Musical instruments are more structured though, every drive you do would be different, different observation needed for different days/situations. A racing driver would be different again, even after 1 lap they would know the circuit - after that the only real variable is traffic. I know weather and safety cars etc would affect it, but the circuit wouldn't suddenly create another corner, or random lorry.
10,000 hours is quite a lot though, in any walk of life.
Kinky said:
However, the factor which you can't practice for is the actions of every other driver out there. You're not only thinking for yourself; but for everyone else out there too.
Interesting, because I thought that anticipation is something that does improve with practice and the main reason experience tends to bring accident rates down. Dr Jekyll said:
Kinky said:
However, the factor which you can't practice for is the actions of every other driver out there. You're not only thinking for yourself; but for everyone else out there too.
Interesting, because I thought that anticipation is something that does improve with practice and the main reason experience tends to bring accident rates down. Dr Jekyll said:
Interesting, because I thought that anticipation is something that does improve with practice and the main reason experience tends to bring accident rates down.
My view would be that anticipation comes from knowing what events/situations leads to a hazard/awkward situation, and knowing that comes from experience of previous/similar events, and training/coaching. For example, motorway, Lane 1, cars joining from slip - I realised the speed and trajectory of a certain car meant it was almost certainly going to cut straight across to Lane 3. And that's exactly what it did. I couldn't have anticipated that manoevure when I first started driving. You can't really gain this from active practice I would have thought, although you might by shear coincidence of doing lots of driving and having that situation arise.EDIT: for clarification, I think that anticipation, and being cautious, are very separate, the latter giving you plenty of time to react to events you could not anticipate. IMO naturally.
Edited by RenesisEvo on Wednesday 3rd November 17:07
10,000 hours at 30mph is only 300,000 miles. I passed my test at 18, and have therefore been driving for <cough> 18<cough> years. To have clocked up 300,00 miles I only need to have been doing 17k miles per year.
Adding up the miles I've done in my own cars over that time I get 217k miles, and for three years I used company cars and hire cars, which would easily account for the other 83k miles.
So, I reckon I have been driving for 10,000 hours. Or to put it another way, 1 year, 1 month and 21 days. Crikey!
I'm still learning - I've only done 35k or so in an automatic, and driving it on a commute and trying to get reasonable consumption out of it is a challenge, but in terms of driving a manual I feel my learning has levelled off - a few years back I used to feel proud of my driving ability as I felt like I was continually improving, but I don't get that any more, so the theory sounds about right to me.
ETA - that's not to say I'm the perfect driver, just that this is as good as I think I'm going to get. If I manage another 18 years and 300,000 miles without an accident I'll be happy.
Adding up the miles I've done in my own cars over that time I get 217k miles, and for three years I used company cars and hire cars, which would easily account for the other 83k miles.
So, I reckon I have been driving for 10,000 hours. Or to put it another way, 1 year, 1 month and 21 days. Crikey!
I'm still learning - I've only done 35k or so in an automatic, and driving it on a commute and trying to get reasonable consumption out of it is a challenge, but in terms of driving a manual I feel my learning has levelled off - a few years back I used to feel proud of my driving ability as I felt like I was continually improving, but I don't get that any more, so the theory sounds about right to me.
ETA - that's not to say I'm the perfect driver, just that this is as good as I think I'm going to get. If I manage another 18 years and 300,000 miles without an accident I'll be happy.
Edited by blugnu on Wednesday 17th November 11:23
Something I found is that if I am racing / driving on track I can left foot brake to almost the same level of modulation that I can achieve with my right foot however as soon as I have to move my concentration to something else then it reverts back to a clutch foot that is either on or off. For example, I left foot brake in my automatic road car and it is smooth but if someone looks like they may step out / pull out of a junction, my left foot slams the brake hard enough to give me whiplash and doesn't come up again until I realised what I've done. I guess there are some parts of muscle memory that override your concious effort to change / improve and it will take me a long time before I can get rid of it.
spad78 said:
Something I found is that if I am racing / driving on track I can left foot brake to almost the same level of modulation that I can achieve with my right foot however as soon as I have to move my concentration to something else then it reverts back to a clutch foot that is either on or off. For example, I left foot brake in my automatic road car and it is smooth but if someone looks like they may step out / pull out of a junction, my left foot slams the brake hard enough to give me whiplash and doesn't come up again until I realised what I've done. I guess there are some parts of muscle memory that override your concious effort to change / improve and it will take me a long time before I can get rid of it.
This is exactly the effect I'm trying to eradicate! We have two cars, one manual, one automatic. I drive them on alternate days, so this could be a challenge. Especially as I keep finding myself going for a non-existent handbrake to the right of my seat in the Mondeo after being in the Multipla.Am I an old dog who can't learn new tricks?
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