[yungchin]

Thanks, yes, that's the other important point: you can't turn it around and expect a guarantee of success. I believe the original study didn't even claim any magical threshold of hours either - Gladwell probably just introduced that as a literary device: "10000 hours", and the added suggestion of some mystical threshold, make for much better storytelling than "oh you know, on the order of tens of thousands of hours" :)

And then if you add the other caveat too, it becomes too underwhelming to make for inspiring bedtime reading: "on the order of tens of thousands of hours, provided that you were quite great to begin with"!

[Brashman]

Yes, too underwhelming to catch on as much as Gladwell's interpretation has. However, it actually makes an important point: even if you're talented, it requires practice to really become an expert.