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So I'd like to talk about
the development of human potential,

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and I'd like to start with maybe the most
impactful modern story of development.

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Many of you here have probably heard
of the 10,000 hours rule.

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Maybe you even model
your own life after it.

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Basically it's the idea
that to become great in anything,

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it takes 10,000 hours
of focused practice ...

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so you'd better get started
as early as possible.

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The poster child
for this story is Tiger Woods.

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His father famously gave him
a putter when he was seven months old.

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At 10 months he started
imitating his father's swing.

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At two you can go on YouTube
and see him on national television.

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Fast forward to the age of 21,

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he's the greatest golfer in the world.

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Quintessential 10,000 hours story.

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Another that features a number
of bestselling books

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is that of the three Polgar sisters,

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whose father decided to teach
them chess in a very technical manner

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from a very early age.

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And really he wanted to show

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that with a headstart in focused practice,

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any child could become
a genius in anything.

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And in fact,

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two of his daughters went on
to become grandmaster chess players.

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When I became the science writer
at "Sports Illustrated" magazine,

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I got curious.

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If this 10,000 hours rule is correct,

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then we should see that elite
athletes get a head start

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in so-called deliberate practice.

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This is coached,

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error-correction focused practice,

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not just playing around.

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And in fact,

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when scientists study elite athletes,

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they see that they spend more time
in deliberate practice.

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Not a big surprise.

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When they actually track athletes
over the course of their development,

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the patter looks like this.

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The future elites actually spend
less time early on in deliberate practice

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in their eventual sport.

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They tend to have what scientists
call a sampling period,

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where they try a variety
of physical activities,

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they gain broad, general skills,

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they learn about their interests
and abilities

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and delay specializing until later
than peers who plateau at lower levels.

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And so when I saw that I said,

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"Gosh, that doesn't really comport
with the 10,000 hours rule, does it?"

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So I started to wonder about other domains

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that we associate
with obligatory specialization,

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like music.

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Turns out the pattern's often similar.

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This is research from
a world-class music academy,

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and what I want to draw
your attention to is this:

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the exceptional musicians didn't start
spending more time in deliberate practice

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than the average musicians

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until their third instrument.

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They too tended to have a sampling period.

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Even musicians we think of
as famously precocious,

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like Yo-Yo Ma.

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He had a sampling period,

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he just went through it more rapidly
than most musicians do.

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Nonetheless, this research
is almost entirely ignored,

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and much more impactful

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is the first page of the book 
"Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,"

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where the author recounts 
assigning her daughter violin.

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Nobody seems to remember
the part later in the book

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where her daughter turns to her
and says, "You picked it, not me,"

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and largely quits.

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So, having seen this sort of surprising
pattern in sports and music,

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I started to think about domains
that effect even more people,

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like education.

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An economist found a natural experiment

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in the higher-ed systems
of England and Scotland.

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In the period he studied,

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the systems were very similar,

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except in England,

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students had to specialize
in their mid-teen years

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to pick a specific course of study
to apply towards.

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In Scotland, they could keep trying
things in the university

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if they wanted to.

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And his question was:

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who wins the trade-off,

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the early of the late specializers?

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And what he saw was that the early
specializers jump out to an income lead

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because they have more
domain-specific skills.

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The late specializers get to try
more different things,

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and when they do pick,

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they have better fit,

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or what economists call "match quality."

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And so their growth rates are faster.

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Bu six years out,

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they erase that income gap.

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Meanwhile, the early specializers
start quitting their career tracks

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in much higher numbers,

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essentially because they were made
the choose so early

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that they more often made poor choices.

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So the late specializers lose
in the short term

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and win the long run.

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I think if we thought about
career choice like dating,

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we might not pressure people
to settle down quite so quickly.

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So this got me interested --

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seeing this pattern again --

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in exploring the developmental backgrounds

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of people whose work I had long admired.

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Like Duke Ellington,

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who shunned music lessons
as a kid to focus on baseball

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and painting and drawing.

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Or Maryam Mirzakhani,

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who wasn't interested
in math as a girl --

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dreamed of becoming an novelist

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and went on to become the first,

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and so far only woman to win
the Fields Medal,

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the most prestigious prize
in the world in math.

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Or Vincent Van Gogh --

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had five different careers,

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each of which he deemed
his true calling

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before flaming out spectacularly.

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And in his late 20s picked up a book
called "The Guide to the ABCs of Drawing."

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That worked out OK.

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Claude Shannon was an electrical engineer
at the University of Michigan

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who took a philosophy course
just to fulfill a requirement,

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and in it, he learned about 
a near century-old system of logic

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by which true and false statements
could be coded as ones and zeros

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and solved like math problems.

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This led to the development
of binary code,

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which underlies all of our
digital computers today.

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Finally, my own sort of role model,

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Frances Hesselbein --

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this is me with her --

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she took her first professional
job at the age of 54

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and went on to become 
the CEO of the Girl Scouts,

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which she saved.

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She tripled minority membership,

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added 130,000 volunteers,

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and this is one of the proficiency badges
that came out of her tenrure --

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it's binary code for girls
learning about computers.

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Today, Frances runs a leadership institute

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where she works every
weekday in Manhattan,

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and she's only 104,

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so who knows what's next.

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(Laughter)

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We never really hear developmental
stories like this, do we?

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We don't hear about the research

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that found that Nobel Laureate scientists
are 22 times more likely

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to have a hobby outside of work

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as are typical scientists.

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We never hear that.

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Even when the performers
or the work is very famous,

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we don't hear these
developmental stories.

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For example, here's
an athlete I've followed.

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Here he is at age six,

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wearing a Scottish rugby kit.

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Now he tried some tennis,

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some skiing,

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wrestling.

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His mother was actually a tennis coach
but she declined to coach him

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because he wouldn't return balls normally.

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(Laughter)

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He did some basketball,

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table tennis,

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swimming.

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When his coaches wanted to move
him up a level to play with older boys,

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he declined because he just wanted
to talk about pro wrestling after practice

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with his friends.

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And he kept trying more sports:

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handball,

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volleyball,

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soccer,

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badminton,

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skateboarding.

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So who is this dabbler?

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This is Roger Federer.

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Every bit as famous
as an adult as Tiger Woods,

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and yet even tennis enthusiasts don't
usually know anything

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about his developmental story.

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Why is that even though it's the norm?

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I think it's partly because the Tiger
story is very dramatic.

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But also because it seems
like this tidy narrative

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that we can extrapolate to anything
we want to be good at in our own lives.

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But that I think is a problem,

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because it turns out that in many ways
golf is a uniquely horrible model

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of almost everything
that humans want to learn.

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(Laughter)

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Golf is the epitome of what
the psychologist Robin Hogarth called

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a "Kind learning environment."

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Kind learning environments have next steps
and goals that are clear,

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rules that are clear and never change --

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when you do something you get feedback
that is quick and accurate --

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work next year will look
like work last year.

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Chess:

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also a kind learning environment.

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The grandmasters' advantage is based
on knowledge of recurring patterns,

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which is also why
it's so easy to automate.

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On the other end of the spectrum
are "wicked learning environments,"

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where next steps and goals
may not be clear.

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Rules may change.

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You may or may not get feedback
when you do something.

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It may be delayed,

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it may be inaccurate

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and work next year may not
look like work last year.

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So which one of these
sounds like the world

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we're increasingly living in?

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In fact, our need to think
in an adaptable manner

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and to keep track of interconnecting parts

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has fundamentally changed our perception.

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So when you look at this diagram,

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the central circle on the right
probably looks larger to you

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because your brain is drawn
to the relationship of the parts

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in the whole,

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whereas someone who hasn't been
exposed to modern work

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with its requirement for adaptable,
conceptual thought,

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will see correctly that the central
circles are the same size.

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So here we are in the wicked work world,

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and there, sometimes
hyperspecialization can backfire badly.

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For example,

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in research in a dozen countries

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that matched people for their parents'
years of education,

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their test scores,

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their own years of education,

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the difference was some got
career-focused education

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and some got broader, general education.

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The pattern was those who got
the career-focused education

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are more likely to be hired
right out of training,

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more likely to make more money right away,

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but so much less adaptable
in a changing work world,

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that they spend so much less time
in the workforce overall

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that they win in the short term
and lose in the long run.

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Or consider a famous,
20-year study of experts

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making geopolitical
and economic predictions.

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The worst forecasters were the most
specialized experts.

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Those who'd spent their entire careers
studying one or two problems

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and came to see the whole world
through one lens or mental model.

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Some of them actually got worse
as they accumulated experience

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and credentials.

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The best forecasters were simply
bright people with wide-ranging interests.

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Now in some domains,

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like medicine,

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increasing specialization has been
both inevitable and beneficial.

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No question about it.

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And yet it's been a double-edged sword.

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A few years ago,

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
one of the most popular surgeries
in the world for knee pain

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was tested in a placebo-controlled trial.

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Some of the patients got sham surgery.

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That means the surgeons make an incision,

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
they bang around like
they're doing something

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and then they sew the patient back up.

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That performed just as a well.

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And yet surgeons who specialize
in the procedure continue to do it

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by the millions.

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So if hyperspecialization isn't always
the trick in a wicked world, what is?

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That can be difficult to talk about

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because it doesn't
always look like this path.

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Sometimes it looks like
meandering or zig-zagging

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
or keeping a broader view.

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It can look like getting behind.

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
But I want to talk about what
some of those tricks might be.

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If we look at research
on technological innovation,

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it shows that increasingly,

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the most impactful patents
are not authored by individuals

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who drill deeper, deeper, deeper
into one area of technology,

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as classified by the US Patent Office,

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but rather by teams that include
individuals who have worked across

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a large number of different
technology classes

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and often merge things
from different domains.

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Someone whose work I've admired

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who was sort of
on the forefront of this --

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a Japanese man named Gunpei Yokoi.

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Yokoi didn't score well
on his electronics exams at school,

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so he had to settle for a low-tier job
as a machine maintenance worker

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at a playing card company in Kyoto.

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He realized he wasn't equipped
to work on the cutting edge,

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but there was so much
information easily available

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that maybe he could combine things
that were already well-known

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in ways that specialists
were too narrow to see.

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So he combined some well-known technology
from the calculator industry

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with some well-known technology
from the credit card industry

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and made handheld games.

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And they were a hit.

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And it turned this playing card company,

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which was founded in a wooden
storefront in the 19th century,

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into a toy and game operation.

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You may have heard of it.

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It's called Nintendo.

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Yokoi's creative philosophy translated

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to "lateral thinking 
with withered technology."

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Taking well-known technology
and using it in new ways.

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And his magnum opus was this:

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the Game Boy.

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Technological joke in every way.

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And it came out at the same time
as color competitors from Saga and Atari

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and it blew them away.

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Because Yokoi knew what his
customers cared about wasn't color,

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it was durability,

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portability,

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affordability,

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battery life,

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game selection.

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This is mine that I found
in my parents' basement.

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(Laughter)

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Seen better days.

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But you can see the red light is on.

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I flipped it on and played some Tetris,

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which I thought was especially impressive

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because the batteries had expired
in 2007 and 2013.

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(Laughter)

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So this breadth advantage holds
in more subjective realms as well.

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In a fascinating study of what leads
some comic book creators

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to be more likely to make
blockbuster comics,

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a pair of researchers found

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that it was neither the number of years
of experience in the field

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nor the resources of the publisher,

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nor the number of previous comics made.

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It was the number of different genres
that a creator had worked across.

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And interestingly, a broad individual
could not be entirely replaced

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by a team of specialists.

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We probably don't make as many
of those people as we could

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because early on,

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they just look like they're behind

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and we don't tend to incentivize anything
that doesn't look like a head start

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or specialization.

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In fact, I think in the well-meaning
drive for a head start,

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we often even counterproductively
short circuit even the way we learn

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new material at a fundamental level.

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In a study last year,

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seventh-grade math classrooms in the US

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were randomly assigned
to different types of learning.

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Some got what's called blocked practice.

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That's like, you get problem type A,

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AAAAA,

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BBBBB,

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and so on.

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Progress is fast,

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kids are happy,

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everything's great.

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Other classrooms got assigned
to what's called "Interleaved practice."

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That's like if you took
all the problem types

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and put them in a hat

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and drew them out at random.

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Progress is slower,

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kids are more frustrated.

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But instead of learning
how to execute procedures,

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they're learning how to match
a strategy to a type of problem.

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And when the test comes around,

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the interleaved group blew
the block practice group away.

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It wasn't even close.

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Now I found a lot of this research
deeply counterintuitive.

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They idea that a headstart,

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whether in picking a career
or a course of study

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of just in learning new material,

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can sometimes undermine
long-term development.

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And naturally, I think there are as many
ways to succeed as there are people,

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but I think we tend only to incentivize
and encourage the tiger path

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when increasingly in a wicked world,

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we need people who travel
the Roger path as well.

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Or as the eminent physicist
and mathematician

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and wonderful writer,

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Freeman Dyson put it --

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and Dyson passed away yesterday,

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
so I hope I'm doing
his words honor here --

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as he said,

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
"For a healthy ecosystem,

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
we need both birds and frogs.

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Frogs are down in the mud,

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
see all the granular details.

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The birds are soaring up above
not seeing those details,

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but integrating
the knowledge of the frogs."

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And we need both.

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The problem, Dyson said,

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is that "we're telling everyone
to become frogs"

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and I think,

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
in a wicked world
that's increasingly short-sighted.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)