The 100-Hour Rule: Forgotten Study Shows How You Can Become World-Class In 100 Hours

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The year is 1976. Anders Ericsson is an unknown, newly minted PhD.

Little does he know that he is on the verge of what would be “the most surprising two years” of his career. Ericsson and his collaborator Bill Chase are about to begin the study that will ultimately lead to the 10,000-Hour Rule.

Though, what makes their seminal study most interesting is not what came from it (10,000-Hour Rule), but what should have come from it and didn’t…

Inside The Forgotten Finding From The Study That Spawned The 10,000-Hour Rule

The study design was simple.

Ericsson and Chase wanted to replicate a forgotten 1929 paper where two undergrads increased their ability to memorize random digits when shown them at a rate of one per second. Over four months, one student went from memorizing 9 digits to 13 and the other went from 11…