There is a better summary of the studies in "Thinking, Fast and Slow"
From what I remember, the claim is that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice work best when:
1. You get immediate feedback on success and failure
2. The thing you are trying to master has a skill set that can be improved, and that improving that skill is sufficient.
That #2 is tricky -- a counter example is stock picking. We have no evidence that there is a skill that can be learned that will make you better at picking stocks, so 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, even with immediate feedback, won't help.
I think that Dan is following a reasonable deliberate practice plan with experts and that he does get fast feedback. What we don't know is if Golf is something that is primarily/mostly/all skill based. For example, what if there was a physical body type that made you better and Dan didn't have it -- then 10,000 hours might not help.
Also, the point of the 10,000 hours is to train your intuitive mind (System 1, the fast thinker) to be as correct as your deliberate mind would be (System 2, the slow thinker) if you had time and attention. This whole thing is much better for thinking-based activities, like say, programming. I don't remember if the studies looked at physical activities and "muscle-memory".
Caveat: this is all from memory -- read "Thinking, Fast and Slow" if you have interest in this.
I read Thinking Fast and Slow and also I also read a better summary of the initial study, by the author I think. The 10,000 hour was taking from a study from top music performers (so, no random population), also there was a lot of variance; for ex among chess players some achieved mastery in 5,000 hours, others put in more than 10,000 and didn't achieve it. So lots of deliberate practice is good, arbitrary 10k hours is BS.
Could you point to some articles? I've read a few Buffett articles and his suggestion seems to generally be - invest in an index fund and leave it alone.
Warren Buffet's own letter to stockholders is the best source for what he thinks. It is not stock picking (he parks some money in stocks, but that's not the bulk of what he does). He calls what he does "capital allocation" not "stock-picking"
His basic strategy:
1. Write insurance: that gives you tons of cash up front. Get good at setting the price right so you can make money on the float (using money in near term, paying it back in the future)
2. Now with all of this cash, invest in things (like utilities) that need big cash investment, but then pay-back forever (basic rent collecting). He likes things with big barriers to entry (moats)
He does not care if his company stock goes up or down, all he cares about is intrinsic value: the cash generated (now and in the future) and time value of money. His benchmark is the S&P 500 -- he wants to beat their intrinsic value.
From what I remember, the claim is that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice work best when:
1. You get immediate feedback on success and failure
2. The thing you are trying to master has a skill set that can be improved, and that improving that skill is sufficient.
That #2 is tricky -- a counter example is stock picking. We have no evidence that there is a skill that can be learned that will make you better at picking stocks, so 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, even with immediate feedback, won't help.
I think that Dan is following a reasonable deliberate practice plan with experts and that he does get fast feedback. What we don't know is if Golf is something that is primarily/mostly/all skill based. For example, what if there was a physical body type that made you better and Dan didn't have it -- then 10,000 hours might not help.
Also, the point of the 10,000 hours is to train your intuitive mind (System 1, the fast thinker) to be as correct as your deliberate mind would be (System 2, the slow thinker) if you had time and attention. This whole thing is much better for thinking-based activities, like say, programming. I don't remember if the studies looked at physical activities and "muscle-memory".
Caveat: this is all from memory -- read "Thinking, Fast and Slow" if you have interest in this.