I have my own take on this - if you triple-Pareto the 10k hours rule you end up with 80 hours of work responsible for 51.2% of your skill. I round it up and call 100-hours rule: if you put one hundred hours of actual practice into something it might not make you an expert, but you'll be proficient and/or good enough to impress people around you.<p>I started applying this to random things, and I think one could cut it down to even 10 hours for things one would just want to have a familiarity with. It's surprising how much progress can you make in few initial hours of practice. I could never toss a coin without it landing in completely random places or hitting someone. After just 3-5 hours of practice total over span of few days I learned how to toss various coins and catch them with one (the same) hand, and I could even spin them in ways that make or don't make sound on demand.<p>So my take is: apply 10-hour rule to random stuff you fancy, things that could make good party tricks, etc. Apply 100-hour rule to things you end up caring about enough that you want to be proficient in them.
Given the 10,000 hour rule as generally true (at least in spirit), what's very difficult and seldom discussed is just how hard it is to get there at anything worthwhile once you're passed a certain point in life.<p>Why? Because job.<p>Having gone through college and taken work terms between years, I saw this first-hand: after you're done 9 to 5 for that paycheck (+food, +commuting, +exercise, +social life), <i>good luck</i> finding 4 hours a day for building your skills at something meaningful - or starting a side project. You have to sacrifice a ton, or say goodbye to full-time work. While a lot of graduate students won't outright admit it, I get the feeling this is a big motivator for a lot of people "delaying the real world".<p>(BTW, 4 hours a day means an actual 4 hours of high concentration and high output, which can take a full working day as anyone with a day job will attest.)<p>And then you get people who look down on you for "delaying the real world", and so many people who do anything other than a 9-5 after basic college feel guilty for doing so. I used to look down on those people too quite frankly (lazy bums, you don't get to learn interesting things while I fix this bullshit Perl script). But now I get it.<p>To me, this is the best argument for basic income, although I'm still not sold on it. How can we have a passionate society of master craftsmen and artisans when we're busy inventing bullshit jobs for people to fill, so they can support themselves?<p>A big caveat is if somehow the stars align and your work contributes to mastery at your craft. The odds actually aren't nearly so bad if you're in tech. As I alluded to above, they didn't work out so great for me, at least initially. Web and app development, I found out, isn't my thing.<p>As some final anecdotal data, it's fairly well-known that the Dutch have a disproportionately high amount of world-class DJs (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Dutch_DJs" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Dutch_DJs</a>). In examining this anomaly, one finds out that the Dutch offer disproportionately more grants and funding for music and the arts. So people can take those years they would have otherwise spent in typical 9-5's and instead focus on DJ-ing.<p></rant from someone who would rather not be job hunting>
I like the doable attitude of this - and the words hold true. Very few 'inspirational' things I read actually manage to break things down to something reasonable. Once the teacher strikes here (In norway) stop, I start language classes. The teacher doing the initial questions told me I have 550 hours of required language classes - but then made sure I know I get up to 3000, with the note that 550 hours really isn't enough to learn a language and be good. Just enough to survive. The same principle applies here - that first 1000 hours of instruction will be absolutely priceless for me. I'll get good.
Slightly tangential, but the latest You Are Not So Smart podcast is about practise and how it changes your brain, particularly with regard to the 10,000 hour 'rule'. It's well worth a listen (and so are all the previous episodes if you've not heard it before).<p><a href="http://youarenotsosmart.com/2014/08/14/yanss-podcast-030-how-practice-changes-the-brain-with-david-epstein/" rel="nofollow">http://youarenotsosmart.com/2014/08/14/yanss-podcast-030-how...</a>
This is a pretty solid rule.<p>I've taken a similar approach with my kids, but they're not really old enough to report back any results. I didn't round down to 1k hours or look at 10k seriously.<p>I've been trying to teach them that it's important to take the journey to get actually good at something. You pick up a lot of things on the way to becoming proficient.<p>I let my oldest pick something to get good at this year. She went with fast pitch softball. (she's 8)<p>She's threw about a thousand pitches the first month with me having her get out there. Since then (I thought that was too much) she's been the one to get me out there to catch her and that number has settled on about 500 a month.<p>With how many pitches you get in a normal little league (farm league softball) game, she basically pitched about 5 years worth of seasons over summer.<p>It'll be fun to watch this next season. I don't think anyone will expect a 4' 50 pound girl to throw as hard as she does.
I think the order of magnitude scale is a good guide for most things you can learn. Obviously these are rules of thumb. "Practice" can vary in quality, prerequisites and starting points matter. YMMV based on a huge number of factors. That said, the order of magnitude scale is usually a greta way of looking at things.<p>1,000 hours will get you to entry level "professional" level.<p>1,000 hours is also 20 hours per week (of deliberate practice) for one year. An hour will get you a definition (different keys play different notes. This is a note. A scale. A chord). 10 will get you an overview of a subject (This is what mean, median, variance and variance mean) and perhaps a usable tidbit. At 100 hours knowledge starts being functional in a limited way (write code that generates a sales report). 1000 hours is entry level professional.<p>Learning to read<p><pre><code> 1 hr: Understand that letters represent sounds
10 hrs: practice reading and writing all the letters. read simple words like cat
100 hrs: know all letters, most common words and can sound out most words
1000 hrs: functionally fluent
10000: achieve your potential as a poet or novelist
</code></pre>
Judo<p><pre><code> 1 hr: Overview of that martial art's approach
10 hrs: Understand basic vocabulary of the style: stances, throws, etc
100 hrs: Can perform a limited number of techniques effectively.
Would be advantageous in a self defense situation
1000 hrs: You are eying that black belt.
Consistently overcome most untrained opponents.
Very useful in a self defense situation.
You can ref a match, teach Beginners or invent some moves.
10000: achieve your maximal potential as a competitor or instructor
</code></pre>
10,000 hours in an interesting thinking tool. In my mind it represents the level of practice required to maximize your potential. 1,000 hours is another useful tool. To me, it's a more liberating concept because it's achievable without dedicating your life to a thing. Put in 1,000 hours and you will be able to code that app, play in a band or terrorize your husband with a flying triangle choke.
Do people really need to be told "Find something that you enjoy doing and then keep doing it"? Really?<p>I do the things I enjoy, um cause I enjoy them.<p>I also don't (or try not to) do the things I don't enjoy.<p>Nobody gave me that stunning advice. It's nature's built in reinforcement loop.<p>How about; "Do something you suck at (but want not to) or are afraid of. Stick with it at least until you don't suck or are no longer afraid."
Is the 10,000 hour rule even true? I know this was popularized by Gladwell's book 'Outliers' but I had heard the study referred to in the book might not be accurate. Is it that 10,000 of practice is common to experts or that there are no experts without 10,000 hours of practice?
10,000 hour rule is a bit strange. I've been programming for 8 years doing so at work and at home. Working full time there are roughly 2,080 work hours in a year. 2,080 * 8 = 16,640 hours of programming. Now there is also all of that time spent programming in classes, on homework, on hobbies, and doing freelance work. That easily brings the amount of hours spent programming to 18,000. To account for all the time spent on hacker news, reddit, etc... instead of actually programming I'll drop that number to 16,000 total hours programming.<p>By all accounts I should be an expert. I'd imaging there are many on here with a similar hours, many with more. I don't feel like an expert though. Do you?
How about 20 hours? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY</a><p>The 10k hours thing is based on how long it took athletes to become the very top of their field. The very top of their highly specific, highly competitive field. It doesnt even mean becoming an 'expert' (whatever that means), let alone just being good at it. Anyway, check the TED Talk above, 20 hours to proficiency.
I like this submission a lot. It is consistent with the "expert performance" research literature pioneered by K. Anders Ericsson and his colleagues in that it points out that lots of competent, gainfully employed adults are not "experts" (as rigorously defined in the expert performance research literature)[1] but are capable journeymen. We may as well all resolve ourselves, and all advise young people, to find something that we enjoy doing anyhow in our free time, something that is useful in solving problems other people experience, and practicing how to do it well enough to trade with other people for resources we can use to solve the problems we can't solve on our own. Better that we be competent journeymen rather than unknowingly incompetent.[2]<p>I like too that he links to Paul Graham's essay "What You'll Wish You'd Known,"[3] which everyone should read before finishing high school.<p>[1] <a href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/pdf/DeliberatePractice(PsychologicalReview).pdf" rel="nofollow">http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/pdf/D...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolved-primate/201006/when-ignorance-begets-confidence-the-classic-dunning-kruger-effect" rel="nofollow">http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolved-primate/201006/w...</a><p><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2702783/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2702783/</a><p>[3] <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html</a>
The rule? Solid. In practicality how many will follow this? Few. It's like telling someone how to get rich. You can literally tell someone but few will do the action required to get the results.<p>But then the few that do end up like Drew Houston or Aaron Levie when they apply their skills to business and if they fail they're more experienced than the average 20 something.
I've been wondering if there's another level to be reached after another factor of 10--in other words, is there a "100,000 hour" rule?<p>Which at 8 hours per day would take over 30 years, so there's not going to be a lot of them.<p>Maybe Jiro from Jiro Dreams of Sushi?
I believe there are three factors to consider:<p>- what you are trying to learn<p>- your ability to learn things on that particular area<p>- how you measure [familiar/proficient/good/expert/impress people]<p>The time it takes to get to those levels can vary a lot and you can't really use the same rule for all. It is almost like saying that if a group of people spent 5 years in college together and by the end of it all of them have the same level of expertise. We all know it doesn't work this way.<p>I think these X-hour rules are flawed unless they are very specific on the three factors I mentioned. The 10k hours probably works simply because it is a lot of time... not because everybody learns the same way.<p>EDIT: formatting
I have the constant conversation with my kids of just finding an interest - any interest and trying it. It's great when your kids like sports, etc, but when you have one's that find it very hard to come up with any interest they want to explore, I'd be thrilled with even 2 hours worth.<p>For now, it's us getting them trying things and they're middle/high school age, so they should be coming up with stuff on their own. I only hope someday it clicks and they find things they want to explore on their own.
A detailed an well argumented framework to be found in<p>Chapter 1: Five Steps from Novice to Expert<p><i>Mind Over Machine</i> by Hubert Dreyfus<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Over-Machine-Hubert-Dreyfus/dp/0029080614/" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Over-Machine-Hubert-Dreyfus/dp/00...</a>
I consider myself a expert in .NET/C# development, and it did not take no where NEAR 10,000 hours. 3000 hours is a fair estimate. 4000 to be on the safe side.<p>I was good after 1000 though, so I'd have to agree with this "rule".
On a tangent: could you consider centering the content on your site? Right now I have to turn my head left by about 30 degrees to read your blog, on a widescreen monitor.<p>margin-left in <body> of 25% makes it much better to read.
This is exactly my plan with most of my hobbies. Just continuously do it now and then and you ought to get better at some point. It still needs dedicated practise, though. Just "doing" it is not enough.
10k hours rule is not general to a topic, and is quite specific -- 10,000 hours of a skill-based, feedback giving action in which productive practice takes place is different from, "spend 10k hours learning about history and you become a history master."<p>And 1k hours is <i>completely</i> unsupported by experimentation.<p>Why do people think they can just randomly throw nonsense at a wall and expect it to stick?