They say it takes 10,000 to become an expert. At 12 hours a day, that would take 2.28 years…how would you apply yourself to achieve the 10k hours? How long do you think it would take you?
If thr goal is to master the skill, then it takes as long as it takes and there shouldn't be a deadline.
If you need to pick this skill up in order to accomplish a certain task, then mastery isn't what's required. This is a challenge we face regularly as software engineers. There is an art in deciding which rabbit holes to plunge down and which to step over.
My process for doing so is roughly to survey the field in a broad and shallow manner to understand the context, evaluate what parts of it are most relevant to the matter at hand, and then study them in depth. But try to keep it tethered to the task you set out to accomplish. The minimum amount of information you'll need to capture is probably still a lot, so don't put more on your plate than you can eat.
Meh-ish. The goal is always on a gradient. It's entirely reasonable to look for the best way to "approach mastering a skill" on a deadline, because there is at least one deadline, and in reality there's always more.
No doubt, but somewhere between here and you dieing, I would assume that you semi-continuously revisit the progress per time and effort you put in and what you are getting out of it (maybe not so explicitly), and reconsider if "mastery" of that topic and as by your rules, is still a reasonable and worthwhile goal?
Either you never change your mind on what you master, or there is a implicit process by which it is changed, and I would be very surprised to learn that time/effort/progress do not play a role in that calculation.
Not really. I'm not fussed about leaving things unfinished when I die.
A few years ago I was deeply struck by an image of the late Grant Imahara's workbench [1]. It was cluttered with tools, notes, and unfinished business.
That's what I expect my desk to look like when I die, too.
A whole slew of authors and influencers have tackled this exact question. There have been books and even TV series about it. Not a lot of practical advice has come of it.
The big takeaway is that improving the quality of your practice, instruction, and mentoring is the biggest force multiplier. You can become very good at most things by experimenting and trying different things until you find what works, but you can skip past much of the trial and error with an excellent coach.
The problem is that you're not going to find a world-class person to teach and mentor you. You can often find high-level people who write books or teach lessons, but the top talent is usually either focused on their craft or retired. There are a lot of influencers who want to sell you on the idea that they're the best (or that they have learned from the best and will teach you like Tim Ferriss) but the actual results from those programs are rarely worthwhile.
The best thing I've found is to practice frequently and then aggressively engage with communities surrounding that thing. Post your work, participate in other people's projects when you can, join communities, or give presentations and ask for feedback if you can. Enter competitions early and often so you can realize what the best actually looks like in your field (and hopefully be motivated to get there).
I haven't seen much success from people who just isolate and put hours into a problem. Even the famous "self-taught" people pull a lot from resources available to them.
To add to your point about world-class people. Even those who do write about it somewhat (Buffett is an example) are, in my experience, usually quite clueless about why they are so good at it. They think they know, but they don't.
Your question aside for a moment, for what it's worth, "they" do not say this, that's Malcolm Gladwell misinterpreting research, according to the researchers themselves. See e.g. https://www.inc.com/nick-skillicorn/the-10000-hour-rule-was-... or google `10000 hours gladwell researchers` or what have you and you should find plenty of skepticism and/or failed replication results. My recollection is that Freakonomics or Planet Money also did an episode with the researchers explaining what their data actually said (IIRC the takeaways were more about deliberate practice). I'm sure others in the field may have more to add on what the science actually says (so your question is still of course a good one).
Time is important, but being able to assess what good is is incredibly important. I've met plenty of people who thought they were good at something till they met someone who was actually great at it, and then had to personally reassess.
This goes for sports, hobbies, tech skills, everything. If you're just at home and practicing by yourself, you can get competent, but without a bar to assess yourself against you have no idea if you're expect or just ok.
Furthermore, without the bar of "expert" to measure yourself against, it's hard to identify where your weaknesses are, and where to put effort.
Tech example - I started using ansible at home to automate things. I'm competent and can build a role for a new service pretty quickly. Am I good? No. Do I know how ok/good/great I am? Not really. It's pretty hard to measure. I know some of the patterns I use are designed for home use, not large scale deployments, but more practice isn't going to get me there.
It comes down to coaching, measuring, improving against a known standard, not just 10k hours of repetition.
To answer the actual "how to do it ASAP" part - I'd find a known expert who wanted to teach me, then learn from the master. With a great teacher you get the benefit of all their 10K hours of wisdom, provided in digestible chunks and a focused learning plan.
Someone tried that - see http://thedanplan.com/ - it turns out that you can become good, but expert / world class level takes more than dedicated practice.
The truth is that the people who do not have the aptitude to start wash out before they reach 10,000 hours, making this a self-reinforcing belief. That said, you can always become better, and you have the opportunity to define your own rules such that you can become recognized in something in which is suited to you.
An interesting approach I've seen recently is using a Spaced Repetition System like Anki as a system for skill practice. For example someone learning to tie knots would open Anki alongside them having string in their hands, and the system will prompt the user to tie specific knots. Whether you can remember and perform the skill is then tracked in the same way as if you were memorizing facts. In theory this sort of system could be extended to "cloze" deletions etc.
Do keep in mind that ideally Learning should come before Memorizing.
When I was in college, we would take a "J-term" in January, where we took only one class but would do multiple class sessions per day. Like maybe lecture in the morning, lunch, then come back for lab, and then work sessions / break out discussion in the evening. Squeezed a full semester class into the month. Obviously this is not easy or perhaps even possible as an adult learner with a job, kids, responsibilities, etc. If there was some subject for which I absolutely had to quickly develop proficiency, I'd set up some kind of a focused schedule like that - lay out a curriculum plan, set aside scheduled time each day, set an end-date by which you can assess your progress.
No, though you are correct that this kind of thing is popular at small liberal arts colleges. I think the one local to me does "May term" instead. It's really a nice way to do things - I took AI one year, poly sci another, good time for a study abroad. But it's also a good way to structure the kind of focused learning the original poster queried.
It has some guidelines and examples of how to go about getting 'good enough' with different skills in 20 hours to feel ... if not confident, at least comfortable in knowing what you don't yet know and how to get better.
This is probably too small to serve as an example. Back in my dorm days we used to play a lot of poker (Hold'em $1/$2), and it is pretty embarrassing to not know how to shuffle the cards by hand. Eventually I decided to sit down for maybe a couple of hours and practice shuffling non-stop. I never worried about shuffling cards afterwards.
That's a nice example of permanently solving a problem. I think my favorite example (not really relevant to learning, but funny) is an anecdote about a rich guy who had many houses and was always lugging shoes around. Eventually he just buys a hundred pairs so he never needs to worry about shoes again.
I started playing saxophone 2 years ago and have been making good progress (by my own definition). Here's my take:
1. If you don't have tremendous passion don't bothering thinking about mastering it. Be ready for practicing to be your new life style.
2. Have a picture of what you want to become (so you can make practice plans accordingly)
3. Have clear definition about what's productive practice and what's useless practice (with productive practice you can get great progression even if you only practice 1-2 hours a day)
4. If possible find a master in person and learn (I was lucky enough to have studied with a jazz legend, the first time I directly heard the "true" sound from a tenor saxophone in front of me is life changing)
5. The start is always the hardest, you're severely limited by your lack of skills, you won't feel free (especially for skills about expression, like music). Have to grind past that
"mastering" is a tricky word, it kinda imply you need third party acknowledgement in order to become a "master". In my case my goal is highly personal and might not be called a "master" by some people when I reached my goal. It all comes down to personal goal I think.
Having a mentor + immersion is best if possible. Theory or artificial exercises are hard to wrap your head around, learning by doing is a lot quicker, and it also becomes clear which part exactly you need to become an expert at and why. Most people don't need to know everything about everything, just fulfill their unique needs.
If you're already putting a clock on yourself ("ASAP") then you have made it harder.
Somebody doing something for 12 hours/day is losing out on free time that makes life worthwhile. If you're Serena/Venus Williams, maybe giving up a normal life for mastery is worth it. But I imagine there are people that trained roughly the same number of hours and aren't operating at a level where they could comfortably tell people "I gave up years of my life to be able to do this".
Most people involved in an activity day to day don't think of themselves as having mastered something.
However, people on the outside of something who want to be on the inside may feel that if they can't demonstrate mastery, they won't be invited in.
I would do I everything I could to connect with others pursuing that same goal with the hope being that by working together we could increase everyone's chances of success.
Becoming an expert in anything is going to be full of challenging days where you question why you're doing this, just want to give up, get distracted, etc. Having others to lean on (and be leaned on) can help get everyone through those challenges. Additionally, knowing you're part of a group may give you some sense of responsibility do you won't be as likely to slack off.
Lastly, in my opinion, working with others and building friendships along the way makes the entire journey more fun.
* Break down key area and create a list of relevant topics to understand and relevant study materials, gpt can help
* For each resource, skim & write summary on material,
* Read deeply or discard & take atomic notes on new/key info then write hand written summaries after each page or chapter,
* Re-read/skim notes and previous pages when revisiting material
* Alternate topics/key areas interleaving and noting their similarities & relationships, gpt can help
* For interleaving, spend 20-30mins a key area when studying
* Transfer paper notes to digital & outline
* Rewrite again in 1doc and elaborate, gpt can help
* Elaborate further with how&why questions, gpt can help
* Answer the how&why questions, gpt can help
* Identify multiple concrete examples and analogies, gpt can help
* Find counter arguments, gpt can help
* Read other resources, wikipedia reviews, websites, blogs, & repeat the above
* Give gpt notes “whats missing?”
* Add/create/organize visuals/concept maps/mind maps for dual coding, dall-e can help
* ?how to add sensory experience and engage more of brain when learning # pragthinking
* Watch relevant videos for more dual coding,
* Mediate on ideas
* Teach someone or speak it, or Feynman it
* Create test, gpt can help
* Create
I just scanned all of the comments so far and I’m surprised how few people have suggested hiring the best coaches.
I say “coaches” as plural because chances are mastery is going to take work in multiple areas simultaneously (ie nutrition, mental health, physical therapy, etc…).
It's not that simple. If you try too much, you may end up automating the wrong thing and getting yourself further from mastery.
It may take 10k hours, but if you rush it, it's possible you'll never get there.
For example, when training olympic weightlifting, if you fail your third attempt, you just stop or put less weight to ensure a successful lift, otherwise you risk fixing the wrong movement.
You cannot keep at it, you just get worse, rest is necessary at that point before you try again.
Weightlifting is interesting, "most" elites have really good technique (tempo, maintaining angles throughout the pull, bottom position, lockout, etc.) indicating some level of mastery from years of practice. But I think a good amount beginners and intermediates (i'd consider myself somewhere in there) let their strength hold them back, which after obtaining the requisite positioning/flexibility can be "spammed" ( i.e. run a squat program while getting touches on the classical lifts and seeing your total increase the first time you test it). I guess the strength aspect is a dependency that must be optimized as some lifters have an excess strength reserve and can't snatch/ clean n jerk what their squat numbers would indicate.
Yeah, raw strength is a limiting factor for amateurs (like me). You need to put the work and that requires dedication.
If I wanted to get to the next level relatively quickly I would need to start doing more specific strength training. I'm much more focused on technique at the moment, I find weightlifting training relaxing.
Since it's a hobby for me, I just slowly go increasing my PRs by every once in a while (once or twice a year) slightly bumping the reference weight for training.
Kind of like an aspirational PR. Once it feels and looks right across the whole range of training, I try a new PR, if successful, slightly move the target for the next time.
Identify who you and society views as the masters / what "mastery" is
Immerse yourself in their world and surround yourself with them on a daily basis if possible (where/how they work, where they train, where they hang out, what they do)
Create a super tight, iterative feedback look where you can make measurable improvements daily to your current skills, ideally with a testing or competitive component with scoring system or methodology - trial/error and experiment, but quickly
Debrief after these sessions on how it went, what was improving, what could be better, what feels completely off and difficult. Take appropriate time off to digest what you did and avoid burnout
Supplement with theory, books, video review (if applicable) and studying in addition to training and performing so you become a student in the craft
The goal is to get to a point of exponential acceleration and improvement to get you to mastery quicker by determining the pareto 20% skillsets and field experience ("inputs") that create 80% of the output value to get you to that 95 percentile, and double down on that once you've figured it out (and have validated that from the masters).
I personally think chasing mastery without deep burning passion for the thing is dumb and a waste of time because most top performers are probably 90-95 percentile pseudo-masters anyway and just lucky/well-connected. You might hit a point where the masters possess something you don't and never will, so it's crucial to understand that early (like a physical or genetic trait that you are born with or optimized for idk). Assuming everything above is in place, and you have unlimited $ and time commitment to make it work, I estimate a dedicated and focused 8 hours, every day would probably take 1.5-2 years to get to mastery, but YMMV.
Be interested in what you're learning. It's that simple.
If you're interested or even better yet passionate, you will naturally circumvent blockers (e.g. say 'no' to things blocking your goal without hesitation). You will naturally prioritize accordingly.
People who need 'systems' to do their personal stuff most likely aren't that into it. Systems are for businesses and managers. Sure, they can help - but. . .people who are experts are most likely interested in what they're doing and have worked at it tirelessly - because they're passionate or deeply interested in it. They will naturally gravitate to learning/doing the thing that they later on become experts at.
Einstein had a quote about how learning is a lot easier if you're passionate or interested. He was right.
Sort of. In a world where your attention is under constant siege by low-effort junk food distractions, there can be resistance to overcome even for things you're interested in or passionate about.
Have you never procrastinated on a passion project?
There's also some psychodynamics involved where certain activities impose a strain on you. After doing them too much, even if they're a complex carbohydrate form of fun, you'll eventually need a break in the form of simple carb fun (e.g., video games -- dead simple ones). Which sucks; I wish carrots could taste like candy.
You're right that this is a bit romantic, but nonetheless true.
I've never procrastinated with my main passion (music) - like a planet circling the sun, it might be out of my orbit for a bit, but i always come back to it. Not because someone told me to, or because I had a calendar reminder or a Kanban board.
Saying 'no' is hard, esp when you're younger I think (due to feelings of obligation) - but as you get older you realise that a lot those obligations can be dropped and that your life is short. It's also a lot easier to say no to distractions, if you're passionate. Less guilt about it.
There's a lots of techniques/hacks: Make what you want to achieve visible (e.g. surround yourself with carrots/only buy carrots).
Agree with you that breaks are necessary, but then you can enforce that by buying a limited amt of junk food for your pantry, so you don't spin out of control.
War of Art is a great book if you need some good cheerleading. . .but i read it, I didn't really need it because I'm fortunate to having something I love to do. I know that's not the case for everybody.
Unless you're defining expertise in a purely relative sense like PaulHoule here and aiming to learn something that is brand new that nobody is an expert in, I would not expect to become an expert in anything quickly. Putting aside the realism of any specific number like 10,000 hours, you can't usually just frontload that. Athletic endeavors are most obvious. You have to recover and adaptations take time besides, so simply increasing practice time density eventually becomes counterproductive. I'm sure intellectual endeavors are a bit more conducive to cramming, but not entirely. The brain is still a physical organ that requires recovery, downtime, and takes time to produce lasting adaptations.
Dive into sample projects! In 2019 I began a shift that has taken me roughly that "2.28 years" worth of time outside of my other responsibilities/activities- Unless you stop everything else that is probably super hard to compress down further... i do like sleep tho...
I often feel like Im moving too slow, but have zero bandwidth to allocate further. My first milestone is either a profitable side project or job transition, which ever happens first. Im close.
I am sure he pretends to master the subject very well. Having never seen a single one of his videos, I can also tell you with 100% confidence they are a complete lie. He is not memorizing 100+ words a day + grammar. Maybe 20-50, maybe. Learning jujitsu fast is a complete joke - there is a physical component that can't be separated from the skill work. There is practice, which tires you out, etc. Feels dirty even responding to this tripe.
Felt the same way about the question being unspecific.
I meant about the advice on learning he gives seemed decent.
Exercise while learning helps with retention. The episode was a joke, he got a few softballs and half the interview turned out to be in English. No idea about jujitsu or the timeline and haven’t watched it. Just examples since op gave zero details.
I'd ask a different question: Why do I want to become an expert? If I have a specific goal in mind, I can focus only on the aspects of the skill that support that goal. A narrow expertise with a shallow understanding of a skill can be reached faster, while still achieving something. Once you have that small success, you can broaden both the skill and the understanding of it.
But you need to first identify what you are really aiming to do.
A few (1-4) dedicated, focused hours of practice/learning per day, every/most days. Review how well learning/practice is going periodically. Adjust as needed. Repeat until at desired level.
You're not going to get 12 good hours of practice every day. At least half of those hours are going to end up pointless. They might be beneficial at the start, but that's just beginner gains and will fall off.
In some cases there are no experts so you can become an expert (as much as anyone) very quickly. Say writing prompts for LLMs. (Nobody has done that for 10,000 hours)
A 35 year old athlete has no change of breaking into the NFL or NBA but they can be one of the founders of a new sport, only later will there be a system to turn young athletes into champions.
On the other hand there are cases you could spend 10k hours and still suck or maybe you are a master of something nobody cares about. (been there… done that)
I had a friend in high school who was a great athlete and his coach pointed out that no-one in our region at our age level did the pole vault, so he registered and got gold every time at the county then regional level for a while till others figured out they could join in. I remember his annoyance at the first meet where someone else showed up to compete and he had to actually put in effort.
>> A 35 year old athlete has no change of breaking into the NFL or NBA but they can be one of the founders of a new sport
Just played pickleball on vacation for the first time. It's the second-chance for a whole bunch of over-the-hill tennis seniors, but boy, are they unpleasant people!
Was the 10K number supposed to be scientific? I thought it was a rule of thumb kinda thing like 10k steps a day (which most people are not getting, as that is around 5 miles of walking).
The 10K hour rule came from Malcolm Gladwell, who is known for slipshod or negligible research. 10K steps came from the brand name of the first pedometer to be mass-marketed, rather than research. So no in both cases.
>A 35 year old athlete has no change of breaking into the NFL or NBA
I argue that mastery =/= the very best. You can't get into the NBA at 35 because you didn't master Basketball, you can't get in because hundreds of others have also mastered it and have other advantages over you, physcically.
But I guess it comes down to how we interpret "master".
>maybe you are a master of something nobody cares about.
Tree falls... I guess it's another question up for debate. I don't necessarily think a master's value lies in how others value it. Especially since trends are so fleeting.
I highly recommend Ultralearning [1]. It does not talk about hours required to learn something, but how to define your goal, plan out the study, and then immerse yourself into the task.
Well, learning how to ask specific questions would be a start...
Skills are different and most don't actually take anywhere near 10,000 hours to learn. Figure out exactly what you want to learn/build and what the end goal is.
Is it to make money with said skill? Is it to become a community expert? Is it for a personal hobby that few would even know/care about?
Checkout Dr. K’s thoughts on this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=3y5p7V05xls - one key takeaway is to strive to understand the knowledgeable sustainably. Avoid starting out with the intention of being the best.
They say it takes 10,000 hours because you need time to explore, fail and learn from failures. Your best bet is a mentor coupled with total immersion in the area of interest. Keep in mind a great mentor can only shorten the time by a few thousand hours at best.
Researchers (dunlosky and many others) say that the more learning is spread the better the outcomes. The effect is called distributed practice. Interleaving is also important. So it's better to master many skills in parallel than to focus only on one.
Use many different approaches and materials, and quickly abandon anything that's insufficiently rewarding. Being faithful to a single text/course/strategy is the biggest source of failure I see in motivated students.
My diverse set of interests and age means I already have many thousands of hours laid. So, really, it's just a matter of focusing on the last little bit. How long does that take?
>it's just a matter of focusing on the last little bit.
I would call that prefetching.
There are so many things that can't truly be mastered in a lifetime, much less a mere 10000 hours.
Either way, extreme ambition may be involved but it's not actually required.
If ASAP is a factor, that would tend more to the extreme though, but I would say that the same tasks required to achieve the level of mastery expected at 10000 hours will lead to a higher level of accomplishment if spread out over more than 2.28 years.
What you really want to do if you can is to put in the 10000 hours (or preferably 100000 or more) in areas where others have hardly done anything yet (or just can't compare), so you will have something exceptional to offer fairly early in your journey, and build momentum to surpass the state-of-the-art in the long run before very much complete mastery has yet occurred.
Especially for things which complete mastery can not be expected to occur, whether you know it or not.
You find somebody who already did it and interrogate them about path-optimization until they are sick of you (what to learn in what order, what books, etc.)
Do NOT even think about the "10,000 hours". It is a bullshit made-up number from Malcom Gladwell misinterpreting some research.
The actual number is vastly different depending on the specific field, and what you count as hours spent. E.g., in the ~decade it took me to get to top international ranks of alpine ski racing, if you count just time 'on the hill', it was probably 15K hours, but if you subtract time on the lifts, it was 3k, and time on track in my best event, it was <100 hours, but if you add in physical training, running, weights, etc, it was probably 30K hours).
The same goes for becoming an expert software programmer, sportscar racer, or other skills I've gained. In some, I'm far under the 10k hours, and others far over, and a HUGE amount depends on what you count. E.g., in starting out sportscar racing with Autocross events, I learned some bad habits that needed to be unlearned, but I learned a lot about just organizing, packing, & prepping for an event. So how do those events count? Do we count the days prepping before the event & traveling to it?
Yes, "seat time" or "inside the helmet" time counts. But those "10k" numbers are BS. Some learn faster than others, faster in some sections of the knowledge base vs others, better/worse training programs exist, better/worse coaches, etc.
The elements I've found critical are:
Find the absolute best teachers/coaches/mentors that you can. You will need to learn something, and I've found it's best if you can get it straight from the top. They are often not available, and there are often some deep experts that are obscure, you just have to find them and.or luck into them. OFC, you don't know how to judge from the position of a novice, but look for a focus on understanding how it all works, vs anything flashy (in fact the more anti-self-promotional they are...).
Practice time with good feedback. Use every tool at your disposal to get actual feedback on whether you are hitting your marks or not. The tighter the feedback loop, the better. Having video feedback is better than not, if you can watch it instantly, it's better than in the evening, etc. Actual instrumentation so you can see live data can also be critical, but use it to improve your internal sense of whatever is being measured, don't use the readout.
Good, but not great, equipment. Poor equipment will give you bad habits, so get advice on what is good enough to prevent that. But don't spend on the top-shelf equipment until you really understand how your middle-of-the-road equipment is holding you back. This will be different for each person. As you gain mastery, you'll need to focus on what equipment improvement will produce what quantified result for what costs (dollars, upgrade time, re-learning time, etc.).
Have fun!! Do not make it a slog. There will always be dreary and discouraging days, but it the fun days that keep you going. Enjoy the process!!
If thr goal is to master the skill, then it takes as long as it takes and there shouldn't be a deadline.
If you need to pick this skill up in order to accomplish a certain task, then mastery isn't what's required. This is a challenge we face regularly as software engineers. There is an art in deciding which rabbit holes to plunge down and which to step over.
My process for doing so is roughly to survey the field in a broad and shallow manner to understand the context, evaluate what parts of it are most relevant to the matter at hand, and then study them in depth. But try to keep it tethered to the task you set out to accomplish. The minimum amount of information you'll need to capture is probably still a lot, so don't put more on your plate than you can eat.