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Comment by tgv | Hacker News Reader

My opinion:

* The 10000 hour rule is nonsense. There are skills that require very much practice, and a lot of those are unattainable for most people. You could practice 10,000 hours on the violin or playing chess without reaching the lofty heights of Hahn or Magnusson. That does require some kind of "talent".

* Many other skills can be acquired in much less time, certainly if you don't start from scratch. E.g., learning a 2nd programming language takes much less time than the 1st.

* I've been switching jobs all my life; on average after about 5 years. 43 isn't very old to switch, IMO.

* Think about what is important to you: Money? Stability? Job satisfaction? Can you find a new job that gives you what you want and need?

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Mastering a skill doesn't imply being in the top 10 or even 100. It simply means acquiring expertise to a point of diminishing returns and being recognized by your peers as very skilled. It's perfectly possible to become really good at chess and at the violin after a lot of practice. Good enough to impress a beginner.

Learning a second programming language isn't really learning a new skill, it's maybe more like learning a new genre of music if you already play the violin well, or learning how to play speed chess once you're already a master.

> You could practice 10,000 hours on the violin or playing chess without reaching the lofty heights of Hahn or Magnusson.

Without commenting on whether the 10k rule was reasonable, you're shifting goalposts. It was never the claim that it only took 10k hours to be the best in the world.

>The 10000 hour rule is nonsense

You should probably read a bit about the "rule" before calling it nonsense.

It's vague, flexible, and refers to attaining mastery in some skill. Nowhere is it implied you'll be a world champion chess player after 10,000 hours.

It says practice will make you better at something. That's hard to dismiss.

Agreed. Bobby Fisher got there in less than 10 years.

https://problogservice.com/2012/03/15/what-malcolm-gladwell-...

The problem is, Gladwell never said you needed 10,000 hours to be an expert, you need 10,000 hours to be a phenom. To be so freakishly awesome, to be such a standout among your peers, that sometimes your first name is enough to tell people who you are: Peyton. Tiger. Venus. Kobe. Oprah.

But in the meantime, here’s what Malcolm Gladwell said about the 10,000 hour rule and being an outlier:

“In fact, by the age of twenty, the elite performers (violinists) had each totaled ten thousand hours of practice.” — p. 38

“The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything,” writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin. — p. 40

“To become a chess grandmaster also seems to take about ten years. (Only the legendary Bobby Fisher got to that elite level in less than that amount of time: it took him nine years.) And what’s ten years? Well, it’s roughly how long it takes to put in ten thousand hours of hard practice. Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness.” — p. 41

I need 500g of flour to make bread. That doesn't mean I can make bread with just 500g of flour.

You are trying to say that someone claiming 500g being necessary to making bread is hogwash because it doesn't also talk about the salt and water (etc).

Why is everyone so pessimistic? I believe that if you, sophacles, had the time, the determination, the money for 10 000 hours of tutoring of a grandmaster, and the mental/emotional/physical okay-being for the time, you could reach a grandmaster level in chess in 10 000 hours. Same for many many areas. (Polgar tried it, for a time his 3 daughters were the 3 best woman chess players, but this doesn't really count since they started very young.)

I'm not disagreeing with you. In fact I'm pretty much agreeing -I'm saying 10Kh is necessary but not sufficient.

You are saying: 10Kh of practice + tutoring costs + (implicitly) not having other responsibilities to block the learning either directly via work or whatnot or indirectly via emotional stress.

That 10Kh is in your equation, but isn't the only part of the equation. That is it's necessary but not sufficient.

I didn't mention any baking concepts.

I quoted Malcolm Gladwell -- who was the originator of the "10,000 hours" rule (remark?) in popular culture.

Let me spell out the analogy:

Gladwell says you need practice 10,000 hours. In my analogy of the situation, I claim I need 500g of flour.

You complain that there may be other things needed in addition to practice therefore the need for practice is bullshit. This is analogized by "you" saying that the need for other ingredients in bread somehow invalidates that the flour is needed.

The point I'm trying to make is this: Stating that something is necessary but not sufficient, does not invalidate claims about what is necessary. In the quotes, I saw no claim that only 10k hours of practice was required, just that they were necessary.

Don't get hung up on the number. I've always taken Gladwell's writing to mean lots of deliberate practice (on the order of a decade) is necessary, but maybe not sufficient, to master something difficult.

I believe in talent to a limited degree. It governs the floor, ceiling and learning curve's slope. Kind of like the parameters to a sigmoid function. Magnus Carlsen's very first chess match was likely much better than most other people's/kids', he learned at a breakneck pace and obviously, possesses a high skill ceiling.

However, there is a huge and dynamic middle ground that can be conquered by anyone through nothing but work and dedication.

> The 10000 hour rule is nonsense

Even if there is some merit to the "rule", the intent behind it is you'll master something in that amount of time. You can become good at something with far less time. You just need to be good to earn a living. I think of all the jobs I've worked and the slackers and incompetence I've seen. I think with some education about a job and decent intelligence most people can put in the effort, learn on the job and become good - if they want to.

10k hours is roughly 5 working years of experience with no nights+weekends extra time so if OP switches careers now, they could be mastering something by the time they're 48. I've seen people switch careers into software, and go from junior to mid level up to senior in that time.

Do it.

It also depends what you mean by "switching jobs." I've had three distinctly different jobs/careers over the past 30 years or so (with some moving around within those careers). However, they were all sufficiently adjacent that there was quite a bit of knowledge transfer and the transitions were very logical as a result. (And, in fact, in all cases I was hired by someone I knew from the prior job.)

He means no shortcuts for master anything. It takes time, 2000 or 3000 hours or any numbers. People tends to find a shortcut for anything, fox example, buying crypto to get rich quick. I agree that 10000 hours rule is a myth.

10,000 hours of chess as a kid is different to 10,000 as an adult.

10k hours as an adult in violin is not the same as 10k hours at chess.

Nor is the same at a young age, but possibly differenly not the same.

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