The 1,000-hour rule (2009) | Hacker News Reader

The 1,000-hour rule (2009)

pgbovine.net

190 pointsode119 comments

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.

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.

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.

If we combine your rules of thumb with the original essay and the 10,000 hour rule, we get a rough order-of-magnitude scale of work and levels of ability:

  * 10 hours: familiar
  * 100 hours: proficient
  * 1000 hours: good
  * 10000 hours: expert

Not perfect, of course, but it's sort of intriguing in its simplicity.

I like this, I think as an aphorism it actually has a good bit of descriptive power.

A while back I started learning the guitar - having learnt drums and (some) piano as a child with a teacher and structured learning, I decided to teach myself at a much slower process for 'fun'. I'm probably somewhere between the proficient and good categories now and I think this trajectory matches my experiences.

What is an important take away for people is that you can learn something, and it doesn't take that long for you to get to a point where it is useful, enjoyable and satisfying. So many adults shy away from learning new skills unnecessarily. Learn to play guitar. Learn to code. Learn to paint, learn to speak Dutch, learn to write poetry, learn to bake, learn to woodwork. Your life will be richer for it.

Yeah... I really like this too!

Ha. The marketing/consultant's version.

1 hour = familiar (heard of it) 10 hours = proficient (1 day) 100 Hours = "good" (2 weeks) 1000 Hours = "expert" (6 months)

Although a general rule of thumb (that is true) is 3 months of full time work on a topic makes you "conversant"--good enough to pass yourself off as an expert to the unsuspecting. OF course, YMMV.

I like it - sounds very similar to Josh Kaufman's "The First 20 Hours". His thesis is that you won't become an expert in 20 hours, but you can become competent enough at something to turn it into an enjoyable hobby (and after that, sky's the limit).

http://www.mdswanson.com/writeup/2013/07/05/the-first-20-hou...

And a mere 20 hours (never mind "only" 1,000 hours) still distinguishes you from the vast majority of people who never put in even that much. Expertise is relative, after all.

Could you explain "triple-Pareto"? (I might be messing up by parsing it as an economic term.)

I meant the "Pareto principle"[0], or 80-20 rule, that says that you can get 80% of effect with 20% of work. If you apply the rule to itself, you get the 64-4 rule, and if you do this again, you get 51.2% of results from 0.8% of work ;).

[0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle.

The Pareto principle is that 80% of result comes from 20% of the effort. So 80% of the 10k hours worth of skill (8k) comes from 20% of the actual time (2k). If you continue multiplying the hours worth of skill by 0.8 and the actual hours involved by 0.2, you get 5120 hours worth of skill in 80 actual hours of practice.

Of course, if you keep going, you get the first 800 hours worth of skill in less than a second (and the first 300 in a mere millisecond), so I'm not sure the repeated application is justified.

> so I'm not sure the repeated application is justified

Probably not. I don't think that whoever came up with 80/20 had this in mind, but that's the fun with mathy-sounding rules of thumb - you get to mix them and/or fold them on themselves and see what comes out ;).

More seriously, you may try to rescue the rule and such application by noting that it is the right 20% of work required to get 80% of result. Finding that work in the space of all work to be done requires effort on itself. Finding the right 4%, or right 0.8%, requires even more bits of knowledge, thus more meta-work.

Fortunately, we may cheat a little bit, because those who came before us and mastered the skill we want often already did the big part of figuring out which work has most payoff at the beginning.

"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." - John Wanamaker

The question is WHICH of those 80 hours account for 51.2% of the value of 10K hours of practice. It's not necessarily the FIRST 80 hours.

It's very possible you could get 8% of your skill in less than a second; it just might come at a lightning-strike eureka or moment of epiphany during hour 8,679.

I think people also forget that the point of the 10k hours is not just the time, but also the fact that experts actively spend time figuring our their weaknesses, and focus on that, while making sure their strengths don't start to wilt. Planning rather than just doing, are also important.

I tend to take this 100-hour rule in short bursts. I can't often get myself to do something 2 hours a week consistently for a year (not to mention a decade!). So instead I tend to intensely apply myself to one thing for a short while, and then seldom do it after that. For example, I got into the habit of learning a new instrument every Summer for eight years. I tried everything from the guitar to the didgeridoo (I learned how to breathe circularly, too; it only took a week or so), and spent a Summer practicing whatever tickled my fancy. People really do find it impressive despite my insistence that I'm terrible at every instrument I play because I don't stick with it.

Moreover, I've found these minor skills have given me broad applications beyond what I originally intended (leisure). I worked at a day camp and knowing the harmonica and ukulele made campfire stories/skits/songs immeasurably better (I also did a semester of intense practice in performance literature, which helped as well). My forays into design have made me the resident web/design expert in my mathematics department, resulting in some extra cash. Learning to paint has made decorating my apartment way more fun and elevates my perceived sophistication (which I think is hilarious). The list goes on and I don't intend to stop growing it.

I've wanted to do this for some time, but don't get summers off unfortunately. How do you divide the time? ~8hrs/day for a couple weeks, or ~2hrs a day for the whole summer?

Thanks for validating the concept!

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.

Why? Because job.

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), good luck 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".

(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.)

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.

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?

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.

As some final anecdotal data, it's fairly well-known that the Dutch have a disproportionately high amount of world-class DJs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Dutch_DJs). 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.

</rant from someone who would rather not be job hunting>

It's interesting you didn't mention family at all. Having kids is a huge commitment of time.

I think a good take-away from your rant (plus the consideration of family) is that we need to be talking more about making time for things. Too often we talk a great deal about what can be done in a few hours a day, but when it comes to making that time, we just say, "If it's important to you, you'll make the time."

We should be looking at ways to maximize the use of very small chunks of time. I may not be able to commit even a single hour of dedicated time per day... but I can certainly do something for a few minutes here and there throughout the day which adds up to an hour. How can we make that kind of practice more effective?

Maybe I'm wrong but I interpreted the logic there as: Having kids is definitely an enormous time-sink but that is a choice. Without basic income having a job essentially is not.

I guess I took it a different way. My interpretation was basically... once you get to a certain point in your life, the amount of time required for your responsibilities is significantly higher than it was in your youth. Four hours per day is probably achievable for the average college student but incredibly unlikely for the average "adult", for lack of a better term.

Gahhh I'm not even that old, don't scare me with this family talk.

>We should be looking at ways to maximize the use of very small chunks of time. I may not be able to commit even a single hour of dedicated time per day... but I can certainly do something for a few minutes here and there throughout the day which adds up to an hour.

Sounds noble in theory, but in practice there are two problems: 1) you won't be entering a state of flow on your tasks, and 2) you still won't be racking up the volume to get anywhere close to world-class.

To point number 1, I tend to think of flow as helpful but not necessary. For some tasks, I'm not really sure flow applies at all. I mean, I'm pretty damn good at tying my shoes. I do it without even thinking about it. I don't think flow was involved in learning that; it's just muscle memory. That's a trivial example of course, but there are other factors than flow which influence the effectiveness of practice. I don't think we should just give up if we can't have flow.

To point 2, you're right of course, but we can't be world-class at more than 1 or 2 things anyway. There's still benefit to being pretty good at something. A great phrase I stole from a blog called All Japanese All The Time is "You can have, do or be anything, but you can't have, do and be everything." If you want to commit your whole life to being say... the greatest chainsaw juggler in history, that's probably achievable. But you aren't also going to be fluent in 10 languages, an expert computer programmer, a world-class guitarist, and a grandmaster in chess.

I'm alright with only being an expert in things I'm able to devote full-time efforts to. But I'd also like to be pretty good in other stuff. How can I take bits and pieces of time here and there to achieve that? That's what I'd like to see some research (formal or informal) on.

I can't speak for others, but for myself, flow is definitely necessary. At least when learning something new or approaching a new problem. In the case of tying your shoes, once you've learned how, you might only spend a moment doing it each time and improving to perfection. But when you first learned as a child, you probably watched someone else do it multiple times, and sat awkwardly fumbling with laces for a (relatively) lengthy amount of time. So if I have a running project in a language I am familiar with, I can spend a few minutes here and there making small improvements and honing my skills, but if I want to learn a new language, or just start a new project in an unfamiliar area, I would need hours set aside to really get into a flow. Scraps of time would never provide enough for things to click.

Basically, to more familiar the subject, the less time you need to accomplish something, the more efficiently you can use scattered time. So if you want to really broaden your skillset, it is very difficult when you have a 9-5 with a long commute, a home to maintain, social obligations/family, basic needs, etc.

I suppose that might mean that if you want to make efficient use of your scattered time to perfect skills, you would have to focus on your strongest skills when you have minimal time, and improve them to perfection.

> We should be looking at ways to maximize the use of very small chunks of time.

I'm not sure it can be done. The best way to maximize the use of small chuncks of time is to join them into rarer big chuncks of time.

Agreed, there is a term in the Perl community for it called 'tuits'.

Its called a unit of time where you can get some meaningful work done.

It really depends on what you're learning.

If you're learning to juggle, you can absolutely get value out of 25 2-minute chunks during the day.

Even more complicated skills -- you may not be able to get things set up on a computer, but if you have a notepad you can take 5 minutes and jot down what you remember of whatever you're trying to learn. Next 5 minutes? Fill in the missing bits, or look up one of them.

I have lots of somewhat random skills that I've developed without really dedicating time at all -- like Tuuvan throat singing, or using the NATO phonetic alphabet -- practiced while driving, or in other chunks of time that seem to be already occupied (but are actually just constrained).

Being involved in raising your kids takes a huge amount of time.

BUT - the best way to raise kids is to bring them into your life, not leave your life to do kid things, so that huge block of time is not "lost" to your kids at the cost of your own interests.

Obviously not all projects are suitable to sharing with a 4-year-old (learning HTML? probably not), but more than you might think (getting exercise? yes. learning an instrument? yes. learning a foreign language? oh yes. photography, sketching, painting, sculpture? yes. training a seeing-eye dog? yes. house repair kind of things? many of them, yes).

Even pretty little kids can learn to work with dangerous tools (they'll be really good about following safety rules when they realize how much you'll let them do as long as they're safe).

I see lots of parents who think spending time with their kids involves sitting and watching some loathsome cartoon with them. Honestly, if you're creative about bringing them into your world, instead of you going into the (artificial, invented) childhood world that's been set up for them, it's better for everyone.

Amen to this!

One or both of my kids, depending on the activity, will beg to do stuff that my wife and/or I are doing: gardening, learning about electronics, home repair, sports, music, cooking, crafts, animal care/husbandry, forestry (I DIY all of our firewood for winter heat), small engine maintenance and repair, hiking, biking, workout videos, etc etc.

I still think it's important to expose them to other things and respect and encourage the interests that they develop, which may be outside the sphere of things that you enjoy. E.g. neither I nor my wife have much musical skill/talent, but one kid likes making music so we encourage it where we can (e.g. I've learned a bit about drumming just so I can help him figure some things out).

When I was a small child my dad taught me how to take apart motorcycle engines, while my mom taught me QBASIC and getting around in DOS.

You'd be surprised at how much children can learn even at a very young age if you don't make it look harder than it is.

Or even simply because you do it. Not making it look harder than it is is a step up from simply having a lack of fear of getting your hands dirty and trying things. Taking your time, having a notebook and/or a digital camera and you can pretty much take anything apart with a reasonable chance that you can put it back together again.

I first got my taste of powertools when I was 12, visited a friend of my moms who didn't bat an eye at letting me use his big electric drill after showing me how dangerous the thing was. Proper respect for tools is half the battle, after that you'll make sure you hold them well instead of half-assed and have the business end pointed where it can do no harm.

Two days with that guy did more for my sense of shop safety than a few years cumulative after that. The level of trust both increased my abilities and my responsibility. After that it was back home where none of that was allowed.

I let my 11 year old roam the workshop at will after some instruction and I never regretted it.

He built me a custom bike a week ago, so I guess that paid off well :)

That is awesome!

I was only 4 years old when my dad trusted me around scary things like torque wrenches and lathes. It wasn't until I was 10 that we were able to put together the whole engine again.

I feel like it is kinda cheating at life to have really, really good parenting.

I saw some article go past a while ago, claiming that intensive practice works far better than the same amount of scattered practice.

Maybe use those scattered minutes to keep up on small tasks that would otherwise pile up, so you can set aside a full day every few weeks? Or use those few minutes to relax and do nothing, so you'll be more clear-headed (and presumably perform better) for whatever you do next...

But being a parent also gives you many new opportunities to learn. My 11-year old loves YouTube so we have been working on making our own videos, experimenting with different cameras and editing. My 3-year-old loves swords so we fight with foam swords (a lot) and watch sword fighting videos (plus Princess Bride and Star Wars.) It's not much now but in 10 years we could have a nice set of fencing equipment and he could be a fighting force to be reckoned with (he already terrifies me.)

Other great areas of expertise for family guys are: Cooking, music, coaching sports, outdoorsmanship, and almost anything educational (science projects are my favorite.) Get ideas by listening by to what your kids are interested in. It will help motivate them to learn and it will expose you to cool stuff you would have never thought of on your own.

Having kids is optional.

That's a voluntary sacrifice in a way that having a job is very much not. They don't really belong in the same breath.

At a societal level, having kids is not optional is it?

On an individual level, why do you feel a job is mandatory? It's only necessary if you want certain things - lots of homeless manage somehow.

> Having kids is optional.

Choosing not to participate in a fundamental experience of the human condition is no more a choice than choosing not to have a job.

On the other hand, your job will be very happy to expand and take all "family time" that you have voluntarily chosen to forgo. Going with the flow takes you where the flow takes everybody else. You must first learn what is valuable for you and then plan your life around those values, not the other way around.

If this is your mindset, then you've made a choice to value having children over other things like free time and disposable income. Perfectly valid.

Other people do not share your priorities.

And only one of these sets of priorities is self-centered.

The sacrifices you make to raise a child after it's born are certainly altruistic.

The decision to have a child in the first place is entirely self-centered (or maybe centered on a partner who is him/herself self-centered.) Humans are not in danger of dying out because we're breeding too slowly; if anything, it'll be the opposite.

Which is not to say that it's bad, but (assuming you are actually financially and emotionally capable of raising the kid) no better or worse than choosing differently.

Condescension from people with attitudes like yours is why millions of people who know they will be complete failures as parents decide to inflict themselves and their circumstances on innocent children who don't deserve that kind of suffering.

There are ways around the 'because job' problem. I've been reading a lot on this guys blog: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ and he's got some pretty interesting ideas on getting off the treadmill, with both actionable advice and the lead character eating his own dogfood.

Most people are astonishingly bad at savings and investments, and this includes some really smart people who fail to make a good recurring income out of windfall scenarios.

I tend to see this as failure of humans in general to visualize large structures. There fore similar things like large timelines, growth scenario's, compounding. One would be surprised how common this is. People can think of probably a couple of years, but their understanding fails them when they have imagine of scenarios 2 or 3 decades from now. Some times its so bad, they even totally avoid thinking about it.

I know a lot of people who made a fortune in the 1990's when they were in their 20's, but are now back to where they were when they are in their 40's. And you don't have to even to win the start up lottery to do this. A good savings and investment strategy will get you there. But that very rarely happens.

Most people can at most simply maintain the status quo all their lives.

I've never had a very large amount of cash at my disposal, up to now it was mostly 'cash flow' and I buried as much of it as I could in stones and land.

Now that is changing and I'm back to school because I realize that managing any amount of money is a risky operation and it is too important for me to consider outsourcing the job to so called experts the majority of which appear to be at least as clueless as I am when asked some pointed questions.

So so far the lack of capital has kept me from seeing just how deficient I am in this respect, I was so focused on achieving a certain goal that I lost sight of what to do once it was achieved. Luxury problems, that's for sure, but still, they are problems and I'm fairly determined not to go down the route you sketch.

Thanks for the underlining and implicit warning.

I've always planned and managed to take two to four months per year off: between jobs, or simply blocking my freelance-agenda for a few (slower) months. During these months, I take on a personal project with a certain focus.

I don't force myself to release anything: though shipping is nice. I don't set any hard goal.

Just two, three or even four months of playing around and learning. A new Database-concept. Geocoding. TDD. A new framework or language.

This is not enough to become expert or even good at anything. But it allows me to keep up with the field and ever evolving technologies; I'm a webdeveloper, so my field is rather fast-moving.

And, because I plan this ahead, I can afford the time off (by asking a little more during the rest of the year) and I can actually tell clients "nope, I don't have time the coming X weeks".

I did that basically, but I saved up enough to move to and live comfortably in SE Asia for at least 3 or 4 years.

I spend less then $400 a month, so maybe this lifestyle is not for everyone, and it's certainly not feasible with a family, but the move has totally changed my life. Before, I felt stuck and directionless. Now though, after a little less than a year of total freedom, I've finished two big projects that I'm proud of. I have a much wider range of skills and I'd be confident walking into an interview at a tech company. I hope I never have to though!

I would absolutely recommend a similar path for anyone struggling with the full-time work grind.

You have not addressed something in your post, but maybe is is obvious : why do you want or need to become an expert ?

You can have a very fulfilling life being a jack-of-all-trade. In a fast moving word, I am not sure I would like to become a world expert in a shrinking domain.

I would say the vast majority of humain beings, both dead and alive, are no expert. So is this because you have an insatiable curiosity ?(but I don't think that being an expert is necessary the best to quench your thirst for knowledge) Do you want to stand out in a crowd ? To have a legacy ?

I am also kind of frustrated knowing that my time is limited, and it reduces somehow my options, but I have come to term with the fact that I won't be able to do "everything" during my time on Earth.

>>this is the best argument for basic income

You only feel the need for a basic income because you are currently strapped for time and you crave for more time to work on something far more creative.

Once time comes in abundant supply you will now be faced with a situation where you will have a lot of time and won't really understand the reason why you would want to work hard(Your basic needs are met) or spend time doing <some work of interest>, since you now have unlimited time to delay those projects.

People generally think they can pull of miracles if they get time. Instead what happens is most people wake up late, sleep late, waste time doing pointless stuff.

As a general rule you will only consider things in short supply as precious. Which is why being busy is probably a good idea, because that way you will value the most important thing in your life-- time and opportunities.

A good point to be sure, but I disagree entirely in my own case. In fact I realized this a while ago and put strict controls so that I actually earn whatever free time I have. My current schedule looks something like: wake up at 7am, apply to jobs during the morning, then I get to work on side projects and read technical texts the rest of the day, usually a good 6+ hrs (with exercise and some people time thrown in). I fear for the day I actually get a job, haha...

> I fear for the day I actually get a job

The fear is well-founded. When you get a job you'll find yourself with no time for much technical texts and side projects. I wish you find a fulfilling job though, working on what feels like bullcrap to you is terribly frustrating.

You have a point and it's definitely true that for many, the big part of the desire to do something creative that is not job comes from being busy and not having time to do this. But I doubt that if you got rid of jobs, people would waste time. I sometimes wondered why I can't seem to be as productive, or learn as much fast enough, as I had been in high school or when I started university. I realized that it's not that I was a fast learner there, it was that I had tons of free time to throw at stuff without having to worry about deadlines, or bullshit like a job.

> most people wake up late, sleep late

Many people don't sleep enough for a healthy and productive life. "Sleeping late" is often "sleeping the amount you should, but don't, because you're too busy".

A basic thing I notice is every time I'm working on a interesting project at work, or when I change jobs the craving for a side project decreases. But then there are only that many interesting things you can do in this industry for years. Beyond that you need to keep moving towards something new every 1 - 1.5 years. If you are lucky you will end up in a company that will let you go after interesting projects and will upgrade your responsibilities with your experience. Else you will have to keep looking for them outside, or start a side project in your spare time.

I have a mentor who is quite a successful guy. I've grilled him enough to know the biggest secret is refusal to work for anything that sounds uninteresting. If you look at his career history, it just comes clear that he never touches any project that demands maintenance or support. Its through and through new interesting projects which involve innovating or building new platforms, frameworks or systems.

I think Steve Jobs's advice comes handy:

I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's next.

Depending on your skill level, you may be able to work a deal with your employer to work reduced hours, or to disappear for a few months of each year -- basically, unpaid leave, but as a regular thing.

I worked reduced hours for quite a while after my second child was born; and we have an developer on the team who disappears for 3 months a year to go be a theater director.

There's basically quite a lot of flexibility that's perfectly possible, and not even costly for the employer, but it's not habitually permitted. I suspect in a lot of companies you might be able to get a lot more leeway just by asking for it, though.

See if you can get away with only working a half-day Friday, in exchange for an extra hour the other 4 days, for example.

Your "passionate society" is appealing in theory, but it doesn't work in practice.

In a market economy, someone offers you a price for your labor. You decide whether or not to accept it. If you're passionate about something nobody wants to pay for, why should you still be paid?

Citizen's income is no fantasy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

What is the difference between these proposals and fantasy at this point? As this article points out, the idea has been around a long time, yet has not been implemented on any wide scale, why will this ever change?

Is it expected that I respond to the throw-away account of a down-voting anonymous coward?

> Why? Because job.

So, why do you trade your lifetime away for cash and perceived "job security"? Maybe it's time to get a little more entrepreneurial?

"Because job" I don't think specifically refers to wage labor; entrepreneurship is often people apply existing expertise, not developing new expertise from scratch, because that's generally where their competitive advantage lies, and competitive edge is at least as important in entrepreneurial efforts as in wage labor. The constraint seems to be that needing to spend significant time applying your current-best skills reduces available time to develop expertise in new skill areas.

I once heard about an interview with a very dedicated wikipedia volunteer, who spent hours daily on the project. The reporter asked a bit tongue in cheek how he had the time for it, silently implying that he had no life.

The volunteer hesitated a second asked the reporter back: "Did you know that the average person watch TV two hours every day. How do they find time for that?".

I've carried this reply with me since then.

Sadly, watching tv is considered having a 'life'

First expressed, I believe, by Clay Shirky:

[…] She heard this story and she shook her head and said, “Where do people find the time?” That was her question. And I just kind of snapped. And I said, “No one who works in TV gets to ask that question. You know where the time comes from. It comes from the cognitive surplus you've been masking for 50 years.”

— Gin, Television, and Social Surplus, Clay Shirky, May 2008 (http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008009.html)

The wikipedia presentation must have been a couple of years before that. But the idea didn't originate with them. You can find similar musings from the 70s. (Which is funny, because they probably watched a lot less back then.)

> (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.)

TV-watching is not high-concentration.

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.

1000 focused hours for most European languages is really good, see for example these quotes:

Deutsche Welle suggests A1 is reached with about 75 hours of German tuition, A2.1 with about 150 hours, A2.2 with about 225 hours, B1.1 with about 300 hours, and B1.2 with about 400 hours.[5]

Cambridge ESOL said that each level is reached with the following guided learning hours: A2, 180–200; B1, 350–400; B2, 500–600; C1, 700–800, and C2, 1,000–1,200.[6]

Alliance Française has stated students can expect to reach CEFR levels after the following cumulative hours of instruction: A1 60–100, A2 160–200, B1 360–400, B2 560–650, C1 810–950, C2 1060–1200.[7]

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_R...)

For those who don't know about CEFR, C1 is basically fluent. It might take a bit longer to learn Mandarin, Russian or Arabic, but it's just by a reasonably small constant factor (based on FSI numbers that I can't find right now).

They key is to make the practice good practice, and not just mindless repetition.

> They key is to make the practice good practice, and not just mindless repetition.

This - it needs to be emphasized more. I feel a bit pedantic when I make this point, but I really think it's crucial.

If you read the original research, it's not 10000 hours of just practice. There is a reason many people can play golf for 30 years (and probably accumulate 10000+ hours of play), but still never even get close to shooting par. The term they use in the research is deliberate practice. The quality of the practice is just as important as the practice itself. Practice does not make perfect, practice makes things a habit. If you develop the wrong techniques in an area, you'll reach plateaus and hit a point where you can't progress. Deliberate practice requires tasks that are designed to stretch you in specific areas and have fast feedback loops so you are able to correct mistakes quickly. This is easier to apply in some domains (music, sports, etc...) than others.

Absolutely right, Anders Ericsson has called Malcolm Gladwell out for misinterpreting his results for this exact reason. Not sure how widely available this is for playback but "More or Less" did a great podcast on this earlier this year: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01sqly1

Here's how Jerry Rice, probably the greatest wide receiver of all time, practiced: http://jamesclear.com/jerry-rice It's a short read and very instructive.

One amazing thing is just how that practice translated into so little time in actual games. I.e. if a football team plays 20 games a year (1 hour each), and the offense is only out there half the time, then a wide receiver is playing for at most 10 hours a year. Jerry Rice played for 20 years, so that works out to 200 hours of actual game time over his entire career!

That seems excessive. Pimsleur uses 45 hours of lessons over 90 days. I've used it for Italian, Portuguese and German.

In each case, I've been able to have conversations with native speakers after the program ended.

The next step, to really master any of them, would be going to one of those countries. Suppose I spend four hours a day in conversation with native speakers. 1 week = 28 hours. 3 months = 336 hours.

Total of 381 hours. I'd be astonished if that program didn't make someone fluent, at least in a language with some similarities to their native language, as close as any of the romance languages are to English.

I'm speaking from experience, having got part of the way with Italian and Portuguese, and having had a six month visit to Cuba make me fluent for all intents and purposes (but I didn't do Pimsleur before, just ineffective college classes)

The key to shortening is the intro lessons which make all additional practice much more effective, since you can simply practice by fluid conversation. This isn't the only method; I've heard very good things about Benny Lewis' method as well.

For anyone that is interested in picking up a language really quickly, I can highly recommend Fluenz http://fluenz.com/ I tried the Pimsleur audio lessons, but I am a visual learner. Fluenz structured things very easily. After 2 hours I could point and say I wanted items. 6 hours I could say I want to look at things and talk about other people. I'm at the 12 goes out lessons point and I can now go into shops and ask basic questions and know how to ask about prices. I'm doing this with just 1 hour every few days with the lessons.

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).

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2014/08/14/yanss-podcast-030-how...

Thanks for posting that. One of the best things I've ever listened to.

This is a pretty solid rule.

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.

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.

I let my oldest pick something to get good at this year. She went with fast pitch softball. (she's 8)

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.

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.

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 don't know about softball, but I played baseball from the time I was 4 until I was 19 and the biggest change in youth baseball has been monitoring pitch counts for youth pitchers. If I remember correctly, Softball pitchers usually have trouble with their knees while baseball pitchers have arm trouble. I still have arm trouble and I had parents who put my safety first and did the best they could to take care of my arm. Please do some research on the topic to make sure your daughter doesn't hurt herself. I only speak up because I saw it happen over and over again growing up. Youth sports are awesome, I got to travel all over the country playing, but I still have issues almost 10 years after quitting.

Yeah, I cut back significantly after talking to a cousin of mine who played college ball.

At first I was a bit frustrated because she was really interested in pitching, as was roughly half of her team. So when you play 3 games a week for a 4 month season, if you spread it around (like you should at a young age - give everyone a chance) you have each kid throwing about 2 innings a week. (6 inning games, ~8 kids who want to pitch on a 14 player team)

What's your thoughts on the right amount? Maybe a game a week and really concentrate on form and technique? (No fancy pitches, just straight with accuracy.)

It's difficult for me to say. After I wrote the first comment, I remembered hearing long ago that the reason softball pitchers typically don't have arm trouble is that the under handed motion is a natural motion, while overhanded is very unnatural. With baseball you typically don't want to do anything that causes extra tension on the elbow (i.e. curve balls) at a young age. So, I only threw fastballs and change-ups until I was in middle school. You actually can cause a lot of ball movement with altering grip pressure. (but that's off topic.) I'd recommend talking to an orthopedic specialist if you have access. I had a bad case of tendonitis in my early teens and I remember seeing an otho doctor who had dealt with a lot of sports injuries. Also, reach out to a local college coach and ask. As always, be careful with advice off the internet, people are idiots. I know that from middle school on, we had very structured "bullpens" that would increase in pitch count as we got closer to the season starting up and that helped a lot. Unfortunately, it's been a long time and my memory is fuzzy. I also know that it's not one-to-one with softball. I found this pdf for Babe Ruth pitching rules[0]. If nothing else, I wouldn't exceed what they say.

[0]http://files.leagueathletics.com/Text/Documents/5200/27001.p...

In general, much of sports injuries have to do with improper recovery cycles. So, although most skills-based practice (such as music) benefit from daily practice due to the way the brain adapts, this has to be somehow balanced against the body's need for recovery. So practicing language is great every day or several times a day, while power lifting starts with 4 recovery days per week and more recovery tends to be added as the person nears their genetic potential.

How to apply this precisely to martial arts and sports which have such intense mental and physical training/adaptation requirements, and adjusting for age and other individual considerations is way beyond what I can speak knowledgably about. I would recommend Thomas Kurtz's "The Science of Sports Training" but I found most of it impractical and incomprehensible. But what I think is the most important takeaway from his work is:

- recovery is everything

- sometimes a different, light activity, speeds recovery more than full rest

- so athletes' workloads should by cycled, they shouldn't do the same thing day after day, and it should also vary by season

- but really, recovery is everything, never underestimate how important recovery is

Maybe not related to your softball injury point, but women in general are far more at risk for knee injuries than men. It's even more problematic in sports like soccer and basketball.

And I empathize with your arm problems. I'm still feeling the nagging effects of my Little League shoulder injury, which happened in a game where my coach showed up late and I didn't have as much time as normal to warm up before it started...

My daughter is now 16 and moving away from playing softball. But she has played since she was about 8 years old. So this is recent history for me. Thankfully she didn't pitch, but I got to watch everything, including pitchers (parents of pitchers are usually Prima Donnas), for many years.

There's "little league" and there's serious softball. The pinnacle of little league is winding up in the Little League Softball World Series, played in suburban Portland Oregon. [1] My daughter was able to play in the preliminary rounds because we're local and one local team always gets to go as the "host". It's for 12 year olds, after that age little league pretty much disappears.

But Little League softball teams are usually weak because the competition is weak. They never will get to the World Series unless the kids also play by what goes by a variety of terms. We call it "ASA" here, but "NSA" is also popular in other areas. It's also called "club" softball. ASA and NSA are sanctioning bodies that provide umpires to tournaments that are held practically year round.

As opposed to little league, which is organized by town, ASA teams can draw from an entire metro area or even from across the state. Anybody who wants to can organize a team. Pay an entry fee and your team can play in a tournament.

And teams play and play and play. There are competing tournaments every weekend for much of the spring and summer. After a short break, "fall ball" starts up for preparation for the next spring. Even 10 y/o and 12 y/o girls travel out of state to go to tournaments.

And once you're in a tournament, the play can be very tiresome. Usually they are double-elimination brackets. Lose an early game and you may need to play 4 games on Saturday and 4 more on Sunday in order to win the tournament.

That's right. Weekend tournaments would routinely have 6 or 8 games (as long as you kept winning, of course).

A team might have 2 good pitchers. And a light weekend schedule would be 6 games. So a girl could expect to pitch 3 full games in two days. Probably more than that if the other pitcher(s) aren't pitching well that day.

After little league, the natural progression is high school softball. But every good high school player is also on an ASA team. During grade school there are ASA tournaments all spring, but not usually during high school. Instead, when the high school year ends, ASA begins in earnest. The serious ASA teams travel around the country to "exposure" tournaments, hoping that the kids will will be noticed by college coaches. Just this year my daughter traveled around Oregon and to Colorado, Washington, and California.

Why do parents do it? Some (like me) do it because the girls are having fun. It also occupies the girls' time (keeps them out of trouble!). Teams stay together for years, and the girls become good friends. Other parents are delusional about their child's abilities. They think their precious will get a "full ride" to a "D1" school. But I read recently that only 3% of the girls playing "18 gold" (the top) will get scholarships to D1 schools. Other girls might be offered partial scholarships to smaller schools. Is that worth it? Not to me, because even at smaller schools the sport will require an immense amount of time. Do you want your kids' focus in college to be softball? Not me. IMO that doesn't make sense for 99% of the girls.

YMMV.

[1] http://www.alpenrose.com/little-league-world-series/

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.

1,000 hours will get you to entry level "professional" level.

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.

Learning to read

  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

Judo

  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

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.

It should be noted that in the context of martial arts, especially Chinese ones, that the number 10,000 has special significance because it's a sort of colloquialism for "many" or "infinite".

For instance the phrase commonly attributed to Bruce Lee: "Fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once. Fear him who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."

In this case you could substitute any large number and the phrase retains its meaning.

Similarly, "The Classics" (an important illustrated text in Tai Chi, also studied in several other Chinese martial arts) and Taoist texts will occasionally mention "the ten thousand things", which should actually be read as "everything in the universe".

So in other words, when a translated Chinese text talks about practising something 10,000 times, it should generally not be interpreted literally as the number 10,000, but rather as "as much as is possible within a lifetime".

Do people really need to be told "Find something that you enjoy doing and then keep doing it"? Really?

I do the things I enjoy, um cause I enjoy them.

I also don't (or try not to) do the things I don't enjoy.

Nobody gave me that stunning advice. It's nature's built in reinforcement loop.

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?

I agree. It's a bit too catchy.

Being an expert means being noticeably better than non-experts.

This will depend on how much you practice, how well you practice, and whatever relevant innate abilities you have (appropriate personality, IQ, extra-sensitive hearing, tetrachromacy or color-blindness, etc). And also, on how well/much other people practice.

Apparently if you fudge things just right, you get most people either not practicing well or losing interest shortly before 10k hours.

The original study by K. Anders Ericsson involved how top athletes became the very best in their highly specific field. Since then it has been diluted to say that you need 10000 hours to become an 'expert' (definition required); then that you need 10000 hrs to become proficient.

So no, its not true.

Many people miss that the rule is supposed to predict world-class expertise, the kind that wins Olympic events.

Raising yourself into, say, the top 5-10% requires an order of magnitude less effort. It's the difference between "The fastest possible version of this real-time algorithm" and "No longer doing it by hand."

I take it as similar to the rule of thumb that you should walk 10,000 steps per day. It was made up for marketing a pedometer, and most experts I've heard from say it's not based on any facts, but it's close enough that merely striving for 10,000 steps per day is a good goal to set.

It might not be accurate, but it's not bad in terms of setting a goal for yourself. It helps you to focus on the right thing (get more practice, take more steps, etc).

In my interpretation, 10,000 hours is the amount of time most other people are unwilling to spend on a skill, which places you as world-class.

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.

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?

The 10,000 hour rule is often taken out of context. In Outliers, it is made clear that Gladwell means 10,000 hours of focused practice with the intent to improve. A small percentage of day-to-day programming fits that criteria (unless you're a researcher, or something along those lines). So you may have 16,000 hours of programming, but still be significantly short of the 10,000 hour rule.

If you're a CS researcher who actually codes as part of their research, much of the time you'll be banging out barely functional proof of concept code to get some results you can take to conference.

I'm not sure there's any group that actually does focused practice coding for a significant number of hours on a regular basis.

The 10 000 hour commitment only makes you an expert when you spend all those hours deliberately practicing and focusing on improving your performance.

Just engaging in an activity for 10 000 hours does not guarantee expert performance, you need to spend those hours constantly looking for the rough edges in your performance and finding strategies to polish them off.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/pdf/D...

Two things:

- not feeling like an expert is a good sign - unless you were pushing yourself for 10k hours the rule doesn't apply. depends if you were doing stuff you're already familiar with?

How about 20 hours? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY

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 first heard of it from Malcolm Gladwell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)

Actually, Gladwell has specifically said it does not really apply to sports.

i was referring more to the original 10 000 hour rule proposed by K. Anders Ericsson & co.

I would also say that in Outliers, Gladwell seems to implying that while 10 000 hours of practice is common in such 'outliers', simple luck is an equal if not greater part.

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]

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.

[1] http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/pdf/D...

[2] http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolved-primate/201006/w...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2702783/

[3] http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html

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.

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?

Which at 8 hours per day would take over 30 years, so there's not going to be a lot of them.

Maybe Jiro from Jiro Dreams of Sushi?

I had the same Master in mind. He is probably one of the few that matches or surpasses these needed hours. ;)

That's what I thought when I first started innovating in the mature technical field of petro/chemical analysis.

It would require a lot of self-dedication.

Since I was already a young performance leader, I stuck with it and avoided the institutional path where they only accomplish a few hours of progress a day, take breaks, have useless meetings, etc.

Similar to a musical instrument, industrial instruments are never truly mastered, and proficiency declines once the hands are removed from regular use.

This also worked to my advantage since gifted PhD's with high aptitudes seldom can keep their hands on the gear for even one whole decade before they are needed to fill a place on the corporate ladder.

Now after 30+ years, I do not look at ordinary researchers as loafers, there are some brilliant workers and wonderful experts I can draw upon when needed. Normally you are only allowed to do a limited amount before you run the risk & woe of making co-workers look less productive.

By comparison, I now have "60years" experience compared to what would have only been about half as many accomplishments if I had been employed by an oil or chemical company over the same 3 decades. Plus I own my own technology for decades now.

Not trying to toot my own horn but it is an unfair advantage.

I believe there are three factors to consider:

- what you are trying to learn

- your ability to learn things on that particular area

- how you measure [familiar/proficient/good/expert/impress people]

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.

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.

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.

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.

> http://www.pgbovine.net/oldpages/fourth.jpg

Wow...

That's actually really awesome that he has screenshots of all of his old homepages. I wish I had thought to do that.

hey, that was state-of-the-art in 1998!

I love it, it appaer cheesy in hindsight, but it was pure gold back then.

A detailed an well argumented framework to be found in

Chapter 1: Five Steps from Novice to Expert

Mind Over Machine by Hubert Dreyfus

http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Over-Machine-Hubert-Dreyfus/dp/00...

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.

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.

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.

"If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all." - Michelangelo

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."

And 1k hours is completely unsupported by experimentation.

Why do people think they can just randomly throw nonsense at a wall and expect it to stick?

Such a poor attitude! This isn't Science magazine. The entire article -- a hypothesis anyway -- is prefaced by "words I would have wanted to hear as a child". Were you expecting him to run experiments for this piece?

"This isn't Science magazine." Finish that thought.

This isn't Science magazine so... we can just make things up and say whatever we want, even if it's blatantly and provably untrue?

This isn't Science magazine; an interesting or thought-provoking idea is just as valuable as a repeatable experiment.

Yes, in the same way a good fiction story is. "Wouldn't it be nice if life were so simple as I'm about to describe?"

But this doesn't present itself as a fiction, this presents itself as true, when it's clearly the case that the author has no idea if it's true or not, having not done the requisite legwork to verify.

> to become good at something, which I think requires far less time and dedication.

> I claim that it takes roughly 1,000 hours of practice

It presents itself as neither fiction nor reference. It presents itself as a thought and a claim.

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