10,000 hours to Mastery
 

I'm sure most of you have heard this idea--that many successful people are not necessarily more talented than the rest of us, but have put in hours and hours of practice to master their specialty. The idea is it takes about 10,000 hours, or approximately several hours a day for 10 years. (If you haven't, see Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers: The Story of Success http://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Story...9868915&sr=8-1).

So, I was wondering--have any of you actually practiced something this long and mastered? Is there anything you'd want to practice for mastery?

I've actually practiced sex for about that long and feel I've mastered it. Now I couldn't care less about it. Wasted my life!

I'm very good at breathing. I don't even think about it when I do it, and I do it very well. Almost no effort. I've been doing it for several hours each day for my entire life.

It's actually 2.7 hours a day, every day for ten years. If you spend 40 hours a week (8*5) then you can be a master in 4.8 years.

So, for me by those metrics I have mastered:
Black and white photography, particularly printing. (20+yr)
Baking (5yr)
Bicycle Mechanic (5yr)
Cabinetmaking (5 yr) There is some overlap as I have been practicing photography since I was 12 and would still spend 4-5 hours a day after work when I had other jobs. When I did photo full time 12-16 hour days were typical.

As you can see, I have a long way to go before I'm at Z

I read about this in Scientific American. It is very important to note what "practice" means. It means working at the very edge of your abilities--continuously "pushing the envelope." As Terry Bozzio said of playing the drums, if you've been playing paradiddles for 20 years, then cranking out paradiddles on a practice pad no longer counts as practice.

You've got to PUSH yourself. Do THAT for 10,000 hours, then you will have achieved something monumental.

Good point - I think that there are lots of people who have driven 10,000 hours and still do it poorly.

OK then I'll downgrade myself to 3/4 masturbaker ;) and semi master cabintmaker, but as for bike mechanics, I think that is a rather small envelope to push so I'm keeping my accreditation there. As for photographic printing, I am still a full on double rainbow master.

How can you be a double-rainbow master at black and white printing? :eyebrow:

I love the life that meme has taken on.

I'll explain it again...

I'll do that to my kids just to test their powers of discernment. After a minute I ask them, "Do you believe me?"

bi-rainbow win!

My first fencing coach used to talk about how many repetitions we needed to make of an action to make our use of it subconscious. Of course if you practice it wrong it takes many thousand more repetitions to fix it.. So don't just practice, practice properly.

Yes, Griff, yes! Don't bother practicing wrong unless you want to learn wrong.

A lot of physical activities involve developing a "muscle memory" of the action. This is done through repetition and the strengthening on the neuromuscular connections associated.

A couple of thoughts on this.

It may take 10,000 hours to master a skill. But don't let that stop you from taking up an instrument or a hobby. You can have fun from day one.

On the other hand, while I have enjoyed playing bass from the beginning, where I want to be at any given point is always a little further down the road.

When I was teaching piano lessons several years ago, I often had parents of young students ask if they could start learning too, or if it was too late. My answer to them was always the same:

"10 years from now, you're going to be 45 no matter what. You can either be 45 and know how to play piano, or you can just be 45."

Foot .... touche! :lol:


Oooh yeah.
I've been dabbling on guitar for almost 20 years. (#%&*, how did that happen???) and can play a few nice melodies. It's fun and has helped get me laid. ;) But I never took lessons, so I've always had my left hand in what I now know is a wrong position. This is now greatly limiting my opportunity to progress. I can either go back to beginner level and get it right, or mess around where I am for fun. I do the latter. This isn't what I do for a living, just for fun.

So my two cents is, if you're starting out, get at least a few lessons to make sure you start right.

My 10,000 hours was focused of philosophising, and I'm good enough at that to earn a living.

Some of that 10,000 hours is productive thought. You picture it in your head, and think about what you have to do to achieve it, or to achieve the next level. I know a lot of my hours were just spent imagining a fretboard while listening to a song.

I think mine is drawing. I have put in thousands of hour of that and have pushed the envelope for many of those hours. I don't think there is any way not to with drawing. I don't know if I am a master, but I am a hell of a lot better at it than I would have been had I not had that particular obsession for the last 32 years.

Re: Practising Wrong
 

It isn't always a bad thing to work on stuff that isn't "right". I Figure Skate. I've always wanted to, I've been taking classes for 10 years now. After a while I realized that it worked better for me to do stuff "wrong" and get familiar with that then correct it, than to keep trying to do it the right way and be too scared so it never got done.

I'm a mental math and word master.

figure skating will come. I can do more than most....

True. My point is more about getting good at a technique that leads to an early dead-end.

Mostly, it's bad thing. But not for me. Because i'm weird.

You're a triple-rainbow master at that. :D

The devil rum is inhibiting my ability to properly recall or search for it, but I'm 96.3% certain we discussed this previously. In that previous discussion, real or imagined, I referenced the book Bounce by Matthew Syed. Even though he's just a pingpong putz I fully support his hypothesis. Lil Lookout, crazy lil bugger that he is has no more genetic ability than any other child (I should know, I've met his parents) but he has been drilled thousands of hours in technique and philosophy of the game of football and therefore appears "gifted" when compared against other children within 2-3 years of his own age.

I'm with Monster on this one. I have spent my life learning languages and being obsessed with getting it right (at least language wise) and am able to pay the rent with those skills (in various forms) but when I went to Japan 14 years ago, I'd spent so long being at the bottom of the 3rd year uni class that I was afraid to speak unless I got it right so consequently didn't and didn't get half as much out of my time in Japan as I could have as mostly I just avoided any situation where I would be out of my depth language wise.

This time with being in a new language environment (which is albeit an Australian enclave) and learning a completely new language almost from scratch, I've just thought bugger it...who cares if I can speak or understand or not, how many mistakes I make and how long it takes me to learn.

I haven't been able to take any Indonesian classes yet as the last beginner class was full and I can't commit to any non-work activities until my timetable stabilises in mid-April so at the moment I'm learning with the security guards at work. They are obviously bored out of their skulls so every time I walk past them, they ask me a question and explain it with their limited English (which is better than my Indonesian) and little by little (like in miniscule increments), I'm adding to what I can say. Yesterday, I managed a conversation with one of the cleaning staff which consisted of "What time are you going home?" and my answer to the same question "I'm going home in an hour" and was very pleased with myself. The staff member in question humoured me by smiling and everyone felt good and I'll keep on trying out my bad grammar and non-existent vocabulary and gradually get better.

I think we're muddling concepts here.

Should fear of imperfection keep you from doing something? Of course not.

Once you're doing it, there are technical and creative skills to most tasks. The technical skills should be doggedly pursued with perfection being the goal. The creative skills should be propelled forward by experimentation, curiosity, and a healthy degree of "wrongness".

Crochet, Cross-Stitch, and Committing People.

oh, and shootin'.

Exactly. Kimon Nikolaides (the natural way to draw) said, "The sooner you make your first 500 mistakes, the sooner you can correct them."

All learning is about failure. My teacher used to say, "Seven times knocked down, eight times get up."

Wow! a fisherman hasn't posted to this thread yet!

Every time I bake I improve.
The Staffroom are already very appreciative, but there are major flaws and I know it.
I learn a little every time though.

Who knows, in 10,000 hours time I might be good enough to sell them on Aylesbury market?!
Well, I'm happy to stick to perfecting them to my own standards.

It's called thread drift. :)

I have mastering nothing I'm more of a jack of all trades

... which will be useful in 2012 and you won't have the repetitive motion injuries.

I'm not so sure Griff, I bet if you tried to jack off ALL the trades you'd get repetitive motion injuries. Or sore at any rate.

Now, now 3F, I don't think kind of comment is your territory.

You mean because his arm is in a sling?

snicker

If he's ambidextrous, one arm being in a sling won't be a problem. :D and if he's not, this could be the chance to develop that particular shall we say skill.

It depends on what I'm doing.

See how quickly I can drag you into the gutter with one arm in a sling?;)

That implies that I ever leave the gutter

Quote from Good News Week (circa 1999).

Paul McDermott: Raise the tone, raise the tone.
Mikey Robbins: Why?
Paul McDermott: Because I need to have somewhere to go.