5 ms·

I would take it even farther than that and say that people vastly overestimate the time it takes to get good at most things. It might take 10,000 hours (or more

by ksdale 7y ago

I would take it even farther than that and say that people vastly overestimate the time it takes to get good at most things. It might take 10,000 hours (or more) to be considered an expert pianist, but you could spend a tenth that much time getting good enough to impress everyone you know with a few songs at parties, and with just 50 hours of practice, you'll be better at the piano than basically everyone you know (you might not be "good", but a lot of people are also easily impressed, if impressing people is your thing.) I think this is true of practically everything that we don't personally make a profession of. A few tens of hours doing carpentry, fiddling with plumbing, or hooking up electronics, and you'll seem super handy to someone with no experience. What passes for expert-level in a lot of arenas is more like what an actual expert would consider passing familiarity, but passing familiarity is enough to feel good and to be really helpful to your community in a lot of circumstances. I agree completely about hobbies. I think I read somewhere long ago that we ended up with a zillion apps for ordering food because that's the kind of thing that college kids think about. If we all learn a lot more about a lot of things, we'll end up with a much more interesting tech-ecosystem.

sjg007 7y ago
10,000 hours underestimates transfer learning.
- taneq 7y ago
  I definitely feel like I'm more effective coming back to something with more world experience than I was when I only knew that thing. Technically adept? Maybe not quite as much (after all, I'll be rusty and the state of the art will have moved on). Able to make better things? Certainly.
joshkaufman 7y ago
I wrote a book on this topic: https://first20hours.com https://first20hours.com There's a ton of (replicated) psychology research that supports this thesis: the early hours of skill acquisition are very effective/efficient in terms of improvement-per-hour-invested. 20-50 hours is enough to see very substantial improvements in any skill, even if you have no prior knowledge or experience. I wish more people focused on the early process of skill acquisition: that's what most of us will experience for most of our lives/careers. Learning and practicing skills in many different areas is underrated: if you think of skills from an ROI perspective, spending a little time to get a lot better at a portfolio of useful things has a crazy high return.
- ksdale 7y ago
  Very cool! Thank you for the link.
- oob205 7y ago
  Yes! Expertise is good, but overrated. I've found that you can be much happier getting good enough at a broad range of skills that combine professional, personal and whimsical
- hinkley 7y ago
  As long as you don’t get stuck in the expert beginner trap. I like to say that my long history of studying the art of studying helps me get over that hump quickly. But you’d have to ask other people if I have or I’m full of it.
  - filoleg 7y ago
    Why is it a trap, though? I think the whole "T-shaped engineer" analogy applies really well here. Expert beginner of a lot of things, true expert of a few. Sounds like a great balance to me.
  - taneq 7y ago
    In this context you're not spending enough time on it to become an "expert beginner". You're not getting the same three months of experience a dozen times, you're getting them once.
- kevinguh 7y ago
  I would add on by saying from personal experience that the wider your breadth of experiences, the more you find that experiences in seemingly unrelated fields overlap and synergize to make it even easier to pick up new skills. Anecdotally I found my background in software + college coursework in signal processing gave me a huge boost with getting into music production, and in line with the ROI perspective I feel like I'm passively reinforcing my understanding of Fourier transforms and whatnot when I'm playing around with Ableton so it's akin to the effect of compounded interest
hinkley 7y ago
I would absolutely agree that a 1000 hours in you can have rewarding interactions with actual experts. Even 100 can open up conversations. And as a software dev it’s almost expected that you’ll do that at least a few times for some problem domains.
pbhjpbhj 7y ago
>It might take 10,000 hours (or more) to be considered an expert pianist, but you could spend a tenth that much time getting good enough to impress everyone you know with a few songs at parties, and with just 50 hours of practice, you'll be better at the piano than basically everyone you know (you might not be "good", but a lot of people are also easily impressed, if impressing people is your thing.) // I learnt piano for years (from relatively late, ~12-17yo), and could follow a piece of written music but never just play. My son, who at 14 has just started lessons could already play and can work out a piece by ear with essential only a few hours. He can play something you'd recognise, I can't unless I have the music. He has 'natural aptitude', IMO gained genetically from his mother and through environmental exposure to music. Your 1000 hours would work for him, with this skill, I feel; but not for me. There are other simpler restrictions. In my middle ages I've started karate, no one has a hope of mistaking me for an expert karateka unless I also address general fitness.

by ksdale 7y ago

sjg007 7y ago

10,000 hours underestimates transfer learning.

taneq 7y ago
I definitely feel like I'm more effective coming back to something with more world experience than I was when I only knew that thing. Technically adept? Maybe not quite as much (after all, I'll be rusty and the state of the art will have moved on). Able to make better things? Certainly.

joshkaufman 7y ago

I wrote a book on this topic: https://first20hours.com https://first20hours.com There's a ton of (replicated) psychology research that supports this thesis: the early hours of skill acquisition are very effective/efficient in terms of improvement-per-hour-invested. 20-50 hours is enough to see very substantial improvements in any skill, even if you have no prior knowledge or experience. I wish more people focused on the early process of skill acquisition: that's what most of us will experience for most of our lives/careers. Learning and practicing skills in many different areas is underrated: if you think of skills from an ROI perspective, spending a little time to get a lot better at a portfolio of useful things has a crazy high return.

ksdale 7y ago
Very cool! Thank you for the link.
oob205 7y ago
Yes! Expertise is good, but overrated. I've found that you can be much happier getting good enough at a broad range of skills that combine professional, personal and whimsical
hinkley 7y ago
As long as you don’t get stuck in the expert beginner trap. I like to say that my long history of studying the art of studying helps me get over that hump quickly. But you’d have to ask other people if I have or I’m full of it.
- filoleg 7y ago
  Why is it a trap, though? I think the whole "T-shaped engineer" analogy applies really well here. Expert beginner of a lot of things, true expert of a few. Sounds like a great balance to me.
- taneq 7y ago
  In this context you're not spending enough time on it to become an "expert beginner". You're not getting the same three months of experience a dozen times, you're getting them once.
kevinguh 7y ago
I would add on by saying from personal experience that the wider your breadth of experiences, the more you find that experiences in seemingly unrelated fields overlap and synergize to make it even easier to pick up new skills. Anecdotally I found my background in software + college coursework in signal processing gave me a huge boost with getting into music production, and in line with the ROI perspective I feel like I'm passively reinforcing my understanding of Fourier transforms and whatnot when I'm playing around with Ableton so it's akin to the effect of compounded interest

hinkley 7y ago

I would absolutely agree that a 1000 hours in you can have rewarding interactions with actual experts. Even 100 can open up conversations. And as a software dev it’s almost expected that you’ll do that at least a few times for some problem domains.

pbhjpbhj 7y ago

>It might take 10,000 hours (or more) to be considered an expert pianist, but you could spend a tenth that much time getting good enough to impress everyone you know with a few songs at parties, and with just 50 hours of practice, you'll be better at the piano than basically everyone you know (you might not be "good", but a lot of people are also easily impressed, if impressing people is your thing.) // I learnt piano for years (from relatively late, ~12-17yo), and could follow a piece of written music but never just play. My son, who at 14 has just started lessons could already play and can work out a piece by ear with essential only a few hours. He can play something you'd recognise, I can't unless I have the music. He has 'natural aptitude', IMO gained genetically from his mother and through environmental exposure to music. Your 1000 hours would work for him, with this skill, I feel; but not for me. There are other simpler restrictions. In my middle ages I've started karate, no one has a hope of mistaking me for an expert karateka unless I also address general fitness.