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ten thousand hours
Jan. 15th, 2009 04:32 pmMy mother has been reading a book called The Outliers which she describes as an analysis of how people get to be Great, in the sense of Bill Gates, or the Beatles. Not just Rich&Famous, but top of the world stuff. And a lot of it is luck, and getting in at the beginning of the industry, whatever that may mean in your day and age. But part of it is being extremely good at what you do.
And apparently, the oversimplified way of being that good is that, from being talented to start out with, you spend at least ten thousand hours doing the thing at which you want to be great. Coding, playing music (together, if you're a band-- the Beatles got in on a gig where they were farmed out for months at a time to play 6-8 hour shifts every night in Luexmbourg clubs, and hit their 10k hours of stage time before ever getting famous) or whatever else. I'd previously been quoted something like 5k hours playtime before your brain re-shapes itself to start to think like a chess master, but of course anyone who invests that much isn't just going to stop at that point, and there's all the study and contemplation between games...
Which raises the question: What have I spent ten thousand hours doing?
Reading, unquestionably. Anything else?
And then I had to add it up, and say: eight hours a day with no weekends or holidays for a year gets you to almost three thousand hours. And I've lived a bit over 260 thousand at this point, and the first several years pretty much only count towards learning to be a human being, although to some extent I suspect that things learned under the influence of super-baby-brain count extra. And somewhere around a third of it I've been asleep.
I've probably spent that much cumulative in various dextrous hand-work (handsewing, embroidery, knit/crochet, macrame, wire weaving... goodness knows what that I'm forgetting I've done) and I was relatively deft to begin with, I think. But if I spent a few more thousand hours on one specifically, I suspect I would start to create things that meet my (horribly horribly picky) standards, rather than other people's. My blackwork would be perfectly even, or my beads would always fit together perfectly and never ride up against each other.
I've spent significantly more than that being a student, but the definition of being a student changed so much over the duration of that time that I don't know for sure what counts. I'm good at taking notes in lectures, although I don't have the muscle tone in my hands and wrists to keep that up for as long as I used to. (also, not a marketable skill)
There are a lot of things I do, and have done, that hover somewhere in the void between 10-30 hours for basic competency and that elusive 10k of greatness-- my fencing footwork is semi-ingrained, and certain defensive reflexes work ok, but I'm nowhere near great. I don't think I know anyone who's likely to reach 10k hours on that anytime soon, if at all, though I know a few who are working towards it. At a guess, I've got maybe a thousand or so invested in archaeology (although I had a head start by being fascinated by things and thus identifying them before I started digging them up), since a lot of my field work was the repeatative following of shovel test grids, and lots and lots of dirt. I'm good at organizing things (filing, sorting, alphabetizing...) but by no means great, nor do I wish to be. Sewing, pattern drafting... again, part-way there. With four years of Nano behind me, years of sporadic journal and essay writing, a handful or three of finished short stories and some other part-done novels... I really don't know. I might have 2-4k hours invested in writing. Or more, or less, depending on how you count the times where I stare at my computer, or the desk next to it and doodle on my notes. I've always been fairly bad at estimates. I'm pretty good at typing, though not compared to the people who are considered good at it, and my spelling is still fairly poor.
I am, I suspect, extremely good at contemplating abstractions within the confines of my brain, and letting most of them disappear again. Clearly, I should spend more time writing them down.
And apparently, the oversimplified way of being that good is that, from being talented to start out with, you spend at least ten thousand hours doing the thing at which you want to be great. Coding, playing music (together, if you're a band-- the Beatles got in on a gig where they were farmed out for months at a time to play 6-8 hour shifts every night in Luexmbourg clubs, and hit their 10k hours of stage time before ever getting famous) or whatever else. I'd previously been quoted something like 5k hours playtime before your brain re-shapes itself to start to think like a chess master, but of course anyone who invests that much isn't just going to stop at that point, and there's all the study and contemplation between games...
Which raises the question: What have I spent ten thousand hours doing?
Reading, unquestionably. Anything else?
And then I had to add it up, and say: eight hours a day with no weekends or holidays for a year gets you to almost three thousand hours. And I've lived a bit over 260 thousand at this point, and the first several years pretty much only count towards learning to be a human being, although to some extent I suspect that things learned under the influence of super-baby-brain count extra. And somewhere around a third of it I've been asleep.
I've probably spent that much cumulative in various dextrous hand-work (handsewing, embroidery, knit/crochet, macrame, wire weaving... goodness knows what that I'm forgetting I've done) and I was relatively deft to begin with, I think. But if I spent a few more thousand hours on one specifically, I suspect I would start to create things that meet my (horribly horribly picky) standards, rather than other people's. My blackwork would be perfectly even, or my beads would always fit together perfectly and never ride up against each other.
I've spent significantly more than that being a student, but the definition of being a student changed so much over the duration of that time that I don't know for sure what counts. I'm good at taking notes in lectures, although I don't have the muscle tone in my hands and wrists to keep that up for as long as I used to. (also, not a marketable skill)
There are a lot of things I do, and have done, that hover somewhere in the void between 10-30 hours for basic competency and that elusive 10k of greatness-- my fencing footwork is semi-ingrained, and certain defensive reflexes work ok, but I'm nowhere near great. I don't think I know anyone who's likely to reach 10k hours on that anytime soon, if at all, though I know a few who are working towards it. At a guess, I've got maybe a thousand or so invested in archaeology (although I had a head start by being fascinated by things and thus identifying them before I started digging them up), since a lot of my field work was the repeatative following of shovel test grids, and lots and lots of dirt. I'm good at organizing things (filing, sorting, alphabetizing...) but by no means great, nor do I wish to be. Sewing, pattern drafting... again, part-way there. With four years of Nano behind me, years of sporadic journal and essay writing, a handful or three of finished short stories and some other part-done novels... I really don't know. I might have 2-4k hours invested in writing. Or more, or less, depending on how you count the times where I stare at my computer, or the desk next to it and doodle on my notes. I've always been fairly bad at estimates. I'm pretty good at typing, though not compared to the people who are considered good at it, and my spelling is still fairly poor.
I am, I suspect, extremely good at contemplating abstractions within the confines of my brain, and letting most of them disappear again. Clearly, I should spend more time writing them down.