
The 1,000-hour rule (2009) - ode
http://www.pgbovine.net/1000-hour-rule.htm
======
TeMPOraL
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.

~~~
noahl
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.

~~~
001sky
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.

------
zxcvvcxz
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](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>

~~~
DanielStraight
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?

~~~
jtheory
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.

~~~
3pt14159
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.

~~~
jacquesm
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 :)

~~~
3pt14159
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.

------
Broken_Hippo
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.

~~~
oskarth
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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages#Relationship_with_duration_of_learning_process))

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.

~~~
jliechti1
> 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.

~~~
jebus989
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](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01sqly1)

------
onion2k
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...](http://youarenotsosmart.com/2014/08/14/yanss-
podcast-030-how-practice-changes-the-brain-with-david-epstein/)

~~~
silverbax88
Thanks for posting that. One of the best things I've ever listened to.

------
NDizzle
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.

~~~
tannerj
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.

~~~
NDizzle
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.)

~~~
tannerj
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...](http://files.leagueathletics.com/Text/Documents/5200/27001.pdf)

------
netcan
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.

~~~
robert_tweed
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".

------
njharman
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."

------
king_jester
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?

~~~
freehunter
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).

------
systematical
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?

~~~
thedufer
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.

~~~
Mvandenbergh
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.

------
Freeboots
How about 20 hours?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY](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.

~~~
silverbax88
Actually, Gladwell has specifically said it does not really apply to sports.

~~~
Freeboots
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.

------
tokenadult
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...](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/pdf/DeliberatePractice\(PsychologicalReview\).pdf)

[2] [http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolved-
primate/201006/w...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolved-
primate/201006/when-ignorance-begets-confidence-the-classic-dunning-kruger-
effect)

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2702783/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2702783/)

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

------
free2rhyme214
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.

------
IvyMike
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?

~~~
danelectro
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.

------
goshx
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

------
quaffapint
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.

------
elwell
>
> [http://www.pgbovine.net/oldpages/fourth.jpg](http://www.pgbovine.net/oldpages/fourth.jpg)

Wow...

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

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

------
jonsen
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...](http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Over-Machine-Hubert-
Dreyfus/dp/0029080614/)

------
mkhalil
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".

------
induscreep
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.

------
erikb
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.

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

------
diminoten
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?

~~~
joeframbach
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?

~~~
diminoten
"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?

~~~
joeframbach
This isn't Science magazine; an _interesting_ or _thought-provoking_ idea is
just as valuable as a repeatable experiment.

~~~
diminoten
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.

~~~
joeframbach
> 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.

