
The One Thousand Hour Rule - iuguy
http://yongfook.com/the-one-thousand-hour-rule
======
nikcub
_You need to put in 1000-hours of hard work on a new project to begin seeing
meaningful returns._

Gladwell based his quotable theory on some research, and it wasn't a new idea.

In terms of a thousand hours to viable product, there are just far too many
examples of products that have become successful in less time for it to be a
theory. eg.

* first version of Facebook was ~2 weeks of code

* chatroulette

* Inviteshare - built in 24 hours and sold to Techcrunch the next day

* First version of Crunchbase we built in 48 hours

* all the 24 hour hackathons that have released products

* you can pull together various bits of open source software with some glue and a stock template and have a product in 24 hours

There are heaps of other examples of products launched with 10-200 hours of
work that became hits, I am sure others can suggest more.

While you may have come to this conclusion by looking at your own two
examples, it definitely does not apply across a broader spectrum.

~~~
harscoat
And so Zuckerberg did not write code before "theFacebook" and it took him only
2 weeks to MVP?

He arrived at Harvard in sept 2003 and the next week started to write code for
"course Match" and then went on with Facemash...

1000 hours is around 20 weeks if you put 50h/w, less than 6 months.

TheFacebook launched on feb4 2004. So 1000 hours that may well be it or even
more in the case of Facebook.

~~~
joe_the_user
I'm sorry but it should be obvious that while Facebook's success might have
involved genius, it certainly didn't unique _programming_ genius. Zuck didn't
create a real time flight optimizer, an ultra-fast RISK chip or anything of
the sort. He created a decent web app. He was no more a _genius programmer_
than Bill Gates (who also might been both a programmer and a genius FWIW but
not a genius programmer).

What he created was a decent web app that began superbly positioned and then
expertly skippered it into the true golden market position.

The genius ranged from business to social to UI with programming ability being
a distant if important factor.

And that in many ways does contradict the 1000 hour thesis - he could have had
experience in building great web apps beforehand. He could not have gotten
experience building billion dollar companies before hand - but he did well
(however much I might find Facebook unfortunate on various levels).

~~~
benkant
> RISK

RISC?

------
keyist
I hate to dump on someone's effort to motivate others, but this post is a
dangerous extrapolation that combines Outliers [1] and the author's personal
experience.

It promotes the idea of a magic number, and that hard work and time leads to
returns (not true for the majority of startups). It encourages thinking like
"Man I'm at the 950 hour mark, I'm almost there!", or even worse, planning
one's product milestones around time spent.

One of the main attractions of the 10k hour rule is that there are few
external stimuli that can negatively affect your learning/training.

If I decided to invest time in taking up the trumpet, I don't have to worry
about competition with other budding trumpeters or whether BrassCrunch or
Spitter News have effusive posts on my latest performances. I won't have to
determine which percentage of the public 'gets' trumpets and plan how my
playing should appeal to them.

With proper practice one hardly ever goes backward -- ability increases
monotonically give or take a few plateaus. With startups you often go backward
as you try to figure out your product-market fit and so on. Userbase size or
revenue would not increase over time the way ability does when it comes to
personal improvement.

1\. I haven't actually read Outliers but I'm familiar with its thesis. If it's
anything like Gladwell's other books, I recommend _The Talent Code_ for better
treatment of the subject matter. Norvig's <http://norvig.com/21-days.html> is
also great reading.

~~~
beagledude
I dont think anyone is taking this literally, but coming away with the point
that it takes time to develop ideas and not to expect instant success even if
you think you're the cat's pajamas.

------
yatsyk
Do I need to provide example when 1 hour of hard work leads to meaningful
returns and 10000 hours leads to nothing to show that this theory incorrect or
it is obvious?

~~~
andreyf
Not incorrect, just incomplete. The incompleteness might actually be a
misreading of the book. If I remember right (it's been awhile since I read
it), Gladwell mentioned this explicitly, just not as a major point the kind of
which he drills into the reader's mind: 10,000 hours are necessary, but not
sufficient.

Isaac Newton, Henry Ford, and Andrew Carnegie* could not have accomplished
what they did without devoting themselves in outmost sincerity to their ideas.
The point is that to have a truly lasting impact on improving the world for
the better, you need to devote at least 10,000 hours to something great and be
smart about how you devote those 10,000 hours.

Galdwell's point, from my reading of his book, is the hypothesis that the vast
majority of people don't achieve Greatness because they don't begin to devote
that kind of time to one aspiration, not because they are somehow inherently
limited in their mental capacity. In other words, the world is full of
unmotivated genius, and you're very likely one of them. Study hard, work hard,
and strive for the stars, etc., etc. ;)

* having recently met Larry Page for the first time during an internal Q&A session, I can assure you his intelligence is quite limited by human capacity, as well. Yes, he's a lot better at answering sensitive and badly phrased questions (my own) candidly and to-the-point than anyone I've known, but he's also had more experience with it than anyone I've known, also. However, he didn't seem inherently talented in any way than the smarter of my professors (I was once told by one who knew him that neither was Einstein).

In essence, there are two points we sometimes lose in overly simplified
metaphors:

1) there are a lot of really intelligent people changing the world for the
better that aren't famous. A lot of the time, they don't want to be famous
because it would get into the way of their work.

2) there is a big difference between famous people who publicize themselves as
an a means to an end (their ideas), while others publicize themselves out of
ego. We're all prone to the latter (at least I am), and should make a
conscious effort to "unit test" that behavior every once in awhile.

[maybe this is better as a blog post...]

~~~
yatsyk
Gladwell mentions people that accomplished outstanding results after spending
10k hours. But it is not correct way to show that theory is correct. To
support his claim he need to show that most people that accomplished
outstanding results after 10k hours of work. But it is not true. There are
people that accomplished good results after 100 hours, 1000 hours and 10000
hours for sure.

------
skwavu
Both the original "10,000 hour rule" and this rule run afoul of
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox> unless you rephrase the
statement to something along the lines of "we have found that most people
either succeed at X and continue doing it for the rest of their lives
regularly or give up, and that of the people who give up, 95% of them give up
before doing X for 10,000 hours"

I believe the question is, "what is the mean and standard deviation of the
time investment at the point when a sustained positive feedback loop is
achieved?"

------
harscoat
This 10 000 hour rule (or let's see with this 1k h rule) is liberating: you do
not have to be a genius to start. Again that does not mean you will be a
genius but no genius got to be one without 10000 hours. Herbert Simon talked
about the 10 years rule.

------
Abid
The point is to focus on the fact that it will take time (and thus, effort) to
give your project a chance. In other words, don't set unrealistic goals - e.g.
"I'm going to build, launch and get my first 1,000 customer in two weeks" -
because you're more likely to abandon the project instead of grinding it out
as you should.

------
Eliezer
This sounds like the right order of magnitude for every individual project I
ever worked on that had an impact.

------
bobf
There is a big difference in efficiency across people and startup teams, in
terms of what they might achieve in <X> amount of time. A solo founder with no
experience as an entrepreneur, little technical prowess, and few useful
connections would generally take longer to be successful.

For example, look at YC companies' varying degrees of progress at demo day.
They usually have at least two founders -- if they are working 80 hours/week,
they would roughly be putting in 1,000 hours _per founder_ after 3 months.

------
drv
Grammar nitpick: All of the uses of "1000-hours" in the article are
incorrectly hyphenated. You should write "a 1000-hour project" but not
"1000-hours of work."

------
erikstarck
Hey, I wrote that blog post half a year ago. :)
[http://blog.opportunitycloud.com/2010/03/02/its-going-to-
tak...](http://blog.opportunitycloud.com/2010/03/02/its-going-to-take-five-
years/) 1000 hours or five years, the gist of both these posts is that you
need persistence.

------
InfinityX0
The comments are largely very, very accurate. This does not compute as does
Gladwell's formula. However, this can again, reductionally, be broken down to
another cool cliche: work hard, and beat out the dip.

So, read Seth Godin's "The Dip".

------
kayoone
sorry but this is total BS. I know projects that have been instant hits with
100 hours of work (some cheapo iphone apps for example). Then again if want to
make a decent social game or a technology related product, 1000 hours will get
you nowhere. Spread over a years timeframe, which it usually takes to get a
decent product to market from start to finish, thats about 3 hours a day..
Even if you leave out weekends and stuff, its still nothing.

~~~
erikstarck
Yeah, but how many attempts failed before that 100 hour project succeeded?

------
danielschonfeld
It's funny. In flying we use 1,000 hour as the passing point from flying small
airplanes to joining your first airline and technically start "the career".

So I think I agree with the camp that believes in putting the time first and
only then being able to judge results.

Before you fly those first 1,000 hours you haven't learned a thing, and after
you flew them you discover again every 1,000 a bunch of new things.

------
rodericksilva
It is 2010. I'm sure there are apps that were a success after 1 day, 1 week, 1
month, and some after a year or two of pivoting.

If its an innovative and useful idea users "get it" almost immediately.

If it's not as innovative and you're building an app that is improving another
idea it will take more time for users to see it, try it, and switch.

I don't think there is a magic number.

------
joshrule
I wonder if this rule translates into other domains as well? That is, does a
violinist become noticeable after 1 000 hours, but only a true master after 10
000 hours?

Also, we should never forget that these X hours rules are speaking to X hours
of deliberately stretching practice/work. They don't mean, try randomly for X
hours and you'll automatically become awesome/successful.

------
chr15
1000 hours is about 6 months.

Assuming that "meaningful" return means profitable, some companies will be
able to get a return in < 1000 hours. Some it might > 1000 hours. It's going
to depend on the market, your customers, the problem you're trying to solve,
and your work ethic.

------
da5e
I think a "while" is a better measurement than 10k or 1k. It takes a while for
things to click whether it's a skill, a product or business. And the while is
usually longer than we predict.

------
swombat
Our very own zackattack might beg to differ. I can't imagine he put 1000 hours
into his AwesomenessReminders, which are making him a pretty penny.

