

How many 10K hours do you have left? - muan
http://nowincolour.com/2013/04/how-many-10k-hours-do-you-have-left/

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sireat
Sadly, the problem is that the older you does not get the same out of 10k
hours of deliberate practice than the younger you.

Let's take chess: 10k hours of deliberate practice in your teen years will
make you a master level player (and possibly near GM caliber if you think
Polgar experiment was not a fluke).

There are no known instances of someone starting to play chess after age of 30
and getting near GM. Conversely, I've known people who retired in their 40s
and dedicated themselves to chess and could not achieve more than a 50-100
point gain.

I would love to be proven wrong, but I suspect the story is the same with
piano, violin and programming.

Your 10k hours at age 40 will not get you near anywhere the same return than
10k hours at age 10-16.

I would love to see some references to people achieving mastery in some field
past the age of 40 starting from scratch.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity> is supposed to show that it is
possible to get good at a later age, but I am very skeptical.

~~~
kylescheele
I'll agree with the idea that it's harder for the older you to master
something than it is for the younger you, but I don't think it has to do with
physiological reasons. I think it has to do with things like time,
commitments, obligations, and fears.

When you're young, you have more time, less commitments and obligations
(family, job, etc.), and generally less fears (if I screw this up, it's fine
because I'm 17). As you grow older, these things get added on and it becomes
difficult to motivate yourself to actually spend the 10k hours.

If you're talking about something like skateboarding, I think you're right
that younger people will learn it better and faster than old people, because
it's inherently physical. If you're talking about a mental task, I think it's
a matter of whether or not you will sit down and do the work.

~~~
vwinsyee
I agree that less time and more obligations does make learning new things more
difficult later in life. But there's also evidence that fluid intelligence [1]
peaks in young adulthood and declines with older age.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_and_crystallized_intellig...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_and_crystallized_intelligence)
: "This decline may be related to local atrophy of the brain in the right
cerebellum. Other researchers have suggested that a lack of practice, along
with age-related changes in the brain may contribute to the decline."

~~~
ekm2
And there is also evidence that you can increase you fluid intelligence[1]
[1]<http://www.pnas.org/content/105/19/6791.full>

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dgabriel
I thought the "10k" rule had been discredited.

[http://allaboutwork.org/2012/11/21/malcolm-
gladwells-10000-h...](http://allaboutwork.org/2012/11/21/malcolm-
gladwells-10000-hour-rule-doesnt-add-up/)

~~~
Evbn
Really, finding a few examples of 7000k hour violin players discredits the 10k
hour rules? It's an estimate, not a mission to mars.

Are you also offended by astronomers getting the mass of a star, or geologists
measuring the amount of oil in a well wrong? They would be delighted to get
the order of magnitude right.

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localfugue
Looks like we hugged this site to death: I now get a "500 Internal Server
Error". Here's the google cache link:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cac...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnowincolour.com%2F2013%2F04%2Fhow-
many-10k-hours-do-you-have-
left%2F&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnowincolour.com%2F2013%2F04%2Fhow-
many-10k-hours-do-you-have-left%2F)

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anthonycerra
This is a cool brain hack in that it uses math to convince you that you're not
too old to become a master at something.

One issue I have with the 10,000 hour rule in general is this: there are
approximately 2,088 hours in a work-year not counting overtime. To achieve
mastery in your profession would then take less than 5 years. Most professions
don't consider someone an expert 5 years into their careers. So does that mean
a) you're not really improving that much in those 5 years b) there are more
conditions to the 10,000 hour rule c) the 10,000 hour rule is flawed or d) the
evaluation of one's expertise is flawed?

Another issue I have with the 10,000 hour rule is the idea of competence and
sufficient experience. At what level of experience (in this case, hours) are
you competent enough to achieve your goal? If programming, at what level can
you create something that solves a given problem. If business, at what level
can you successfully run a startup, etc.

So if the target changes to "enough experience to achieve a specific goal"
then I'd argue one has much more time available to him/her than what this math
suggests.

~~~
kenjackson
The 10k hour rule isn't about experience, but about deliberate practice. Two
very different things.

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samegreatsleeve
Why do you guys buy into this 10k hours bullshit?

The 10k hours claim is utter nonsense on the most basic level. How exactly is
"one skill" defined? There is no such thing as "one skill." Every skill,
field, whatever is a highly complex amalgam of countless sub-skills. How do
you determine the extent of the "one skill" that you're devoting to?

Let's say you want to master 18th century history, defined as achieving a
skill/knowledge level of X in that field. Does this take 10k hours? Why not
20k? Why not 5k? How can anyone assume that just because 18th century history
has been defined as a particular "skill" that reaching some skill level X will
take 10k hours?

If you instead choose to master early 18th century history from 1700-1730 so
that you know the years 1700-1730 just as well as the 1700-1800 specialist,
does it now take you only 3K hours instead of 10K?

Does any of this math make any sense at all?

Since the concept of "one skill" is utterly absurd nonsense that is completely
undefinable, and the concept of "mastery" is equally undefinable and
meaningless, this whole 10k meme is nothing but marketing bullshit of the kind
that Gladwell mass produces in his shitty vapid books.

Gladwell is a hack of the highest order. He has never said anything
meaningful. This 10k hour meme is just another marketing turd he shit out to
mystify and flatter the dumb middle classes who read poppy trash like Gladwell
so they can call themselves literate.

Fucking disgrace that people take this seriously

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jack_trades
A graph since no calculator was provided. Zoom out a bit to get the right
scale.

<http://bit.ly/11wIBQo>

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TrevorJ
Couple flaws I see here: first, I'm not convinced that 10k hours is a
reasonable estimate given how vastly different any given discipline is from
another. Some disciplines allow for fast iteration and thus more practice in a
shorter amount of time, for one thing.

Second and more important, we need to remember that _none_ of us learn in a
vacuum. How much faster did you pick up programming because you already
understood the concept of grammar, and had taken a logic or debate class in
high school? Even in wildly different fields of study, there are dots we
connect, analogies that we construct, and skills that we posses and bring to
the table. It is reasonable to assume that we gain some efficiency in learning
new skills, by virtue of the masteries we already possess.

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psycr
How could anyone actually sustain such a rate of learning? Two hours every
weekday, plus an additional sixteen hours every weekend for 48 weeks every
year?

Life creeps up, and seeps into the cracks so tenuously occupied by free time.
Mastering but a single skill is impressive.

~~~
mrleinad
2 hours a day is not something completely unachievable. Hell, I spent that
time everyday watching some movie or just relaxing.

~~~
daok
Yes but if you work full time and you have a family this 2 hours per day
become rare. It's also important to notice that your body require to have some
relaxing time which is also needed to be in consideration. Yes you may remove
all "wasted time" of your day, but at the end, your brain will need rest.
Spending your whole life optimizing this time will just get you more chance to
get a burnout. 18 hours per week on free time is huge and hard to get once you
have children, friends, and social activities.

~~~
ternaryoperator
That's exactly right. As you get older, you begin to derive joy from things
other than mastering new skills. I understand the OP's original post was more
about time in the abstract, but the point you make is in fact the reality.

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vowelless
Somewhat relevant, "Teach Yourself Programming in 10 years" by Peter Norvig:

<http://norvig.com/21-days.html>

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mrleinad
5 more achievements to unlock before game over

~~~
kiba
Clearly, we need to hack the underlying codebase to allows more time for
achievements.

On a serious thought, if old people live longer, we have longer access to
their knowledge and expertise. When old people die, we lost some their
expertise forever. So if we cure cancer and other diseases, that would be
money well spent.

~~~
muan
On a serious thought, here's how to NOT lose elders' expertise forever:
<http://www.theamazings.com/>

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Felix21
With the amount of hours i work now i can master 3 new things by the time i'm
30. That's incredibly exciting.

