125 hours later...

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Did you know that the famed "10,000" rule that made Bill Gates and Tiger Woods stars is apparently a myth?

Yep.  

Sheer determination and a lot of free time can't make you awesome (thanks for the info, Brain Picker).  Blame it on Malcolm Gladwell for this urban legend (and check out this for a good laugh).

According to Daniel Goleman, best-known from the book Emotional Intelligence: 

The “10,000-hour rule” — that this level of practice holds the secret to great success in any field — has become sacrosanct gospel, echoed on websites and recited as litany in high-performance workshops. The problem: it’s only half true. If you are a duffer at golf, say, and make the same mistakes every time you try a certain swing or putt, 10,000 hours of practicing that error will not improve your game. You’ll still be a duffer, albeit an older one. 

No less an expert than Anders Ericsson, the Florida State University psychologist whose research on expertise spawned the 10,000-hour rule of thumb, told me, “You don’t get benefits from mechanical repetition, but by adjusting your execution over and over to get closer to your goal.” 

“You have to tweak the system by pushing,” he adds, “allowing for more errors at first as you increase your limits.”

Essentially, you need to spend those 10,000 hours focused on improving your weaknesses, rather than repeating the same motor skill over and over again to actually become "great."

You know what's even crazier about this rule...


10,000 hours is the equivalent of 416 full days.  That's more than 1 year without sleep.

Lately, I've gotten into oil painting.  I've gone to class every week for 2.5 hours for the last year.  Taking out holidays, I'd say this is 125 hours of work, which seems like a LOT of time.  As a fully-employed individual, it's been a serious commitment on my part.

At this rate, I'd have to spend 80 more years to become a Malcom Gladwell expert and maybe even longer to become a Daniel Goleman expert, depending on how much I focus on improving my weaknesses.

In conclusion, it's really difficult to become an expert at something that's not school nor job related due to sheer the time commitment alone.  I think I'm bound to become: an excellent sleeper, a pretty good social drinker and a hobbyist painter (see some of my paintings below).

And, maybe that's perfectly okay.