Teach Yourself Anything in 10000 hours
Friday, August 28th, 2009
During my holidays, on a beautiful spot by the river, i had the opportunity to finish The Talent Code. This nice book brings empirical evidence and scientific foundations to something i have felt for quite some time:
Talent isn’t born, it’s grown.
Actually this has been something known to humanity for at least a century and it’s best explained by this quote from Thomas Edison:
Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration
The point is that becoming great at something is largely a matter of the amount and quality of practice one does. While God given talent can only boost this process, but it’s by no means the most influential factor.
About the amount of practice, there’s the old “Ten Years Rule” and a more refined study by Anders Ericsson who sets in 10000 hours of committed practice the time taken to achieve expert level. From the Pomodoro Technique, we know one can do about 5 hours/day of efficient work (10 pomodoros). That means 5 years and a half, 5 hours every day of hard work could be a good guess to the question “How long does it take?”.
About the quality of practice, the book calls the good one “deep practice”
working on technique, seeking constant critical feedback and focusing ruthlessly on shoring up weaknesses
So deep practice has a pretty simple recipe:
- practice just beyond your current ability
- focus on errors
- fix them
- repeat
Basically, it’s tenacious, steady continuous improvement, so it’s not surprising Kaizen is mentioned in the book.
In the end, we are left with two news: one bad, one awesome. The bad one is if you fail to reach master level in a discipline you care of, there’s no one to blame but yourself. Sadly, you got to take responsibility even for that. But the awesome news is you can really become what you want be. Just keep working.
Let’s close with this sweet advice from great italian poet Giovanni Papini
Chiunque, purché sappia chiaramente cosa vuol divenire e non perda un solo secondo della sua vita, può issarsi al livello di coloro che dettano le leggi alle cose e che creano vite più degne. (Da “Diventar Genio” – 1912)
and my rough translation
Anyone, as long as he clearly knows what he wants to become and doesn’t waste a single second of his life, can raise himself to the level of those who lay down the law of things and create more worthy lives (From “Becoming Genius” – 1912)