10,000 hours in days. The Hundred Hour Rule

Regular contributor magazine New Yorker Malcolm Gladwell published his third book last fall. Like the two previous ones ("Illumination" and "Tipping Point"), it immediately entered the New York Times bestseller list. We can explain the excitement of the public: this time Gladwell undertook to prove that geniuses are not born, but become as a result of hard work in your favorite business. Who wouldn't like such a theory? Forbes publishes excerpts from Gladwell's Geniuses and Outsiders, which has just been released in Russian by Alpina Business Books. Magazine version.

What we call talent is the result of a complex intertwining of ability, opportunity, and chance advantage. If white crows win because of special opportunities, do these opportunities follow any pattern? As it turns out, yes.

Twenty years ago, psychologist Anders Erikson, together with two colleagues, conducted a study at the Academy of Music in Berlin. Violin students were divided into three groups. The first included stars, potential world-class soloists. In the second - those who were rated as promising. In the third - students who could hardly become professional musicians, in best case- music teachers at the school. All participants were asked one question: How many hours have you practiced since the first time you picked up the violin until today?

Almost all students started playing at about the same age - at the age of five. For the first few years, everyone worked out for about two or three hours a week. But from the age of eight, differences began to appear. The best students practiced the most: by the age of nine, six hours a week; by twelve, eight hours; by fourteen, sixteen; thirty hours a week. By the age of twenty, the best students had accumulated up to 10,000 hours of classes. The middle peasants had 8,000 hours in their luggage, and future music teachers had no more than 4,000.

Erickson was then compared with colleagues professional pianists and amateur pianists. The same pattern was found. Amateurs never practiced more than three hours a week, so by the age of twenty they had no more than 2,000 hours of practice behind them. The pros, on the other hand, played more and more every year, and by the age of twenty each of them had 10,000 hours of exercise in their luggage.

It is curious that Erickson could not find a single person who would achieve high level skill, without putting much effort and exercising less than peers. Those who worked hard, but did not get ahead simply because they did not have the necessary qualities, were not identified. It remained to be assumed that people capable of doing better music school differed from each other only in how hard they worked. And that's it. By the way, the best students not only worked harder than everyone else. They worked much harder.

The idea that it is impossible to achieve mastery in complex activities without extensive practice has been repeatedly expressed in studies on professional competence. Scientists have even brought magic number leading to craftsmanship: 10,000 hours.

Neurologist Daniel Levitin writes: “The picture that emerges from numerous studies is that, whatever the field, it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve a level of proficiency commensurate with being a world-class expert. Whoever you take - composers, basketball players, writers, skaters, pianists, chess players, hardened criminals and so on - this number occurs with surprising regularity. Ten thousand hours is about three hours of practice a day, or twenty hours a week for ten years. This, of course, does not explain why some people benefit from classes more than others. But so far no one has come across a case where the highest level of skill would be achieved in less time. One gets the impression that this is exactly how long it takes the brain to absorb all the necessary information.”

This applies even to geeks. Here is what psychologist Michael Howe writes about Mozart, who began writing music at the age of six: “Compared to the works of mature composers early works Mozart are not distinguished by anything outstanding. It is highly likely that they were written by his father and subsequently corrected. Many of little Wolfgang's works, such as the first seven piano concertos, are for the most part compilations of works by other composers. Of the concertos wholly owned by Mozart, the earliest, considered great (No. 9, K. 271), was written by him at the age of twenty-one. By this time, Mozart had been composing music for ten years."

Music critic Harold Schonberg goes even further. Mozart, in his words, "developed late", since he created his greatest works after twenty years of composing music.

It also takes about ten years to become a grandmaster. (The legendary Bobby Fischer completed this task in nine.)

It should be noted one more interesting detail: 10,000 hours is a very, very long time. Young people are not able to work so many hours alone. Parents need support and help. Poverty is another obstacle: if you have to earn extra money to make ends meet, there is simply no time for intensive studies.

Silicon Valley old-timers call Bill Joy the Edison of the Internet. Joy rightfully bears this nickname, he founded Sun Microsystems, one of the companies that helped bring about the computer revolution.

In 1971, it was a tall, skinny guy of 16 years old. He entered the University of Michigan to study engineering or mathematics, but at the end of his freshman year, he happened to drop into the university's computer center, which had just opened.

The center is housed in a low brick building with a dark glass façade. Huge computers stood in a spacious room, lined with white tiles. They reminded one of the teachers of the scenery for the 2001 Space Odyssey. Dozens of keyboard punchers, which in those days were used as computer terminals, were attached to the side. In 1971, they were perceived as a real work of art.

“Growing up, he wanted to know everything about everything,” says Bill’s father. We answered if we knew the answer. And if they didn’t know, they gave him a book.” Joy scored an A in math when he entered college. “There was nothing particularly difficult there,” he says matter-of-factly. “There is still plenty of time to double-check everything.”

In the 1970s, when Joy was learning how to program, a computer took up an entire room. One computer—with less power and memory than your microwave oven—cost about a million dollars. And that's in 1970s dollars. There were few computers, it was difficult and expensive to get to work with them. Moreover, programming was extremely tedious. Programs at that time were created using cardboard punched cards. A key puncher punched lines of codes on the card. Complex program consisted of hundreds, if not thousands, of such cards, stored in huge stacks. After writing the program, it was necessary to gain access to the computer and give piles of cards to the operator. He put you in a queue, so you could pick up the cards only after a few hours or every other day, depending on how many people were in front of you. If even the slightest error was found in the program, you took the cards, looked for it, and started all over again.

In such conditions, it was extremely difficult to become an outstanding programmer. Of course, there was no question of becoming a real specialist in your early twenties. If you only “programmed” a few minutes of every hour you spent in the computer center, how could you accumulate 10,000 hours of practice? “Programming with the help of cards,” recalls a computer specialist of that era, “you did not learn programming, but patience and attentiveness.”

This is where the University of Michigan comes into play. For the mid-1960s, this was atypical educational institution. He had money and an old computer history. “I remember we bought a semiconductor storage device. It was in sixty-nine. Half a megabyte of memory,” recalls Mike Alexander, one of the people who built the university computer system. Today, half a megabyte of memory costs four cents and fits on your fingertip. “I think at that time this device cost several hundred thousand dollars,” Alexander continues, “and was the size of two refrigerators.”

Most universities couldn't afford it. But Michigan could. But more importantly, it was one of the first universities to replace cardboard cards. modern system time sharing. This system appeared due to the fact that by the mid-1960s computers had become much more powerful. Computer scientists discovered that it was possible to train a machine to process hundreds of jobs at once, which meant that programmers no longer had to carry stacks of cards to operators. It was enough to organize several terminals, connect them to the computer via a telephone line, and all programmers could work at the same time.

Here is how a witness of those events describes the division of time: “It was not just a revolution, but a real revelation. Forget about operators, piles of cards, queues. Thanks to time sharing, you could sit at the teletype, type in commands, and get an instant response.”

The University of Michigan was one of the first in the country to introduce a time-sharing system called the MTS (Michigan Terminal System). By 1967, a prototype system was put into operation. In the early 1970s, the university's computing power allowed hundreds of programmers to work simultaneously. “In the late sixties, early seventies, no university could compare with Michigan,” says Alexander. “Except, perhaps, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Well, maybe also Carnegie Mellon and Dartmouth College.”

When freshman Bill Joy fell ill with computers, it turned out that, by a lucky chance, he was studying at one of the few universities in the world where a seventeen-year-old student can program to his heart's content.

“Do you know the difference between punch card programming and time sharing? Joy asks. “The same way that correspondence chess differs from a blitz game.” Programming has become entertainment.

“I lived on the north campus, and the computer center was located there,” our hero continues. - How long did I spend there? A phenomenal lot. The center worked 24 hours a day, and I sat there all night and returned home in the morning. In those years, I spent more time at the center than in the classroom. All of us, obsessed with computers, were terribly afraid to forget about lectures and in general about the fact that we study at the university.

There was one problem: all students were allowed to work at the computer for a strictly defined time - about an hour a day. “There was nothing more to hope for,” these memories amused Joey. “But someone calculated that if you put the time symbol t, then the equal sign and the letter k, then the countdown will not start. This is the error in the program. You put t=k and sit at least indefinitely.”

Notice how many favorable opportunities fell to the lot of Bill Joy. He was lucky enough to get into a university with forward-thinking leadership, so he mastered programming with a time-sharing system, no punch cards; a bug crept into the MTS program, so he could sit at the computer as long as he liked; computer center was opened all day long so he could spend all nights there. Bill Joy was exceptionally talented. He wanted to study. And this cannot be taken away from him. But before he became a specialist, he had to have the opportunity to learn all that he had learned.

“In Michigan, I was programming eight to ten hours a day,” Bill admits. - When I entered Berkeley, I devoted days and nights to this. I had a terminal at home, and I stayed up until two or three in the morning, watching old movies and programming. Sometimes he fell asleep at the keyboard - he showed how his head fell on the keyboard. - When the cursor reaches the end of the line, the keyboard makes this characteristic sound: beep-beep-beep. After this is repeated three times, you need to go to sleep. Even at Berkeley, I remained a green rookie. By the second year I had risen above the average level. That's when I started writing programs that are still in use today, thirty years later." He thinks for a second, mentally doing the calculations, that a man like Bill Joy does not take much time. University of Michigan in 1971. Active programming for the second year. Add here the summer months and the days and nights devoted to this activity in Berkeley. “Five years,” Joy sums up. “And I only started at the University of Michigan. So maybe… ten thousand hours? I think it is."

Can this rule of success be called general for everyone? If you look at the story of every successful person, is there always an equivalent of a Michigan computer center or an all-star hockey team, some sort of special opportunity for enhanced learning?

Let's test this idea with two examples, and for the sake of simplicity let them be the most classic ones: the Beatles, one of the famous rock bands of all time, and Bill Gates, one of the richest people on the planet.

The Beatles - John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr- arrived in the US in February 1964, initiating the "British invasion" of the American music scene and issuing a series of hits that changed the sound of popular music.

How long did the band members play before they came to the United States? Lennon and McCartney started playing in 1957, seven years before they arrived in America. (By the way, ten years have passed from the day the band was founded to recording such acclaimed albums as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and The White Album.) And if we analyze these long years preparations are even more thorough, then the story of the Beatles acquires painfully familiar features. In 1960, when they were still an unknown school rock band, they were invited to Germany, to Hamburg.

“There were no rock and roll clubs in Hamburg in those days,” he wrote in his book Scream! (Shout!) band historian Philip Norman. — There was one club owner named Bruno, who had the idea to invite various rock bands. The scheme was the same for everyone. Long speeches without pauses. Crowds of people wander to and fro. And musicians must play continuously to attract the attention of the public. In the American red-light district, such an action was called a non-stop striptease.

“There were a lot of bands from Liverpool playing in Hamburg,” Norman continues. - And that's why. Bruno went in search of groups in London. But in Soho he met an entrepreneur from Liverpool, who ended up in London by pure chance. And he promised to organize the arrival of several teams. Thus contact was made. Ultimately, the Beatles formed a connection not only with Bruno, but also with the owners of other clubs. And then they often went there, because in this city there was a lot of drinking and sex waiting for them.

What was so special about Hamburg? They didn't pay very well. The acoustics are far from perfect. And the audience is not the most demanding and grateful. It's all about the amount of time the band was forced to play.

Here's what Lennon had to say about performing at the Hamburg strip club Indra in an interview after the band's breakup:

“We were getting better and gaining confidence. It could not be otherwise, because we had to play all night long. The fact that we played for foreigners was very helpful. To reach them, we had to try our best, put our heart and soul into the music.

In Liverpool, we played for an hour at best, and even then we played only hits, the same ones at each performance. In Hamburg, we had to play for eight hours in a row, so whether you like it or not, you had to try.”

Eight hours?

And here is what Pete Best, who was the drummer of the group at that time, recalls: “As soon as it became known about our performance, crowds of people crowded into the club. We worked seven nights a week. At first we played non-stop until half past one in the morning, that is, until the club closed, but when we became more popular, the audience did not disperse until two hours.

Seven days a week?

From 1960 to the end of 1962, the Beatles visited Hamburg five times. On their first visit, they worked 106 evenings of five or more hours for the evening. In the second visit, they played 92 times. The third - 48 times, having spent a total of 172 hours on stage. On their last two visits, in November and December 1962, they performed for another 90 hours. Thus, in just a year and a half they played 270 evenings. By the time the first big success awaited them, they had already given about 1200 live concerts. Do you have any idea how incredible this number is? Majority contemporary bands do not give so many concerts for all the time of its existence. The harsh school of Hamburg - that's what distinguished the Beatles from all the others.

“They left with nothing to show for it, but they came back in great shape,” writes Norman. “They have learned more than endurance. They had to learn a huge number of songs - cover versions of all the works that exist, rock and roll and even jazz. Before Hamburg, they did not know what discipline was on stage. But when they returned, they played in a style unlike any other. It was their own find."

Bill Gates is no less famous than John Lennon. A brilliant young mathematician discovers programming. throws Harvard University. Together with friends creates a small computer company Microsoft. Thanks to his genius, ambition and determination, he turns it into a software giant. This is the story of Gates in the most in general terms. Now let's dig a little deeper.

Gates' father is a wealthy lawyer from Seattle, his mother is the daughter of a wealthy banker. Little Bill was developed beyond his years, and he was bored in the lessons. In the seventh grade, his parents took him from regular school and sent to Lakeside, a private school for the children of the Seattle elite. In Gates' second year, the school opened a computer club.

“The Mothers Committee had a charity sale every year, and there was always the question of what to spend the money on,” Gates recalls. - Sometimes they went to pay summer camp for children from poor areas. Sometimes they were given to teachers. And that year, my parents spent three thousand dollars to buy a computer terminal. It was installed in a small room, which we later occupied. Computers were new to us."

In 1968, this was no doubt a curiosity. In the 1960s, most colleges did not have computer centers. But even more remarkable is what kind of computer the school acquired. Lakeside's students didn't have to learn how to program using the time-consuming system that nearly everyone used at the time. The school installed what is known as the ASR-33 teletype, a time-sharing terminal that is directly connected to a computer in downtown Seattle. “The time-sharing system only came into existence in 1965,” Gates continues. “Someone was very far-sighted.” Bill Joy had a rare, unique opportunity to learn time-sharing programming as a freshman in 1971. Bill Gates started real-time programming in eighth grade and three years earlier.

After installing the terminal, Gates moved into a computer lab. Buying time to work on the computer that ASR connected to was expensive even for an establishment as wealthy as Lakeside, and the mother committee's money soon ran out. The parents collected more, but the students spent that too. Soon a group of programmers from the University of Washington founded the Computer Center Corporation (or C-Cubed) and began selling computer time to local companies. By a happy coincidence, the son of one of the owners of the company - Monica Rona - studied at Lakeside a class older than Bill. Rona offered the school's computer club to test the firm's software on weekends in exchange for free computer time. Who will refuse! Now, after school, Gates took the bus to the C-Cubed office and worked there until late at night.

This is how he describes his school years Bill Gates: “I'm obsessed with computers. I skipped exercise. I sat in the computer class until night. Programmed on weekends. Every week we spent twenty or thirty hours there. There was a period when we were banned from working because Paul Allen and I stole passwords and hacked into the system. I was left without a computer for the whole summer. Then I was fifteen or sixteen years old. And then Paul found a free computer at the University of Washington. The machines were in the medical center and at the Faculty of Physics. They worked 24 hours a day, but between three in the morning and six in the morning no one occupied them, Gates laughs. “That's why I'm always so generous to the University of Washington. They let me steal so much computer time from them! I would leave at night and walk to the university on foot or take a bus.” Years later, Gates' mother said, "We couldn't figure out why he was so hard to get up in the morning."

One of Bill's computer contacts, Bud Pembroke, was approached by TRW, a technology company that had just signed a contract to install a computer system at a massive power plant in southern Washington. TRW urgently needed programmers familiar with the special software used in power plants. In the early days of the computer revolution, programmers with that kind of knowledge were hard to find. But Pembroke knew exactly who to turn to - the guys from the Lakeside School had accumulated thousands of hours on the computer. Bill Gates was in high school and convinced his teachers to release him from school for an independent career. research project at the power plant. There he spent the entire spring developing code under John Norton. He, according to Gates, told him about programming as much as no one told him.

Those five years, from eighth grade to graduation high school, became for Bill Gates a kind of Hamburg. Whichever way you look at it, he's got even more amazing opportunities than Bill Joy.

What is needed to achieve a result? Is it possible to constantly progress in any business or skill? How to become better? Now it has become an axiom of a widespread opinion: in order to become a super-professional in any business, you need to spend about 10,000 hours of time practicing it. It is indicated that this is approximately 10 years of life. Although if you count, I got 10,000 / 24 = 417 days of round-the-clock practice. Of course, this is unrealistic, so if we do something full time, 8 hours, then we get 417 * 3 = 1251 days without holidays and weekends. This is approximately 3.5 years. If we take a standard year, consisting of approximately 250 working days, then it turns out to be 5 years. Well, with a decrease in the time spent, for example, up to 4 hours every working day, the required 10 years finally come out.

It turns out that according to the “10,000 hours” rule, it is enough to work continuously in any field for about 5-7 years to become one of the best in this field. Super professional. Why doesn't this happen? Or even like this: why does it happen so rarely?

Who does not know what this rule is, can read about it in detail with many different facts and success stories, or read Geniuses and Outsiders by Malcolm Gladwell.

Neuropathologist Daniel Levitin writes: “The picture that emerges from numerous studies is that, whatever the field, it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve a level of proficiency commensurate with world-class expert status. In studies of composers, basketball players, writers, skaters, pianists, chess players, hardened criminals, and so on, this number occurs with surprising regularity. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to about three hours of practice a day, or twenty hours a week for ten years. This, of course, does not explain why some people benefit from classes more than others. But so far no one has come across a case where the highest level of skill was achieved in less time. It seems that this is how long it takes the brain to absorb all the necessary information.”

For the first time I started thinking about this topic a couple of years ago, and it was connected with Argentine tango. We have in Nizhny Novgorod I came to social tango practically with his appearance in the city. Therefore, I see and know, you can say everyone in this community. The first years, of course, were literally oversaturated, filled with novelty, everything was cool and out of the ordinary. However, over time, the impressions settle down, you begin to see a larger, more voluminous picture. And ask different questions. For example: why do some people dance over the years does not change in any way in better side neither in an embrace, nor under observation from the side? Is it really necessary to dance for 40 years, like the notorious "old milongueros", in order to become enlightened without learning, to comprehend Zen on the dance floor? And in general, will these 40 years help, because judging by the stories of those who have already made a “pilgrimage” to Buenos Aires, the number of good dancers (as far as I understand, regardless of age) is many times less than everyone else. And finally, a seditious thought - the same old or not so old, but very titled milongueros, personally, in my opinion, could often look much better: yes, they are surely divine in an embrace, but in 40 years I think one could learn not to clubfoot, not twist the body or casually use more variations in steps and elements (the same girl's uncommon front cross on her left side). Then a video shoot for dummies appears, you look at yourself from the side and ask yourself more interesting question: figs with them, with others, but why am I not progressing despite the colossal investment of funds, time and effort??

Why the 10,000 hour rule doesn't work

I already wrote a little on this topic earlier (). However, for some reason, I was hit again after reading the article "Debunking the Myth of 10,000 Hours: What Does It Really Take to Achieve Extra-Perfection Levels?" . The text is in English, besides, access is blocked by the state registry - intriguing, right? But for me, as a real programmer, this did not stop me. :o) By the way, if someone is interested in how to get around such things, write, if there are a lot of requests, maybe I will write a separate note on this topic.

Attention

Well, according to this article, the 10,000 hour rule doesn't work on its own. That is, you can go to work every single day for 20 years in a row, for example, to the library, and still not become the coolest librarian in the world, country, and even city district. Okay, you say, this is boring! And - no offense to all good librarians - you will be right. Indeed, the most important factor in any practice is not the time spent on it, but the attention. Even so ATTENTION. Performing the same actions without drawing your full attention to it does not give practically anything in the output, no progress. And the only real source of sustaining that attention is pure, genuine interest in what you're doing. Important not quantity hours spent in class, and their .

So I have bad news for those who are going to take on a boring job for him, become a doctor in private clinic, a lawyer or a programmer just because they pay a lot good professionals- nothing will work for you. Yes, the cool pros in these areas make really big money. But firstly, you won’t become such a pro, and the salary of a beginner or an average worker in these professions is not so different from the salary of a beginner or an average worker in others. And secondly, high-class pros get a lot in any field. Yes, maybe not as much, but also very well. If you like washing floors, it’s better to go work as a janitor or janitor - I won’t be surprised when in the end you can start a cool cleaning company.


And more about attention. It is artificially possible to call and maintain such a thing, but it is extremely energy-consuming. If there is no keen interest caused by some need or need, you will not be able to keep your attention on the subject, let alone 8 hours - 5 minutes in a row. Speaking of need, I mean the following thing: remember some of the most boring lessons at school or lectures at the institute. For example, I naturally slept on some objects, although my sleep is very disturbing and in general it’s not easy for me to fall asleep even at home in the evening, not like in a stuffy bright room with a bunch of strangers. All because I didn't need these lectures at all. It's incredibly boring to be forced to listen to things that you won't need anywhere. Now watch a man in love looking at his beloved. Or a cat hunting a dove. Is he attentive? Are you interested? What are we talking about! It's just embodied attention. :o) Is it difficult for him to maintain his interest? Of course no. Everything happens automatically, because it is determined by the presence of a need or a need that screams about itself (for example, hunger).


In fact, it is not necessary to become a starving cat in relation to your business. :o) Although it speeds up fantastically, it's enough that you like the process (not just the result!), it brings you joy, satisfaction and other positive emotions.

Okay, you say, I love tango. I have 20 pairs of shoes and a closet of outfits, for the last 3 (4, 5, 6…) years I spend everything I earn on lessons and festivals, I disappear at milongas every evening, where I don’t sit chatting and listening to music, but I dance almost all the tandas. Why am I still not Arce (Chicho, Godoy, Great Pupkini)? To begin with, let's discard the fact that 3 years is not enough for such a level - they have been plowing since deep childhood or for many years, every day - while you are working, and in the evening at the same dances. And there is another interesting thing about attention. The article provides an example of learning to drive a car. When you are just learning, the process of driving a car takes all your attention completely, you think every time which pedal to press, where to turn the steering wheel or stick the handle (we do not consider the machine). Over time, you gain enough experience, the body already “itself” knows how to respond to typical situations, this does not require constant support from the mind. Action moves into the realm of habit, routine. And the attention is gone. And with it, skill development. That is, upon reaching a certain satisfying or “good enough” level of mastery, the skill tends to go into background execution. Which is very reasonable and rational - if you are not a professional driver and do not want to become one, it is stupid to spend so much effort and attention on such a utilitarian skill in Everyday life. However, if it concerns the work of your whole life, it is worth periodically tracking the achievement of such a “plateau” in development and returning your attention to actions that you already know how to do very well. To learn how to make them even better.

Feedback

Second overriding factor development: availability feedback . All top athletes have a personal trainer. All successful - in any field - people one way or another have a personal coach, a mentor. Or a partner, a colleague, giving this precious feedback.

Feedback is needed primarily to correct errors. You yourself or someone else, preferably with great expertise in this matter, should look at you and say what and how can be corrected, improved. However, this is not all. At one of the seminars, I heard the term “feedback High Quality". What it is? In fact, we often get a lot of feedback, but in a hard-to-digest form: criticism, insults, swearing, and the like. And almost never, or very little, are we told when we're doing something really cool. The main feature of high quality feedback is the availability of information about what we are doing well. This is supportive and saves a lot of time, because often we start fixing something that is already in excellent condition, simply because it seems to us that "everything is bad."


The second feature is that information about errors is presented in the most “nutritious” form. That is, not a “crappy performance”, but “it was clear that you weren’t prepared enough, made too long pauses, didn’t get into the music, the partner hung over the partner” or instead of “what are you, some kind of skinny ..” you need say “your weight is not enough for your height and constitution, you need to build muscle mass, especially in your legs and strengthen your back”, or advise “you need to speak louder, look at the audience more often, ask people questions, hold your hands like this” instead of a completely vague "The lecture was so-so." It seems to me that almost everyone would like to know about their minuses in such a correct, productive way. If you are already "pumped" psychologically, then it is quite possible to extract the information you need from the "critic" by asking him the right questions.

Optimal ratio

Despite the calculations at the beginning of the article, it is difficult to imagine a person with unflagging attention doing something for 8 hours in a row. To put it bluntly, it's unrealistic. Even in the presence of great interest, attention, especially concentrated attention, is a limited resource. In other words, it is energy intensive. Using the scientific poke method, the most productive number of hours of practice in terms of price-quality ratio was approximately determined: about 4 hours a day (powerlifters and pianists are given as an example in the original article). It seems like exactly this ratio allows you to maintain an optimal level of concentration and, accordingly, the optimal return on training / practice. However, it seems to me that, like any “average for a hospital”, each person should adjust this position for himself, for his capabilities. Someone will give 200% in an hour, so don't worry mom, but someone needs 6-7 hours to really get tired and feel satisfied.

Hacking the mechanism

Although there is a very convincingly confirmed fact about 10,000 hours per practice, it is quite possible that this is not comprehensive information. Perhaps there are exceptions. Or something you don't see or don't know. You understand, I could not help but be interested in the project show of the already world famous Tim Ferriss, the author of an amazing book

Claims that this is how long it takes to master any skill of any kind. This rule has several implications:

Because it takes so long, three hours a day for ten years, one person can become a master in a very limited number of areas.
Since the time is the same for everyone, it is impossible to speed up the development process. If you have mastered something new and your competitor has not mastered it, you have a serious advantage.
The task of mastering any field of activity looks difficult, so people often give up. For every violin virtuoso, there are a huge number of people who quit after a few lessons, or never even started.

When working on a startup, it is very important to learn a lot of different things. A member of a startup must understand programming, interface development, product strategy, sales, marketing, recruitment. Failure in one of these disciplines can mean the failure of the entire company. For example, if you do not hire a good team, then a startup will not have the resources to implement its plans, regardless of the quality of the plans themselves. Or the product may be useful but not very user friendly or beautiful, in which case it usually has a hard time breaking through to the top.

What if you need to master all the necessary areas to perfection, but mastering them takes too much time?

I want to propose the "100 hour rule":

For most disciplines, a hundred hours of active study is enough to begin to understand them much better than a beginner.

Eg:

• Cooking to be a chef takes years to learn, but a hundred hours of cooking, lessons, practice, and practice will make you a better chef than most people you know.
• In programming, it takes years to become a good programmer, but taking a couple of courses with Codecademy or Udacity will make you a programmer capable of creating many fairly simple applications.
• It takes a few years to become a great salesperson, but by reading a few key books and following experienced salespeople, you can learn enough to avoid common dangerous sales mistakes.

I experienced an example with sales. Before I became a venture investor, I was a programmer for ten years. I had never crossed paths with sales and knew nothing about it. When I got into investing, I learned that for most companies, the bottlenecks were sales, marketing, and user acquisition, not technology. As a result, I became self-taught in sales and related fields. I read books like Traction , attended conferences like SalesConf . I spent 50-100 hours on this. And as a result, even if I can't be compared to an experienced salesperson, I learned a lot more about sales than people who don't do sales know. For example, I now know that most software should be priced based on its value to the user, not development cost. It's better to talk about the benefits than about the possibilities. And the most important thing in sales is to listen to the desires of users, and not tell them about what you have. A professional seller would make deals with 80% of potential buyers, a beginner probably about 10%. I think I would give out 30-40% in this case. Far from an expert, but also far from a beginner. Not a bad return on investment of a couple of weeks in training.

A few observations regarding the "rule of one hundred hours":

• 100, although a round number, is an approximation. In some areas, 10-20 hours will be enough to achieve average competence, while in others it may take several hundred hours. But in any case, far less than the 10,000 hours required to achieve mastery.
• The 10,000 hour rule is based on absolute knowledge - that's how long it takes to learn absolutely everything about an area. The 100 Hour Rule, on the other hand, is based on relative knowledge. 95% of people don't know anything about most areas of knowledge, so it's very easy to go from the naive 95% to the 96% category. The main and longest part of the path lies just in the interval from 96% to 99.9%
• Just as with the 10,000 hour rule, you need to learn actively and thoroughly. You don't just skim through a book or mindlessly repeat the movements of a technique—you read and practice precisely to learn and improve your skills.

Back to startups: make a list of things your company needs to be successful at (sales, programming, front-end development, domain knowledge, etc.). If you lack experience in any of these areas, don't brush it off and hope for the best. Invest some time into it to gain the basic knowledge and confidence so that you don't get in the way of yourself by making common rookie mistakes. In the long term, you will need to hire experts. But in the current situation, you need to invest enough time in gaining knowledge so that you can fill existing gaps in the project with it.

What we call talent is the result of a complex interweaving of ability, opportunity, and chance advantage. Malcolm Gladwell

Well-known Canadian writer and journalist, author of several popular science bestsellers Malcolm Gladwell in one of them derived the formula: 10,000 hours = success.

Many people think that if you were born a genius, then recognition and respect will be in your life by default. Gladwell breaks this stereotype by saying that anyone can become a guru in their field if they put 10,000 hours into it.

Malcolm Gladwell

The 10,000 hour formula is described by Gladwell in his book Geniuses and Outsiders. Why is everything for some and nothing for others? (Outliers: The Story of Success, 2008). The annotation to it says:

This is not a "how to be successful" manual. This is an exciting journey into the world of the laws of life, which you can use to your advantage.

The book, written in a very simple and lively language, analyzes the careers of many successful (for some, brilliant) people. For example, Mozart, Bobby Fischer and Bill Gates.

It turned out that they all worked at least 10,000 hours until their names became household names.

How Mozart Became Mozart

Mozart is a genius. This is an axiom. According to contemporaries, he had a phenomenal hearing and memory. He worked in all musical forms and succeeded in each. He began writing music at the age of 6 and gave the world more than 50 symphonies, 17 masses, 23 operas, as well as concertos for piano, violin, flute and other instruments.

However, look at what psychologist Michael Howe writes in his book Genius Explained:

“Compared with the works of mature composers, Mozart's early works are not distinguished by anything outstanding. It is highly likely that they were written by his father and subsequently corrected. Many of Wolfgang's childhood works, such as, say, the first seven piano concertos, are for the most part compilations of works by other composers. Of the concertos wholly owned by Mozart, the earliest, considered great (No. 9. K. 271), was written by him at the age of twenty-one. By this time, Mozart had been composing music for ten years."

Thus, Mozart - a genius and a child prodigy - really revealed his talent only after he had worked 10,000 hours.

Magic number leading to mastery

Malcolm Gladwell in the book describes an interesting experiment conducted at the Berlin Academy of Music by psychologist Anders Erikson in the early 1990s.

After studying the performance, the students of the Academy were divided into three groups: "stars", that is, those who in the near future are most likely to shine on the musical Olympus; promising "middle peasants" (will be widely known in narrow circles); and "outsiders" - those who are best suited for the position of a school singing teacher.

The students were then asked: when did they start playing music and how many hours a day have they devoted to it since then?

It turned out that almost everyone started playing music at the age of 5. For the first three years, everyone practiced hard - 2-3 hours a week. But then the situation changed.

Those who today were considered leaders, by the age of 9 were already practicing 6 hours a week, by 12 - 8 hours, and from 14 to 20 years old - did not let go of the bow for 30 hours a week. Thus, by the age of 20, they had accumulated a total of 10,000 hours of practice.

For the "middle peasants" this figure was 8,000, and for the "outsiders" - 4,000.

Erickson continued to dig in this direction, and established that there is not a single person who would achieve a high level of skill without putting in much effort.

In other words, achieving a high level of mastery in complex activities is impossible without a certain amount of practice.

Entertaining arithmetic

Gladwell, like other researchers, comes to the conclusion that by itself talent without regular polishing is nothing.

So let's calculate how much time you need to work hard to realize your magical 10,000 hours.

10,000 hours is approximately 417 days, that is, a little more than 1 year.

If we take into account that the average working day (at least according to the Labor Code of the Russian Federation) is 8 hours, then 10,000 = approximately 1250 days or 3.5 years. We remember about holidays and vacations and get about 5 years. That's how much time you need to work 40 hours a week to accumulate 10,000 hours of experience in one area or another.

And if we also remember about procrastination and constant distractions and honestly admit that we work 4-5 hours a day with concentration and efficiency, then it will take about 8 years to grow to the level of a master.

As a result, there are two news - bad and good. The first is that 10,000 hours is a lot. The second is that everyone can achieve great success in their work, regardless of natural inclinations, if they work hard and hard.

And another one important thought, stated by Malcolm Gladwell on the pages of his book. The sooner you start moving towards your goal, the sooner you will reach it. It is better to "start" in childhood. In this regard, few people can work 10,000 hours on their own - they need the help of their parents. After all, who knows, Mozart would have become Mozart if not for his father.

What do the following have in common:

• Composer Mozart,
• Grandmaster Bobby Fischer
• The founder of S.M. bill joey,
• Music group "The Beatles"
• Bill Gates???

Answer options:

1. They are all members of a secret enclave, representatives of a special nation,
2. They are very successful people, each in his own sphere;
3. They are adherents of a special esoteric cult;
4. They all paid for theirs: 10,000 man hours. They have all traveled a ten thousand hour journey to success!!!

Malcolm Gladwell and scientists Erickson & Co.

Speaking about the rule of 10 thousand hours, one cannot fail to mention the good popularizer of science M. Gladwell. What does popularizer mean? Gladwell very good writer, who took (takes) scientific research and presented it to the public in a convenient visual form, for which the public gave him fame and royalties of millions of dollars. Erickson & Co. official source such scientific research in this case.

10,000 hour rule

The 10,000 hour rule says:

“To be successful in a particular area of ​​activity, you need to spend 10,000 hours on such an activity!”

To be a pro, but not the best: you need 8 thousand man-hours.

To be mediocre, "in the subject": 4,000 hours.

An amateur, an amateur will spend 2000 hours.

Important clarification: you need to spend time not on studying activities, but on practical side affairs!

Circumstantial evidence ruled 10 thousand hours

• All of the above celebrities have proven this with data from their biography.
• An academician receiving an academic title, a world-class master becomes recognized, geniuses get fame - after 10,000 hours of relevant work. (By scientific research the same scientist Erickson and neurologist Daniel Levitin).
• To whom will you entrust your health into the hands of: a doctor who has recently received his diploma, or a gray-haired old man whose hands have been mending human hearts every day for half a century? The answer is obvious!

Why is it so? The path to success in 10k steps hours?

Of course, sadly, it turns out that the path to success is hard, difficult and time-consuming. You won’t be able to lie down today, and tomorrow get up already famous, rich, and some other with the word “super”.

1. All researchers in the field of psychology, neuroscience and learning indicate that a person is physically incapable of rapid change both physiologically and psychologically. (mastering skills is always change)

2. The brain, during training, grows in a special way, and it needs time (grow neural networks, in a dream).

3. With a load on consciousness, it may appear, with an underload there will be no effect.

4. On average, a person can productively work from 6 to 8 hours.

5. Natural needs and all others must also be taken into account.

In fact, you can mathematically calculate how much time a person needs to know "his topic" from A to Z,. Perhaps there is already such a formula, buried in the boring and dry works of scientists. It is then worth waiting for the popularizers to unearth it and put it on public display.

And let's count your path to success, in hours

Finally, the path to success is 10,000 steps in practice. What does it mean? (given physical human limitations)

to get a better view: right click, open image + ctrl

From the table: the conclusions suggest themselves, I underlined these conclusions with a yellow (gold) marker, go for it!!!

P.S. The other day I was reading a bestselling author, he, well, he clearly expressed that success began to come to him through 10,000 articles that he wrote. So, I have nothing left: 9,783 articles ... I will not waste time while you are reading and commenting on this post ...