10,000 hours to genius...

Category: Self-Improvement

Published: 01/12/2009 06:15 a.m.

I just finished watching a presentation from Malcolm Gladwell about what it takes to be good at something. It was very interesting. He touched on Fleetwood Mac, the Beatles, and then fine artists like Picasso and Cezanne. In the first bit, he makes the point that it takes 10,000 hours to become really good at something. In the second, he describes the two different ways that people can execute their genius. Picasso had original, innovative ideas. Cezanne learned by trying different things and eventually found his success through trial and error. The Picasso's are rare, but anyone can be a Cezanne with the right work ethic and attitude.

The number 10,000 is very daunting. If you focused on one thing at your job, and worked 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, it would take 5 years to be good at something. If it is a hobby, and you spend 3 hours every day working on it, it takes 10 years. After 23 years on this earth, I am not a pro at much besides eating and reading. What this number really uncovers to me is how important it is to spend my 10k on the right thing.

For instance, I have been doing some web programming and design for close to three years, but probably only 6 hours a week on average. That is close to 1,000 hours (which is far from 10,000). In that time I have worked with asp, php, css, html, and sql statements. So, maybe 200 hours a piece on average. What I have learned in these 200 hours is that things change. Online, there are new languages every few years, and to try and spend 10,000 hours to become a pro at any of these seems like a waste because by that time, the skill won't be as necessary or valuable. I'll be a pro at the old way. Besides the programming languages themselves, I have learned a few other things from these experiences which hint more at a 10,000 hour core that is worth focusing on.

I have learned how to learn better. If I could learn how to learn things for 10,000 hours, I could become very valuable because I could then learn the new things faster than other people, which is a big advantage in a tech world. I have also learned some fundamentals, which are language-independent. Therefore, I could spend 10 years programming and learn a lot about the trade that is not language specific. But, if I tried to dive into, say, ruby on rails for 10 years, this could be a mistake. The hope is to learn something that can move with technology, and won't get me stuck with an invaluable skill.

The other very important point that Gladwell addresses is that the path to a breakthrough or to accomplishing the 10,000 hours is completely relevant and necessary. He discusses a mathematician that works for 4 years to prove a theorem, then stops. He takes a new approach and thinks he has solved it, and another 3 years of work pass. Then, finally, 4 years later, he works on yet another method and ends up accomplishing his goal. Without all of the 'wrong' work he may have never found the right way. All of the things learned during the time working on the wrong thing were vital and important to finding the right way. Or, perhaps just the time spent thinking about it was valuable. Either way, all of the work functions as a whole, so instead of seeing two failures that lead to a success, there is a long path that eventually leads to a successful end. The failures are not really failures, but are ways to figure out what doesn't work.

Take a simple maze. Assuming you don't start from the end, you make find multiple dead ends before you finally reach the way out. The time spend to find the dead ends was not a waste, it was simply a way to reduce the possible right ways. But, out of this maze metaphor is another lesson that Gladwell doesn't really touch on. If you do not remember the dead ends, you may be destined to never find the real end. The work that goes into checking off the wrong answers is key to finding the right solution. The experience gained is also good, as it goes towards the over-arching 10k required to be great.

How does JMO relate to this?

On a more personal note, I find that I am very much a Cezanne. I do not have brilliant, world-changing ideas. I am OK with that. I do have an ability to get into something and start playing around and learning. I tweak little things til I figure out what does what, and then I build. I modify Nerf guns, sometimes opening them multiple times to really see how to better tweak performance. I have designed and built multiple websites and blogs over the years, and it all started with me changing the background on a single page site. One of my biggest strengths is my fearlessness when it comes to trying new things (food not included). I am not afraid to fail at making a website, because I don't have anything to fail at yet. All I am trying to do is learn.

As I progress into a professional career where the goal is producing I am finding more opportunity for failure. At the same time, there is much more to learn. In CARPOOL, I didn't just learn websites. I learned our protocols and methods inside-out (partially from re-working many). I learned how to interact with people in groups, and how to respect authority (mostly from failing first). I am fairly introverted, but I learned to make many friends. I threw myself into many sink-or-swim situations and quickly learned to swim (while sinking a bit at first). These kinds of attitudes will carry me to quickly building more career skills.

The other similarity I share with Cezanne is why I do certain things. I have been told by an art scholar that every line in a painting has a purpose. In the same way, I do almost everything with a purpose behind it. This is my strategic side coming out. I plan ahead and try to do things that lead to a goal. I see this as possibly my most valuable skill. Many people do things "without thinking". I rarely do this. I always have a reason, and because of this, I am able to take smarter risks. I am not stuck in a conservative mindset, and I am not taking hazardous risks. I make good decisions based on all the knowledge I have and am not afraid to do so. One of these days I am going to make a great decision and take a risk that will pay off in many ways. I'm not sure what realm of my life it will be in, but I am convinced it will happen, and this is why I believe I am special.