The 10,000 hour rule doesn’t make any sense. And it’s harmful in a lot of ways.
It implies to be an expert in a field you need to spend 10,000 hours on something.
Expert relative to whom?
And have we asked ourselves what the value of being an expert even is?
Perhaps it gives some benchmark of “if I can make it 10,000 hours I’ll be useful to society”. But that’s a less useful mindset than just asking “what does it take to be valuable?”
Two counter perspectives:
How much do you know about how peanut butter is made? How long would it take you to know more than everyone in your neighborhood? Sure you may not know more than those who have spent 10,000 hours, but 100 hours may be enough to come up with a new recipe.
There are 260 million people above the age of 18 in the U.S. Per a Google search there were 490,000 #datascience jobs in the U.S. in 2018. That’s 0.3% of the population. I’m guessing most of those people compare themselves to the 0.3% of the population rather than to the 99.7%.
Value is driven by the problems you’re able solve and the willingness of someone to pay for those problems because they don’t have the time or energy to solve them for themselves. It doesn’t take 10,000 hours to solve 99.9% of problems.
Other thoughts:
The Great Practice Myth: Debunking the 10,000 Hour Rule • Six Seconds
#innovation #perspective #experts
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Bryan lives somewhere at the intersection of faith, fatherhood, and futurism and writes about tech, books, Christianity, gratitude, and whatever’s on his mind. If you liked reading, perhaps you’ll also like subscribing: