Ever since I first heard of the 10,000 hours concept in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, I've loved it! And especially his choice of those that had done the time (literally). Like the Beatles. I always wondered how many hours I had in to my writing, but now thanks to your efforts, Simon, I don't have to, haha. It really does make sense though. Also, I've always liked the way Gladwell thinks, and writes.
That's a lot of numbers building up to, "of course, this is all nonsense."
Obviously I do not subscribe to the 10000 hours theory. One doesn't necessarily need to spend 10 hours per day, 7 days per week, for two years and 270 days (give or take an hour or two) to become "expert" at a task. It will depend on the task.
As an example I'll look at my broadcast camera work. For this I need to know a few cable connector types (RCA, XLR, 4-pin XLR, 1/4", 1/8", Speakon, BNC/SDI, HDMI, Cat-5, fiber optic). Each camera will be different, but, for the most part I need to know how to trigger a recording, as well as shutter speed, frame rate, gain/ISO, focus, and aperture. I need to understand that an output on one bit of gear connects to the input of another bit of gear.
After that is the intangibles - knowing how to frame up a shot, and do it quickly. If I'm on a tripod this becomes quite easy as I'm just "swiveling my eyes" around a fixed point. Handheld gives a lot more freedom of choice (but is also a lot more fun). I suppose a lot of the intangibles would come almost via osmosis - as watching TV and movies should give examples of shots which work.
Now, don't get me wrong - it took a couple years to get to an "expert" level (make no mistake, I'm absolutely an expert), but that wasn't setting up, tearing down, and shooting 10 hours a day, every day, for 2 years 9 months. It was well under 10,000 hours. The 10k hours would probably represent over a decade of work (camera ain't a 9-to-5, unless you're working for something like a news station, and I was events and weddings). Unless we're counting all the movies and TV I watched as "learning via osmosis."
That's part of my dumbass skill set.
Photo work is similar to video, but has a few differences. Still, I can consider that cross training.
For people in, say, the medical field, pure research, hard science, yeah, it MIGHT take 10000 hours to get expert. I'd even argue it might take 10k hours to be an expert musician (so much building muscle memory so one doesn't have to think of where to put a finger).
But it's not going to take 10k hours to become expert at everything.
This ignores the entire question of base aptitude. Someone quite dexterous will likely find it easier to become an expert painter than a total klutz.
Oh for sure - I only included a tiny portion of my work wee for that reason. As for school, I tried to turn every assignment into a short story. Is that not something normal kids do? 😁
Not really, but I entertained myself in other ways. Nesting footnotes in footnotes was fun (an tormented my poor teachers - one told me to "Cut that out" when I nested 5 different layers of footnotes) (Online, nested footnotes become too many parantheticals, but, structurally this paranthetical would be a nested footnote with the prior paranthetical being the first footnote.) (This second nest is me being silly). Then there was the anthropology final where I ended every paragraph with the word, "tree."
I remember being assigned a task to write a half page story, the sort where you're only supposed to be demonstrating a single skill (maybe, setting the scene), and I ended up doing a 20 page short story.
On the one hand, well done little me. On the other hand, I like to think I've got better at understanding and following client briefs.
Some of my teachers loved me. Others hated and/or dreaded me. I'll be honest.
One who hated me... 14 year old Mike was assigned a 5 page paper on DNA. I was really fascinated in the topic, and did 30 pages with diagrams and illustrations and a snazzy binder.
My grade? (Note US grades are A, B, C, D, F, with F for "Fail" and "C" as "average.")
"This is graduate student college level work, but you didn't follow the assignment. D (barely passing, but substandard)."
Do you think I ever put any more actual effort into the class? I did not. I had that same teacher for a math class. End of year? "You aced all your tests, your homework - when you did it - was perfect. But you have an attitude problem. C-." The student before me? "You failed your tests, your homework is terrible, but your a good kid and try hard. C+. Sorry, buddy, best I can do for you."
Final victory over that teacher to me. I raised such a stink over that bullshit (with 30 witnesses) I got that asshole fired. Although the shit grade stayed on my transcript.
Still, school can absolutely kill creativity, work ethic, and joy in learning.
I've always wondered... Okay, check that. I've often wondered... No, that not it. Ah! I wondered for about three and a half seconds as I read this whether Malcolm Gladwell made a spreadsheet before he wrote the 10,000 hours book to find out if he had put in his own 10,000 hours of being a hack.
He popularised the idea, he didn't come up with it as an original idea. I read the book not long ago, and that was certainly the weakest chapter in an overall weak book.
I have not read the book, but have always found the 10k hours threshold intriguing and amusing, if not especially helpful. Taken as a benchmark it can be interesting, but benchmarks in and of themselves don't tell us much.
Ditto walking 10000 steps a day, btw, which came out of Japan, when those little plastic clip on step counters needed marketing. It was a nice round number.
Lots of things that people take at face value were simply made up, or are in fact science based, but are appropriated in weird and whacky ways.
Such a necessary post for today’s creators! I myself have spent so much time editing one particular novel of mine that I’ve gotten an entire education on how NOT to write my next one!
Consistency, I think, is the key factor to getting great at any creative (or otherwise) endeavor, regardless of hours ticked off, especially since those hours are never calculated in succession—we’d all be dead from sheer exhaustion long before reaching 10K if that were the case!
Nice article Simon.. I enjoyed the audio too! I wanted to say, if you mix that in with Oliver Burkeman’s 4000 weeks, you’ve probably got all the maths there to decide on what is worth pursuing and what isn’t..
Personally I’ll not add up all the hours behind the camera or in front of the computer and all the client visits as I’ll probably want a refund.
I don't write fiction, but I always find your issues very fascinating and capable of moving me and giving me new ideas and reflections. Thanks for sharing Simon. Fun fact: when you feel stuck about starting to write, are there any practices you implement? Something that gives you a particular energy?
I write fiction and when I get stuck I go for a walk or find animals in the clouds. That always works. For non-fiction or professional writing when I get stuck best to do something mathematical/spreadsheet or organizing something that uses a different part of your brain but focused on solving a problem. I’m an accountant by trade so doing bank or general ledger reconciliations will free up RAM on my creative brain so in 30 minutes or so of focus on a math problem I can see a creative problem easier. Hope that helps.
If you consider substituting the word “expert” for “mastery,” semantics it may be, but mastery can be considered a different level of understanding of a subject or profession. When we talk in terms of mastery, I also believe consecutive hours vs. cumulative hours matters. Where there is continuity the rate of experience and comprehension of a subject matter increases due to context and having consistent frame of reference that can be used to confirm premises and assumptions and reduce “error rate.” As a person experiences the full learning cycle of a subject matter the next cycle goes faster and faster until they have truly mastered a subject.
That’s a brilliant perspective Simon! I totally agree. Lots of black belts in judo (my sport) but we each master a different throw. Same in writing, we master and develop a style that is unique to us, our “voice.” Other writers may have a better vocabulary or use more metaphors, but eventually, if we work hard, we master a voice and style that we can be consistent with regardless of genre. Consistency is really what creates mastery. Great topic Simon!!! 👍🏽
"Experts" can still improve. The big trap of "experthood" is deciding one knows all they need to know about a discipline. After all, the field may change and advance. Sticking with broadcast camera, I started in the 1990's when everything was still SD and mostly analog (sure, the tapes may have encoded digital data, but the tapes still had to be captured in real time. HDMI didn't exist when I started.
Digital HD video made my life easier, actually. Shifting from multiple broadcast types (NTSC, PAL, SEACAM) with differing resolutions, pixel aspect ratios, and frame rates to a unified set of resolutions and frame rates that just work was nice...
I imagine 'expert writer' is entirely contextual and different for everyone. Also relative - I'm certainly 'more expert' now at writing serial fiction than I was in 2014, but the term 'expert' isn't really something you can self-describe a without giving off guru woowoo vibes.
Yeah, it's naff in any context, and not generally part of the lexicon for discussing writing. (Except, eg, 'he's an expert at conjuring foreign cultures with few words'.)
You're more skilled at serialisation after 10 years of publishing. You have knowledge and skills to share with others about that process.
I've never met an author who'd describe themselves as an expert, but I'm only talking about published poets and fiction writers.
Perhaps it would be appropriate to some non fiction writers.
I “did the math” on just my 100 word stories. Spending 15min a day to write each. I’ll be an expert in 438 years…if I did the math right. Yay! That’ll get me to 10,000 hours logged. I think I’ll still consider myself the Queen of 100 Word stories if I claim I wrote them and spoke them in my previous lives which rack up to well over 400 years, so since I turned 40 this year, expert I am!
Also, I don’t like the word expert (or similarly used “guru”) when it comes to my writing or sharing my journey. I like to think of myself as a guide instead of an expert. When I think of it that way, it reminds me that I’m sharing my “tips and tricks” to someone coming up behind me who might be looking for answers to questions I’ve figured out and therefore can learn from my mistakes or successes. In the same way I look to someone who is ahead of me to learn by the guided examples they leave to help me get there.
Excellent post! When I’m at my computer I will check out the spreadsheet. I live my entire work life, personal life, and home life in spreadsheets and pivot tables so I’m excited to see yours!
Man, I must absolutely kill at watching tv.
Yeah, and sleeping... totally dominating it.
Breathing. I am SO good at it. One of the greatest breathers ever.
Ever since I first heard of the 10,000 hours concept in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, I've loved it! And especially his choice of those that had done the time (literally). Like the Beatles. I always wondered how many hours I had in to my writing, but now thanks to your efforts, Simon, I don't have to, haha. It really does make sense though. Also, I've always liked the way Gladwell thinks, and writes.
Big fan of Gladwell too!
He’s just great.
That's a lot of numbers building up to, "of course, this is all nonsense."
Obviously I do not subscribe to the 10000 hours theory. One doesn't necessarily need to spend 10 hours per day, 7 days per week, for two years and 270 days (give or take an hour or two) to become "expert" at a task. It will depend on the task.
As an example I'll look at my broadcast camera work. For this I need to know a few cable connector types (RCA, XLR, 4-pin XLR, 1/4", 1/8", Speakon, BNC/SDI, HDMI, Cat-5, fiber optic). Each camera will be different, but, for the most part I need to know how to trigger a recording, as well as shutter speed, frame rate, gain/ISO, focus, and aperture. I need to understand that an output on one bit of gear connects to the input of another bit of gear.
After that is the intangibles - knowing how to frame up a shot, and do it quickly. If I'm on a tripod this becomes quite easy as I'm just "swiveling my eyes" around a fixed point. Handheld gives a lot more freedom of choice (but is also a lot more fun). I suppose a lot of the intangibles would come almost via osmosis - as watching TV and movies should give examples of shots which work.
Now, don't get me wrong - it took a couple years to get to an "expert" level (make no mistake, I'm absolutely an expert), but that wasn't setting up, tearing down, and shooting 10 hours a day, every day, for 2 years 9 months. It was well under 10,000 hours. The 10k hours would probably represent over a decade of work (camera ain't a 9-to-5, unless you're working for something like a news station, and I was events and weddings). Unless we're counting all the movies and TV I watched as "learning via osmosis."
That's part of my dumbass skill set.
Photo work is similar to video, but has a few differences. Still, I can consider that cross training.
For people in, say, the medical field, pure research, hard science, yeah, it MIGHT take 10000 hours to get expert. I'd even argue it might take 10k hours to be an expert musician (so much building muscle memory so one doesn't have to think of where to put a finger).
But it's not going to take 10k hours to become expert at everything.
This ignores the entire question of base aptitude. Someone quite dexterous will likely find it easier to become an expert painter than a total klutz.
Welp, I’m an expert at my day job… my day job isn’t “Author.” Dang it.
If the writing is incidental, not directed , such as schooling and work, shouldn't it be excluded?
I'm pretty sure millions of people have spent at least 10000 hours writing work emails, and we're all less skilled and dumber because of it.
Oh for sure - I only included a tiny portion of my work wee for that reason. As for school, I tried to turn every assignment into a short story. Is that not something normal kids do? 😁
Not really, but I entertained myself in other ways. Nesting footnotes in footnotes was fun (an tormented my poor teachers - one told me to "Cut that out" when I nested 5 different layers of footnotes) (Online, nested footnotes become too many parantheticals, but, structurally this paranthetical would be a nested footnote with the prior paranthetical being the first footnote.) (This second nest is me being silly). Then there was the anthropology final where I ended every paragraph with the word, "tree."
Ha, I'm sure your teachers loved you, Mike.
I remember being assigned a task to write a half page story, the sort where you're only supposed to be demonstrating a single skill (maybe, setting the scene), and I ended up doing a 20 page short story.
On the one hand, well done little me. On the other hand, I like to think I've got better at understanding and following client briefs.
Some of my teachers loved me. Others hated and/or dreaded me. I'll be honest.
One who hated me... 14 year old Mike was assigned a 5 page paper on DNA. I was really fascinated in the topic, and did 30 pages with diagrams and illustrations and a snazzy binder.
My grade? (Note US grades are A, B, C, D, F, with F for "Fail" and "C" as "average.")
"This is graduate student college level work, but you didn't follow the assignment. D (barely passing, but substandard)."
Do you think I ever put any more actual effort into the class? I did not. I had that same teacher for a math class. End of year? "You aced all your tests, your homework - when you did it - was perfect. But you have an attitude problem. C-." The student before me? "You failed your tests, your homework is terrible, but your a good kid and try hard. C+. Sorry, buddy, best I can do for you."
Final victory over that teacher to me. I raised such a stink over that bullshit (with 30 witnesses) I got that asshole fired. Although the shit grade stayed on my transcript.
Still, school can absolutely kill creativity, work ethic, and joy in learning.
All children start out telling and writing stories, then have creativity knocked out of them by the education system.
Not all of them! But I know what you mean. A lot of societal systems and structures seem custom designed to prevent free storytelling.
Not storytelling per se. The education system, from beginning to end, is designed to extinguish creativity.
I've always wondered... Okay, check that. I've often wondered... No, that not it. Ah! I wondered for about three and a half seconds as I read this whether Malcolm Gladwell made a spreadsheet before he wrote the 10,000 hours book to find out if he had put in his own 10,000 hours of being a hack.
He popularised the idea, he didn't come up with it as an original idea. I read the book not long ago, and that was certainly the weakest chapter in an overall weak book.
I have not read the book, but have always found the 10k hours threshold intriguing and amusing, if not especially helpful. Taken as a benchmark it can be interesting, but benchmarks in and of themselves don't tell us much.
There's no science to it.
Ditto walking 10000 steps a day, btw, which came out of Japan, when those little plastic clip on step counters needed marketing. It was a nice round number.
Lots of things that people take at face value were simply made up, or are in fact science based, but are appropriated in weird and whacky ways.
Sometimes it's useful to have a target, even if that target is entirely made up.
Yep. And every goal is made up. So ...
Such a necessary post for today’s creators! I myself have spent so much time editing one particular novel of mine that I’ve gotten an entire education on how NOT to write my next one!
Consistency, I think, is the key factor to getting great at any creative (or otherwise) endeavor, regardless of hours ticked off, especially since those hours are never calculated in succession—we’d all be dead from sheer exhaustion long before reaching 10K if that were the case!
Nice article Simon.. I enjoyed the audio too! I wanted to say, if you mix that in with Oliver Burkeman’s 4000 weeks, you’ve probably got all the maths there to decide on what is worth pursuing and what isn’t..
Personally I’ll not add up all the hours behind the camera or in front of the computer and all the client visits as I’ll probably want a refund.
I don't write fiction, but I always find your issues very fascinating and capable of moving me and giving me new ideas and reflections. Thanks for sharing Simon. Fun fact: when you feel stuck about starting to write, are there any practices you implement? Something that gives you a particular energy?
I write fiction and when I get stuck I go for a walk or find animals in the clouds. That always works. For non-fiction or professional writing when I get stuck best to do something mathematical/spreadsheet or organizing something that uses a different part of your brain but focused on solving a problem. I’m an accountant by trade so doing bank or general ledger reconciliations will free up RAM on my creative brain so in 30 minutes or so of focus on a math problem I can see a creative problem easier. Hope that helps.
Thank you a lot for the inspiration!
Hello Cousin Simon K.!
If you consider substituting the word “expert” for “mastery,” semantics it may be, but mastery can be considered a different level of understanding of a subject or profession. When we talk in terms of mastery, I also believe consecutive hours vs. cumulative hours matters. Where there is continuity the rate of experience and comprehension of a subject matter increases due to context and having consistent frame of reference that can be used to confirm premises and assumptions and reduce “error rate.” As a person experiences the full learning cycle of a subject matter the next cycle goes faster and faster until they have truly mastered a subject.
I like that. ‘Mastery’ also makes it a personal achievement thing, whereas ‘Expert’ implicitly suggests that you’re ‘better’ than others.
That’s a brilliant perspective Simon! I totally agree. Lots of black belts in judo (my sport) but we each master a different throw. Same in writing, we master and develop a style that is unique to us, our “voice.” Other writers may have a better vocabulary or use more metaphors, but eventually, if we work hard, we master a voice and style that we can be consistent with regardless of genre. Consistency is really what creates mastery. Great topic Simon!!! 👍🏽
Ah, left out a point.
"Experts" can still improve. The big trap of "experthood" is deciding one knows all they need to know about a discipline. After all, the field may change and advance. Sticking with broadcast camera, I started in the 1990's when everything was still SD and mostly analog (sure, the tapes may have encoded digital data, but the tapes still had to be captured in real time. HDMI didn't exist when I started.
Digital HD video made my life easier, actually. Shifting from multiple broadcast types (NTSC, PAL, SEACAM) with differing resolutions, pixel aspect ratios, and frame rates to a unified set of resolutions and frame rates that just work was nice...
Thanks for the shout out Simon 🙌. And as for the subject of this post, my friend Fiona calls it "10,000 hours of crying". Yup. Done that.
But you're really, REALLY expert at crying, Eleanor. That's something!
😭
I don't know what an expert writer would look like, in application (not appearances, although probably surprised, or startled).
Surgeons need around five thousand hours before they can open you up independently.
I imagine 'expert writer' is entirely contextual and different for everyone. Also relative - I'm certainly 'more expert' now at writing serial fiction than I was in 2014, but the term 'expert' isn't really something you can self-describe a without giving off guru woowoo vibes.
Yeah, it's naff in any context, and not generally part of the lexicon for discussing writing. (Except, eg, 'he's an expert at conjuring foreign cultures with few words'.)
You're more skilled at serialisation after 10 years of publishing. You have knowledge and skills to share with others about that process.
I've never met an author who'd describe themselves as an expert, but I'm only talking about published poets and fiction writers.
Perhaps it would be appropriate to some non fiction writers.
I “did the math” on just my 100 word stories. Spending 15min a day to write each. I’ll be an expert in 438 years…if I did the math right. Yay! That’ll get me to 10,000 hours logged. I think I’ll still consider myself the Queen of 100 Word stories if I claim I wrote them and spoke them in my previous lives which rack up to well over 400 years, so since I turned 40 this year, expert I am!
Also, I don’t like the word expert (or similarly used “guru”) when it comes to my writing or sharing my journey. I like to think of myself as a guide instead of an expert. When I think of it that way, it reminds me that I’m sharing my “tips and tricks” to someone coming up behind me who might be looking for answers to questions I’ve figured out and therefore can learn from my mistakes or successes. In the same way I look to someone who is ahead of me to learn by the guided examples they leave to help me get there.
Excellent post! When I’m at my computer I will check out the spreadsheet. I live my entire work life, personal life, and home life in spreadsheets and pivot tables so I’m excited to see yours!
I think about this as well. Feel like I should have 10k hours by now.