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Forget the 10,000-Hour Rule — You Only Need 20 to Learn a New Skill
Become good enough to reap benefits and even show off a bit
Soon after his daughter was born, Josh Kaufman came to a sad realization. “I’m never going to have enough time to learn anything new. Ever again.”
After all, being a parent is like taking an extra job that involves triple shifts. And so, Josh knew he’s going to lack time. Time he needed to learn new skills required to level up his business as an author and advisor.
But the young parent wasn’t going to give up that easily so off to the library, he went. Josh scanned book after book, looking for an answer to a very specific question. “How much does it take to learn a new skill?” And what he found was depressing. “10,000 hours.”
That’s a full-time job for more than five years. Luckily for us, Josh ignored the urge to sink in despair and pushed a bit further.
That’s when he found out the 10,000-hour rule was rubbish.
First, he demystified the 10,000-hour myth
Have you ever played the Chinese Whispers? The idea is to sit in a circle with as many people as possible and name a First Player. Let’s say that’s you. You’d then come up with a Message and whisper it to the Second Player, who’d pass it on to the Third and so on until your Message reaches the Last Player.
More often than not, errors accumulate in the retellings, so the statement announced by the Last Player differs significantly from that of the First.
Suppose your message was “Laura lost her lunch at the library last week.” It could easily become: “Laura ate curry for lunch the whole week.”
Funny, right? Well, not so much when it happens with scientific research.
The original message behind the 10,000-hour rule was, “It takes 10,000 hours of practice to reach the pinnacle of world-class performance.” The researcher who came with it studied top tier athletes, star musicians, and chess grandmasters. He was the First…
