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10,000 Hours
Friday, March 16th, 2012 03:10 pmI keep hearing about the 10,000 hours rule. In the unlikely event that you haven't been hearing about it as well, let me explain: the idea comes from Malcolm Gladwell in a book called Outliers, where he argues that to achieve mastery in a given skill, you need to put in 10,000 hours of work. (Well actually, it doesn't; it comes from Anders Ericsson, who did some research on expertise then published it in the Harvard Business Review, and Gladwell picked up the idea because he sure as hell wasn't going to waste 10,000 hours learning to be a best-selling author.) Or something like that - I don't know because like most people, I haven't read the book; I just latched onto that 10,000 hours idea, because 10,000 is a nice round number. It's also a very big number, which is why people often start by thinking "Wow, if I put in 10,000 hours, I can do anything!" but then either forget the idea immediately or realise what an incredibly long time 10,000 hours actually is. If you work an average 40-hour week, then you still have to work for five years just to master your job. Great, you are a master photocopier salesperson.
But wait, it gets worse. You will only have become a master photocopier salesperson if you were consciously practising your salesy skills during all that time. Coffee breaks don't count. Doing routine tasks without thinking about them - which is what most work consists of - doesn't count either. So most people probably aren't even masters of their chosen professions, though one would hope doctors are an exception here.
And there lies one problem. You have to work at mastering something for 10,000 hours if it's the kind of thing that takes 10,000 hours to master, which is kind of circular. If I allow someone to perform surgery on me, then I want them to have put in 10,000 hours of study, training and consciously reflective job performance because surgery is the kind of thing that requires it if you aren't going to kill people. I do not have the same expectation of the person ringing up my groceries. I learned pretty much everything there is to know about that on the first day of my first job. I also wonder if the 10,000 hour rule is just something like "Dunbar's numbar", the twenty words that Eskimos don't actually have for snow or any number that sticks in the popular imagination just because it's a nice number that seems to explain something.
Nevertheless, all this led me to wonder if there was any skill I had actually put 10,000 hours into mastering. I'd come pretty close with playing the recorder when I was twenty: my teacher, who tended to praise with faint damnation, said "You're playing virtuoso pieces, but you're not a virtuoso yet," which kind of implied that I wasn't far off. (And for people who think the recorder is a pissy little instrument for ten-year-olds, listen to this - I used to play that shit, man). None of the martial arts I've practised come anywhere near. In fact the only area where I might meet the 10,000 hour criterion is teaching. Not every hour I have taught could be classed as conscious practice, but most of it probably does, because teaching, like medicine, is one of those professions where you don't get to zone out much, and the hours where I have just told students to get on with something can be compensated for by the hours I spent planning lessons and reading about education.
So am I a master teacher? Well, maybe not, but I'm a hell of a lot nearer to mastering teaching than to mastering anything else that is worth mastering. In that case, I shouldn't be so disappointed that I'll be missing my capoeira batizado because it clashes with a conference on English for academic purposes where I will be presenting a paper. Sure, that is not nearly as much fun as doing capoeira for three days and getting a funky Portuguese nickname at the end. But while capoeira is something I enjoy a lot, it is not something I will ever master. On the other hand, at the conference I'll be talking to a bunch of people from around the world who know what they are talking about and still want to hear what I have to say about the gamification of EAP, which can't be bad. And compared to mastering the art of selling photocopiers, teaching is a pretty good thing to be good at.
Legal disclaimer: It is not the aim of this article to disparage photocopier salespeople. Selling photocopy machines is an important job which can only be performed by suitably qualified personnel who will not turn into psychopthic militia leaders after civilisation collapses.
But wait, it gets worse. You will only have become a master photocopier salesperson if you were consciously practising your salesy skills during all that time. Coffee breaks don't count. Doing routine tasks without thinking about them - which is what most work consists of - doesn't count either. So most people probably aren't even masters of their chosen professions, though one would hope doctors are an exception here.
And there lies one problem. You have to work at mastering something for 10,000 hours if it's the kind of thing that takes 10,000 hours to master, which is kind of circular. If I allow someone to perform surgery on me, then I want them to have put in 10,000 hours of study, training and consciously reflective job performance because surgery is the kind of thing that requires it if you aren't going to kill people. I do not have the same expectation of the person ringing up my groceries. I learned pretty much everything there is to know about that on the first day of my first job. I also wonder if the 10,000 hour rule is just something like "Dunbar's numbar", the twenty words that Eskimos don't actually have for snow or any number that sticks in the popular imagination just because it's a nice number that seems to explain something.
Nevertheless, all this led me to wonder if there was any skill I had actually put 10,000 hours into mastering. I'd come pretty close with playing the recorder when I was twenty: my teacher, who tended to praise with faint damnation, said "You're playing virtuoso pieces, but you're not a virtuoso yet," which kind of implied that I wasn't far off. (And for people who think the recorder is a pissy little instrument for ten-year-olds, listen to this - I used to play that shit, man). None of the martial arts I've practised come anywhere near. In fact the only area where I might meet the 10,000 hour criterion is teaching. Not every hour I have taught could be classed as conscious practice, but most of it probably does, because teaching, like medicine, is one of those professions where you don't get to zone out much, and the hours where I have just told students to get on with something can be compensated for by the hours I spent planning lessons and reading about education.
So am I a master teacher? Well, maybe not, but I'm a hell of a lot nearer to mastering teaching than to mastering anything else that is worth mastering. In that case, I shouldn't be so disappointed that I'll be missing my capoeira batizado because it clashes with a conference on English for academic purposes where I will be presenting a paper. Sure, that is not nearly as much fun as doing capoeira for three days and getting a funky Portuguese nickname at the end. But while capoeira is something I enjoy a lot, it is not something I will ever master. On the other hand, at the conference I'll be talking to a bunch of people from around the world who know what they are talking about and still want to hear what I have to say about the gamification of EAP, which can't be bad. And compared to mastering the art of selling photocopiers, teaching is a pretty good thing to be good at.
Legal disclaimer: It is not the aim of this article to disparage photocopier salespeople. Selling photocopy machines is an important job which can only be performed by suitably qualified personnel who will not turn into psychopthic militia leaders after civilisation collapses.
