Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, “Outliers” has spread virally (as with many of his other books), and I’m seeing the idea that “to become an expert at something you need to spend 10 000hrs on it” bandied about on just about every personal and professional development blog out there. One of the most universal issues that I see entrepreneurs struggling with (and have struggled with myself!) is the idea of calling themselves an “expert.” The word “expert” is a loaded word for most of us.
So I won’t ask you to call yourself an expert, but let’s explore that 10 000hrs thing.
So if I have my maths right (and forgive me if I don’t because maths isn’t one of the things I’ve spent 10 000hrs doing!) then, if you spent 2 hrs a day doing something, you’d build up your 10 000hrs in a bit under 14 years. Of course, if you spent 6hrs a day on it, you’d have logged your 10 000hrs within just over 4.5 years.
Your 10 000hrs
So, if you’re struggling with deciding what contribution you can make, think about your 10 000hrs. What activities have you already spent 10 000hrs doing. And please don’t censor it at this stage – I’m not asking whether they’d be valuable to anyone else, or whether you can get paid to do it, or whether there are any other people doing it already. Just write your list of things you’ve spent 10 000hrs doing. And they can be things that are commonly considered “good talents or skills” or things that are commonly considered “bad habits.” Remember: no judgment!
Here’s some of mine:
- sleeping, eating (see, I told you, ANYTHING you’ve spent 10 000hrs doing makes it onto the list)
- worrying about stuff that could go wrong
- art-making
- writing
- reading books on personal development
- avoiding conflict and trying to please people
- interviewing people about their stories
- helping people with stuff they’re finding difficult
- avoiding grocery shopping or cooking
- multi-tasking
- managing my own fears and anxieties
- managing other people’s fears and anxieties
- teaching
Mine Your Resources
Now go through your list and note any of the things that you would previously have thought were useless or negative/ bad habits, and ask yourself, “in what context might this be a useful skill to have?”
For example, it’s useful to be able to worry about stuff that could go wrong when I’m in a risky situation and I want to be able to manage the risk – being able to identify the risks is the first step (which makes me well-suited for risk-assessment and trouble-shooting roles, such as the Child Protection work I did, and even the life coaching work I do now).
A lot of the time we assume that a particular behavior is ALWAYS bad, and so we don’t leverage the value of our “bad” habits that we might have invested 10 000hrs on. For example, if I were to ever open a customer service call centre, I’d recruit and train women from womens’ shelters (safe havens for women who’ve fled domestic abuse). When I worked with women in call centres in Cape Town, as a life coach, I noticed that a high percentage of the top performers had consulted with me in relation to domestic abuse in their personal lives. Women who have experienced domestic violence have often spent years being incredibly sensitive to other people’s needs and artfully dealing with difficult situations in an effort to relieve conflict and keep the peace. They’re often incredibly skilled communicators who can figure out how to pacify and please another person in a jiffy. So don’t discount the stuff that you’ve always considered to be a “bad habit” or a “bad situation” in your life – there will always have been skills you learned, because we can’t not learn.
So consider what this list of “expertise” is saying about the sort of contribution you can make, and what directions you could go in if you wanted to make more of a contribution.
Now you have a go – you may be surprised at all the resources and expertise you uncover!
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I hear what you’re saying, but you need to read the book because it doesn’t say this at all!
The key is DELIBERATE PRACTICE not just doing stuff for a long time, but CONSCIOUSLY choosing and practising the right things at the right times to help you improve your ability. I.e. hard work and constantly growing by pushing your limits.
10,000 hours is a huge amount of time. Have you really read personal development books for 2 hours per day on average for the last 14 years? And have you really interviewed people for the same amount of time? And have you really made that much art too? Where do you store it all?
I think you’re over-estimating how much time you spend on things and under-estimating how hard it is to become an expert.
I love the idea of looking for the gold in what we think of as bad.
But also, my feeling about ‘being an expert’ is that there will always be people who know more or who are more qualified and so on….there will also always be people behind us on the journey.
It’s passing along what we know, what we’ve learned, and helping others along the way – I’d rather learn from someone with that type of spirit and heart than someone labeling themselves as an ‘expert’.
But of course, that’s just my view.
All the best!
deb
P.S. It also disheartens me to see how many people don’t even try to do whatever it is they may have been meant to do because they won’t put work out there just because they don’t think they’ve fit some formula that makes it okay for them to do so.
Deb Owen’s last blog post..perfectionism (killing creativity & possibility)
Wow! I really loved reading this post. I loved Outliers and thought the whole 10,000 hours concept was so interesting (it definitely stuck out more than anything else in the book). I’m definitely going to think about what I spend a lot of my time doing. Most of my time is spent writing and that’s what I love to do so I guess I’m on the right track! :0
Positively Present’s last blog post..dip your toes into the moment
fears
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[...] … interviewing people about their stories; helping people with stuff they’re finding difficult; avoiding grocery shopping or cooking; multi-tasking; managing my own fears and anxieties; managing other people’s fears and anxieties … [...]…
I’ve come across the 10,000 hours idea before and Outliers is on my ever growing reading list. After putting some thought into this, I found myself putting in the hours on certain activities, but as anonymous said it is the deliberateness of an activity that is the key. Not merely doing it as a perfunctory duty.
To become an expert one needs to make a conscious deliberate effort toward that end. Back in the last century they used to call that practice and hard work!
Sean’s last blog post..Simple Single Tasking
@anon, @Sean: You and Sean are spot-on: deliberate practice will accelerate your learning (coaching is a lot about accelerating growth through deliberate reflection and focused action, isn’t it?)…
AND… the other perspective I wanted to encourage in this post was that unconscious repetition, over time also builds skill. And that when we’re creating results we don’t want (in the areas of our life that are not going well), we’re using skills to do that. And that a skill that you’ve been using to create the results you don’t want (in that area of your life that’s not going well) might be useful in creating the results you do want in another area of your life.
For example, women I’ve worked with who’ve been in abused relationships don’t seem to have deliberately tried to practice being peace-keepers and tuning into someone else’s needs, but their unconscious repetition of those ways of thinking and behaviours over time made them very skillful at it. I wanted to highlight how we often don’t realise the skills we’ve unconsciously developed in some areas of our lives – partly because we didn’t try to deliberately learn that stuff, or because we’ve labeled that area of our life “unsuccessful.”
The post was about mining your resources from unexpected places, rather than an attempt to call myself an “expert” – yuck! (hope that’s not how it came across!) I don’t care much for the term “expert,” but I do care a lot about people being fully self-expressed and making their contribution, based on skills they’ve already developed, and are committed to continuing to develop.
@Deb: I’m with you on your definition of expertise – it’s all relative. And I agree that it’s sad to watch people holding their contribution back for fear that they’ve not met some criteria that society says they have to meet. I hope Gladwell’s 10 000hrs doesn’t become yet another “rule” that holds people back.
@Dani: It rocks that you’re out there doing what you love and building your skills at the same time – growing your contribution you’re able to make. Keep on at it!
Thanks for joining the discussion, guys, and helping unpack these ideas!
Cath
CathD’s last blog post..Leading Your Life: Your 10 000hrs
What I loved about this post (and the comments!) is how it got me thinking about where I do put my time and how I feel about my level of experience.
For example, I’m coming up on my 14th wedding anniversary. I may not have made 2 hours of effort EVERY day
but I do think I understand some things about marriage, or at least my husband.
With technology I’m way past the 25,000 hours level and I would definitely claim mastery in that area but I still know that there is so much to learn, especially as it is field that changes so rapidly.
Thanks for your ideas, Cath – I always appreciate you offering your own fresh lens.
Laurie Foley’s last blog post..Is The Flexibility of Working For Yourself Driving You Crazy?
[...] Leading Your Life: Your 10,ooohrs- From mine your resources. Cath has a fascinating post about the concept of 10,00 hours to become an expert, as put forth in Outliers, by Malcom Gladwell. If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed! Filed under:Uncategorized [...]
YES, I’m and expert sleeper…. to bad every other person on the globe who is five years old is already an expert in that field.
Somehow 10.000 hours don’t sound so much but I just realized something. Getting a master’s degree takes 5 years or work, around 8 hours a day 5 days a week. If you spend 40 weeks a year studying you’re up at 8000 hours, and a lot of those hours are deliberate. You aren’t training to become a master, you’re becoming an expert.
I wrote a small blogpost on this subject a while back but I forgot the title of the book. (Besides, I was reading it in Dutch, local library doesn’t have English books in these subjects. ) So I almost downtalked Malcomb. “Some book somewhere” when referring to a bestseller somehow seems strange.
Great article Cath, I’m looking forward to more of these gems.
Cath – This is the first I have heard of the 10,000 hours concept and I have spent lots of time thinking about it since reading this post. Thx!
Jessica Ryan’s last blog post..Be a WYSIWYG!
@Laurie: “I’m coming up on my 14th wedding anniversary. I may not have made 2 hours of effort EVERY day
but I do think I understand some things about marriage, or at least my husband.”
Love this! And since we’re coming up for our tenth wedding anniversary this year, I think I’ll add that to my list. We’ve not had a TV for most of our married life, so we spend at least 4hrs a day with each other.
So here’s a question for you all, sparked by Laurie’s thought on marriage – if those hours were initially “deliberate effort” (as they often are at the beginning of marriage or any other learning journey), but later become unconconscious competence and they don’t feel like effort or deliberateness at all, then how does that link with the 10 000hrs thing. Because isn’t there always a point in learning/ developing your expertise when you become unconsciously competent and you no longer have to deliberately do things/ think a certain way because it just flows naturally and habitually.
What do you guys think?
CathD’s last blog post..Leading Your Life: How is the World Broken?