10,000 hours: A New Decade Resolution

In his 2008 book "Outliers: The Story of Success", Malcolm Gladwell examines the factors that contribute to success. When analysing the careers of people like Bill Gates, The Beatles and J. Robert Oppenheimer, Gladwell repeatedly mentions the "10,000 hour rule", claiming that the key to achieving world-class expertise in any skill is to practice for a total of around 10,000 hours.

Whether you agree with Gladwell or not, the thesis is enticing. 10,000 hours and you can master any skill for life or career advancement.

I was gifted Outliers for Christmas this year, and though I have already read it, it got me thinking about how feasible 10,000 hours of practice was.

Given that we are entering a new Decade, it may surprise you to know that this breaks down to around 19 hours a week for 10 years. This means that if you were to take up a new activity today, perhaps as part of a "New Decade Resolution", with just a couple of hours each evening (or an intense Sunday) you would be world class by 2030.

I'm in the habit of starting (then dropping) New Years Resolutions. Two years ago I attempted the "run 1 mile each day" challenge popularised by Mark Zuckerberg. This year I am attempting to interact more with my LinkedIn community in order to 1) catalogue my own thoughts and 2) build a more rounded professional brand (perhaps my connections can let me know if and when it becomes annoying!).

But is it possible to set a Decade Resolution? Do we really know what will be important to us in 10 years time? I've been pondering these questions for a couple of days now. Where will I be and what will be important to me?

Clearly health is an important focus, and over the long term this will probably make more impact to me at 41-years-old than any single professional skill. But I personally don't really have the patience or desire to master one sport or activity.

What about languages? The world will become more and more connected and the generations that come after me will be international citizens. Despite recent political hiccups I fundamentally believe this to be true.

The CIA claims it takes 1,000 hours to master a new language. others have put this at 2,000-4,000. Either way, with 10,000 hours practice you could go from being monolingual to multilingual with a few hours of practice per week. And presumably by 2030 you would be adept enough at learning the structure of a new language that you could accelerate this process.

The great thing about learning languages is that this skill would be almost immediately useful to your career and life. Similarly, financial management would help me in my current career and, presumably, go a long way to improving my standard of life in 2030 and beyond. In 10 years, you could theoretically become as skilled in the field of fintech as you are in your primary career.

The same is true for programming. Though often seen as a young persons field, learning to code can be a fun activity for all ages. And in terms of career advancement, for most technically minded people there is no better skill to master. Coding doesn't only make you more employable, it helps you structure the way you think and the way you ask questions. As a scientist, the importance of this skill cannot be overstated.

I spend around 10,000 hours becoming a PhD level cancer researcher. From high school biology to Cambridge PhD in 10 years. Imagine if you had the same depth of experience in a completely separate but complementary academic field.

The trouble is predicting where you will be in 10 years. What will your priorities be?

Of course there is one major issue for me. I can't even stick to a 1 year resolution. I don't think I could commit to learning and mastering one skill over 10 years. For me, I will keep it broad. In the 2020's I resolve to remain curious. Remain a student in philosophy if not in occupation. There are just too many interesting things out there to choose to master only one.