Mastering Skills In Under Ten Thousand Hours

There is a well-known book that describes mastery of skills as needing ten thousand hours.  The ideas put forth in the book have many arguments for and against, but that is for another time.  In this episode, we look at ways for mastering skills in under the ten thousand hours mentioned in the Outliers book.  This theory is critical for our daily exercises in getting better because we do want to reach mastery at some point.

Complementary Skills

We can assume that there is some amount of hours typically needed to master a skill.  Likewise, many skills are related in ways that allow us to learn multiple skills in less time.  The whole hours required are less than the sum of the parts.  We refer to these related skills as complementary.

For example, learning a third language (spoken or coding) does not take as much time as the first two).  We can essentially skip ahead on some of the required time by leaning on previous topics.  This benefit can come from identical tasks like the math skills needed in Chemistry were learned in prior Math courses or similar ones like the concept of language genders seen in many Romantic languages.

Reduce The Time For Switching Gears

There are many ways that complementary skills can work to our advantage.  We can also shift more quickly to similar tasks.  We can flip back and forth, writing Java and C# code or balancing our checkbook and our business ledgers.  Compare this to the time to switch from working a crossword puzzle to doing Algebra problems or even writing business emails and personal chats on Facebook.

Include The Pareto Principle

I have more good news for you.  We do not need to completely master most of the skills that we have in our quiver.  We can move from comfortable or strong to mastery when a skill becomes one used daily.  Foundational skills and concepts like object-oriented design, working with loops or collections, and boolean algebra require mastery to advance our career.  Specific knowledge like memorizing syntax for a language or which C# collections are best for a task do not need to be mastered for most jobs.  This approach is not a fake til you make it, think of it as an MVP approach to mastering skills. 

Episode Challenge: How long did it take to master your last skill?  Apply that to your roadmap and mastering your next skill.

Read more about advancing your career.