20 hours or 10,000 hours to mastery of a new skill !

Sounds kind of ludicrous to compare, right? Well, we’re mostly familiar with the 10,000 hours to reach perfection or mastery. Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers has given us his research on studies of extremely successful people, violinists in Berlin, Bill Gates on programming, The Beatles in Hamburg, across the board studies and given us the 10,000 hours to perfection.

One fascinating point of his study is that no ‘naturally gifted’ performers emerged. If natural talent had played a role, we would expect some of the “naturals” to float to the top of the elite level with fewer practice hours than everyone else. But the data showed otherwise. The psychologists found a direct statistical relationship between hours of practice and achievement. No shortcuts. No naturals. The elites fall in love with what they practice to the point where they want to do little else.

So when I came across the 20 hours to a new skill, it came like a breath of fresh air.  Josh Kaufman, with his 20 hour theory disproves Malcom Gladwell's thesis of 10,000 hours. He of course speaks about mastering a skill for oneself, and not reaching the ultra competitive, ranked professional global circuits. So for a lot of us this really really helps.

When I had a few months between jobs I decided to put it to the test. 20 hours seemed so doable.  I picked three totally new skills and decided to give them the twenty hours each. Very quickly I also realized I was testing not just the theory, but also myself, as the sad and happy outcome is that it also calls your bluff :). You know what you really want and which you're making excuses for. My own experience..... I did it with hula hooping, and learning kannada, decently good at both now. The third was palmistry, at which I failed miserably. Not for lack of interest but for lack of resources, so it's now on the shelf, part of the to do list. But trust me, it works brilliantly where you want it to. 

You can apparently get to just about anything. You don’t need to have the innate talent, or even the 10,000 hour tenacity…..give it 20 hours and it’s yours to enjoy !