Why the 10,000 hours rule is dead wrong? How to make progress?

In this article, I am going to answer the question of “I have spent a lot of time on learning new knowledge but I feel that there is little progress — what can I do?”

This article consists of 3 parts:

(i) why the 10,000 hours rule is dead wrong?

(ii) How to break the spell of having little progress after a ton of investment of effort and time?

(iii) 3 magic to make progress faster in less time — IQL

Part 1: why the 10,000 hours rule is dead wrong

Most readers should have heard of the “10,000-hour law” that states if a person spends 10,000 hours on one thing, in principle, he can become an expert in that area. This rule is taken out of context of deliberate practice.

However, in the hierarchy of information, contents on the 10,000 hours rule would likely belong to third hand or fourth hand or N-th hand information. It is over simplified and polarised for the purpose of better transmission and channeling. Hence the value and nutrients of such information would be significantly reduced when compared to first hand and second hand information.

More details are available in <How to Learn Better in the Era of Information Overwhelm? — First hand, Second hand, N-th hand information >

Since this 10,000 hours rule is taken out of context, it is no longer a principle with wide application. Let me give you an example, farmers spend far more than 10,000 hours on the farm in their lifetime, but they are very unlikely make any breakthroughs. This is because the simple repetitive work of seedlings, cutting crops, and planting crops does not take 10,000 hours to reach the level of proficiency.

Most farmers have been farmers all their lives, and they have not done any thinking or research besides doing farm work (such as reflection or research on agricultural technology, agricultural mechanisation, commercialisation of agricultural products, etc.). There is no improvement in what they are doing, it is just pure repetition.

With repetition, there is no way that one can improve. A security guard guarding the gate has to work ten hours a day, which can easily reach 10,000 hours in total in 1000–2000 days, but he is still just a security guard, with little improvement in skills or income.

Similarly for reading or learning, if your goal is read 10,000 hours by repetition of reading the words of different books, you may find yourself with little improvement at the end of the 10,000 hours.

That brings us to….

Part 2: How to break the spell of having little progress after a ton of investment of effort and time?

I have 3 magic to break this spell, summarised as “IQL” -

(1) Intention

If the farmer sets the grain output target of 500 catties this year and 1000 catties next year, even though he may be doing largely the same activities, he needs to force himself to think about ways to improve the grain output — that is the power with intention. It inspires improvement to the next level.

If you practice piano, having the intention to increase the level of difficulty will allow you to become more proficient in your skills with more hours of practice.

If you approach reading and learning with intention, you will determine and find out whether a book or any material has the information you want before diving into it. And reading with an intention can facilitate application of a book.

(2) Qualitative change

When we set our intention, it is important to note the difference between Qualitative change and Quantitative change.

Qualitative change is a change in quality.

Quantitative change is a change in quantity.

We often hear the description of book readers as nerds sometimes. Nerd is not a good word, simply because it refers to those who have read countless books, but still have little wisdom, as their reading process has only quantitative changes but not qualitative changes. Their intention is on quantity not quality. More details in <It’s not about how many books you read>.

The 10,000 hour rule only focus on quantitative change — quantity can be accumulated. Yet quantitative change may not necessarily bring about qualitative change. Quantitative change can only bring about qualitative change when we consciously look for better ways to make the progress forward.

The key reason why one could be spending a lot of time and/or money on learning but still there is little progress is because what they develop is merely quantitative growth, not qualitative.

To improve qualitatively, one needs to look for strategies and methods. There are methods and strategies in learning. There are people have studied a language for decades, and yet their level is still average; some studied only for a few months and they speak fluently. For the same eight hours in work, most people only accomplish a little and get lost get distracted get procrastinated, some spend only two hours to finish the eight hours work and use the remaining six hours for self development. How can the latter do that? They have strategies and methods. More details in <5 ways how you can become an active reader> , <How to Learn Faster with The Feynman Technique> and the Bloom’s Taxonomy in <Happy Learning Plan for Those Who are About to Take Exams>

(3) Learn from others

Sometimes it is hard to think about strategy and methods on our own, hence the third magic is to get advice. Most likely, there would be people out there who have been through what you’re getting through and they would be able to provide the strategies to you (paid or free). That is why one element in deliberate practice is to find a mentor — someone who is ahead of you and can help you to find the direction and breakthrough. A good mentor is like a guide in Amazon forest — he or she can tell you which plant you can eat, which mushroom is poisonous, which animals you can touch on our way to where we want to be. When we have proper guidance, we can make progress much faster.

If you would like to know how to reap the benefit of deliberate practice, I would suggest you to turn to the first hand or second hand information. The closer the information is to the original source, the better quality it would be, and the higher the effectiveness of learning. More details are available in <How to Learn Better in the Era of Information Overwhelm?>

To recap, we talked about why the 10,000 hours rule is dead wrong? And how to break the spell of having little progress after a ton of investment of effort and time, which can be summarised to 3-word magic — IQL, namely:

- intention

- qualitative change

• learn from others

That’s the end of my sharing this time, hope you benefit from it. See you in the next article!

Connie is an Active Reader, Creator to 1 framework “Sustainable Simplified Soulful”, 3 programs “Rich Brain Installation, Knowledge to Cash, Easy Passive Investing”, Author to 1 book “Design your Day: How to Achieve More in a Day than Most Do in a Year”, Host at “Simplified Business Show” podcast. She shares about book recommendations, new learnings, and principles that she learned and practised in business and life.

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