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Why 10,000 Hours is a Scam

Why 10,000 Hours is a Scam

10,000 Shots Not 10,000 Hours

Mayday
November 27, 2023

Why 10,000 Hours is a Scam

Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Outliers," suggests that the key to achieving world-class expertise in any skill is largely a matter of practicing for a total of around 10,000 hours.

‘10,000 hours = mastery’

Malcolm Gladwell, Author

People have based their entire journey off of this practice, thinking by putting 10,000 hours in, they will achieve mastery in whatever form they desire.

Chess. Music. Fitness. Art. Mathematics. Literally anything.

However, the basis of the principle speaks to a few things which explain the subtitle of this entry.

Quantity = Quality

‘I prefer quantity to quality’ - someone at some point in your life

Look at your favourite Youtuber’s latest video, then go to ‘videos’ and sort by oldest and watch their first. There’s a 100% chance that they improved.

Better lighting, cleaner shots, great storytelling.

But how did they learn that? How did they get to that quality?

Quantity.

The quantity produces the quality. The more you do it, the better you will get at doing it.

‘I don’t fear the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, I fear the man who has practiced 1 kick 10,000 times’

Bruce Lee

The 1st 10,000 hours principle is by putting in more hours, you are putting in more repetitions.

From these repetitions, your ability and skill level increases which in turn makes you better at what you’re doing.

Consistency compounds over time

You can take 10,000 freekicks in a day. That’s a lot of quantity. From that, you probably scored some bangers. Great!

But you did that once and were so sore from it you didn’t go back to the pitch the day after, or the day after that, or the day after that.

All now it’s been 2 weeks and you don’t want to take another freekick.

However, making this a more manageable number and consistently turning up on a regular basis will put you ahead of 99.9% of people.

It’s rainy and snowing and its dark at 5:45am but you made it to the pitch?

Congrats. Everyone else is asleep and now you’re an extra session of work ahead.

Do this over time. Be consistent. People will be better than you, smarter, faster, stronger, prettier, whatever it is but do not let them outwork you.

Outwork them by outworking yourself.

Make the hours count, don’t count the hours

Okay yeah, you put in 10,000 hours of work but you’re only marginally better.

Why?

Because you worked on bullshit.

You avoided doing the work because you allowed yourself to.

You put in 10,000 hours on shit that don’t move the needle and now you’re moaning about ‘ahhh it doesn’t work for me’.

No, it does, you just didn’t do the work.

This is where it leads to my theory on why 10,000 hours is a scam.

It’s not 10,000 hours = mastery.

It’s 10,000 shots.

Take 10,000 shots.

Release more music. Play more games of Chess. Try more makeup techniques.

You can watch all the YouTube tutorials, read all the books and absorb all the podcasts you want but if you don’t actively practice what it is you’re trying to get better at, you’ll never improve.

Take more shots. Take 10,000 shots. The 10,000 shots will eclipse the figurative 10,000 hours you were working on.