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Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

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Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#181

Post by fn-mote »

travisporter wrote: post #93
knorker wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two good reasons why Grace Hoppen should not be used as an example. 1. You are (likely) not Grace Hopper. 2. Computer science was, in a way, much easier back then. At least very different. Listen to the Brian Kernighan being interviewed by Lex Fridman; he keeps repeating that you didn't have to be as awesome back in his days, using himself as an example. Saying "If Grace hopper can do it, then so can I" is…

But (1) is suggesting only a woman at that age with those life experiences could have done what she did. I don’t see why that has to be empirically true

No post body was provided.

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#182

Post by memling »

Gladwell's 10k hours rule is disputed.[1] Assuming it were true, for sake of argument, it's not 10,000 hours to get good at something. The difference between bad and good is much, much smaller than the difference between being good and great at something. Josh Kaufman argues that 20 hours could be enough.[2]

All things being equal, make a change. I did this more or less accidentally (applied for programming, got turned into a systems engineer) and it was terrific. Feeling stupid is awful, but it's pretty good for you in the end.

[1] https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/anders-ericsson/1

[2] https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#183

Post by elforce002 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #17

If you're healthy and are willing to take the risk the answer is yes. Everything else is in your head. When I worked in China I talked to people who grew up during the Cultural Revolution and lost everything, then lost everything again during the turbulent years of the 80s and 90s, and rebuilt their life entirely again. They always used to say that when you're younger than 50 you can just start over and laughed at yo…

Thanks for sharing. Loosing everything looks daunting but you are alive. Get up and keep moving forward.

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#184

Post by elforce002 »

IvanaDora wrote: post #9

We fear change as we get older and we no longer like to take risks, especially if those risks can affect our earnings, stability etc. But if you sum up the currage, things can really change for the better. Go for it

Thanks for sharing. You're absolutely right.

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#185

Post by myheadasplode »

ghaff wrote: post #169
scifibestfi wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (ie the Beatles example is complete bullshit, gigs are not practice) Why doesn't that count as practice?

Because you're doing the same thing over and over and don't have a lot of latitude to experiment. Mind you, there can be some value in repetition starting out especially if you make regular minor adjustments. But for someone already at a high skill level, just doing the same old activity probably won't help their skills much.

Playing as a dance/cover band as they did (compared to, say, classical music), they had plenty of space to experiment. The critical aspect that's different from practicing with your band in a rehearsal space vs on stage is that you get to see how an audience actually responds to what you're doing, which is the whole point of the game. Every audience is different. A musician who's played 100 sets of songs alone in a room will have nowhere near the same level of insight as a musician who's played the same number of shows for an audience.

As an instrumentalist, I can choose to play my part ahead of the beat, behind the beat, right on time, I can choose to embellish my part or play it as written, I can improvise a solo vs play something pre-planned, I can subtly vary the intensity of my playing, all while my bandmates are tweaking their performance in real time, too. There's also the telepathy you tend to develop with your bandmates when you're unable to stop a show and yell about mistakes or forgotten parts :)

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#186

Post by MrsPeaches »

adamgordonbell wrote: post #137
iainctduncan wrote: post #114

The Gladwell book is so bad it's laughable. It's a gross misrepresentation of the work of Anders Ericsson, with completely unfounded extrapolations. So bad it prompted Ericsson to get a non-academic writer to work with him to write his own popular science version of his work, which is titled "Peak". Outliers is the worst example I know of of popular authors bending facts to make a narrative they want to tell. In a nu…

Here's Gladwell himself: There is a lot of confusion about the 10,000 rule that I talk about in Outliers. Practice isn't a SUFFICIENT condition for success. I could play chess for 100 years and I'll never be a grandmaster. The point is simply that natural ability requires a huge investment of time in order to be made manifest. Unfortunately, sometimes complex ideas get oversimplified in translation. I don't get why p…

> He never said it was either necessary (lots of music prodigies are world class in way less)

Gladwell:

"The point is simply that natural ability requires a huge investment of time in order to be made manifest" (emphasis added)

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#187

Post by spoonjim »

Bakary wrote: post #146
spoonjim wrote: post #139

The 10,000 hour “rule” is complete bullshit. I, for example, was a prodigy at art and a complete dunce at music. I got better at drawing much faster than my peers but I was more interested in music, where I simply could not figure out anything. Eventually that was frustrating and I gave up music but I can imagine that I would have been a world-class talent with 10,000 hours of drawing (I went into computer programmin…

Given Stable Diffusion maybe you made the right choice!

I honestly just didn’t like drawing.

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#188

Post by happyopossum »

ghost-towels wrote: post #160
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. You can be as confident as you like, if people won't take on staff as "juniors" who are older, then the whole process of retraining - wrt career change - has been a waste of time. I've never been involved in corporate HR, I'd want advice. Similarly, if I was doing a bungee jump for the first time I'd ask someone to check my harness ... (to spell it out, you seem to be berating someone for doing a reality check,…

This is pretty much where I’m at. I’m mid 40s and been working in the marine industry for almost 30 years (yes I started that young). I’m going for a career change but I have zero experience in a corporate/modern office setting. I am also self taught. It will be a huge change, and I’m concerned that I may not be hireable. All that being said I’m still going for it as I’d like the rest of my working days actually help…

> I’m looking into security/osint.

If you can breathe, spell cybersecurity, and have decent grooming standards, you can get hired in security. The 3rd is technically optional...

Get training, then take a crappy SOC level 1 analyst job to get exposure and experience - the hiring standards aren't a lot higher than your average call center at a lot of them, as we have a ~1.5M headcount gap in the industry. You will burn out or move up in 9-12 months just like all the other L1s, but you will either figure out it's not for you or you'll be able to get a foot on the next rung of the ladder.

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#189

Post by dehrmann »

david422 wrote: post #153
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #86

In my admittedly still short life, I have started to notice something: you can broadly divide the world into two groups - those who do things and those who keep wondering if they should have done things. So for what’s worth, here is my advice to you: drop Gladwell and self-help books, if you want to and can switch to a new job, do it. Should it work or fail, you will have experienced trying. If you don’t feel like it…

> those who do things and those who keep wondering if they should have done things. Yea, I've realized that if I want to do something - some goal - if you don't literally _just do it_ then odds of it happening become slimmer and slimmer.

To quote my old trainer, "the weight's not gonna lift itself."

Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?

#190

Post by ElijahLynn »

The 10K hour rule came from the research by Erics Anderson and you can learn more by reading his book "Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise".

It contests the generalized statement from Malcom Gladwell's writings and then the book makes sure to say that it it needs to be 10K of deliberate AND perfect practice (not just practicing incorrectly for 10k hours).

This book will prove that you can learn anything at any age, and it doesn't need to be 10K hours to learn a shit ton.

This is the first book I have my software student mentees read when they start. Why? Because it does one thing. Gives them hope.

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