Even if the 10,000 hours to be an “expert” is valid, you don’t need to be an expert to be successful.
You don’t need other people to validate your choices or your define your level of expertise or success.
Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?
291–300 of 305 posts
Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?
#292In 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…
Everywhere, no matter education, wealth or resources in general. DOers will always come out ahead. Not do it once but acting on your ideas regularly. Yes, some ideas will go wrong but at least you know the out come. DOers are those we read about all the time. Sometimes they are great other times they are not but at least they did something to find out. You never hear about those that did nothing. Maybe, we read their…
>DOers will always come out ahead. Not do it once but acting on your ideas regularly. Yes, some ideas will go wrong but at least you know the out come.
Especially if they are already rich.
>DOers are those we read about all the time.
Because nobody wants to hear about the DOer that failed and ruined his/her life.
>You never hear about those that did nothing. Maybe, we read their name in a grave stone.
And maybe they had a great family and their name will be remembered in the family for generations as the "founder" of the family. Almost a mythological figure.
Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?
#293I know this is just one person who was in a different time and under different circumstances, but I've found it inspirational to put age into perspective. Grace Hopper first entered computing at age 38, completed the first compiler at age 46, influenced the design of COBOL at age 53, wrote COBOL for the Navy through her 70s, retired from the Navy aged 80 and only then became a consultant for DEC. So for me , at least…
Grace Hopper had a PhD in Mathematics from Yale.
Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
I need 500g of flour to make bread. That doesn't mean I can make bread with just 500g of flour. You are trying to say that someone claiming 500g being necessary to making bread is hogwash because it doesn't also talk about the salt and water (etc).
Why is everyone so pessimistic? I believe that if you, sophacles, had the time, the determination, the money for 10 000 hours of tutoring of a grandmaster, and the mental/emotional/physical okay-being for the time, you could reach a grandmaster level in chess in 10 000 hours. Same for many many areas. (Polgar tried it, for a time his 3 daughters were the 3 best woman chess players, but this doesn't really count since…
I'm not disagreeing with you. In fact I'm pretty much agreeing -I'm saying 10Kh is necessary but not sufficient.
You are saying: 10Kh of practice + tutoring costs + (implicitly) not having other responsibilities to block the learning either directly via work or whatnot or indirectly via emotional stress.
That 10Kh is in your equation, but isn't the only part of the equation. That is it's necessary but not sufficient.
Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If you can’t afford to change, that answers the question. In my personal experience the greatest challenge is always oneself and not external factors. So your advice to drop all self-help is wrong in my opinion. There are people who made it against all odds and their mindset may crave the necesseary pathways in your brain as well. I would even say that the more the odds are stacked against you the more you should tr…
I personally suspect more people are harmed by self help books etc than helped. Which circles back to the kind of advice I would give someone. It’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming reading advice is inherently beneficial but it needs to result in some net positive behaviors or it’s just wasting time, money, and mental effort.
> just wasting time, money, and mental effort.
I don't believe it takes effort. On the contrary, reading self-help is basically a guilty pleasure. Otherwise it wouldn't sell in such massive quantities.
Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is cool. In construction? Do you plan on doing residential, industrial, or commercial? Do you have previous experience?I would love to build physical things for a living.
Yeah going to do some even smaller projects first like retaining walls and building driveways. There are different license levels and they require different levels of capital. The lowest level mainly lets you build residential and has a limit on the number of stories for buildings and the full price of the project. One cool thing I've learned so far is how complex concrete is. Eventually will ramp up to commercial af…
Cool, thx for the info. Best of luck with your venture! I'm sure being a technical person will come in extremely handy over and over again.
Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?
#297Can you not switch career, given that you don’t like your current one?
Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
I personally suspect more people are harmed by self help books etc than helped. Which circles back to the kind of advice I would give someone. It’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming reading advice is inherently beneficial but it needs to result in some net positive behaviors or it’s just wasting time, money, and mental effort.
> just wasting time, money, and mental effort. I don't believe it takes effort. On the contrary, reading self-help is basically a guilty pleasure. Otherwise it wouldn't sell in such massive quantities.
What else would you call all that chemical energy used up when neurons are firing etc to allow you to read and remember something if not mental effort?
Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?
#299I know this is just one person who was in a different time and under different circumstances, but I've found it inspirational to put age into perspective. Grace Hopper first entered computing at age 38, completed the first compiler at age 46, influenced the design of COBOL at age 53, wrote COBOL for the Navy through her 70s, retired from the Navy aged 80 and only then became a consultant for DEC. So for me , at least…
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Re: Ask HN: 10k hours rule to master anything. Could I switch career when I am 43?
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
> just wasting time, money, and mental effort. I don't believe it takes effort. On the contrary, reading self-help is basically a guilty pleasure. Otherwise it wouldn't sell in such massive quantities.
What else would you call all that chemical energy used up when neurons are firing etc to allow you to read and remember something if not mental effort?
All things we do requires mental effort. Laying in bed and daydreaming also results in neurons firing. So, I think we're just discussing the amount of effort. My point was that self-help is usually written is such a way to make its reading very pleasant and to actually be a dopamine hit - it makes the reader imagine all the potential changes they can implement in their lives, it pumps them up with positive message etc. It feels good to read it. However, in vast majority of cases, people remember and try to apply the advice for a couple weeks at most, and after that life happens, habits take over and they're back to their default.