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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?

#231

Post by Silverback_VII »

nsxwolf wrote: post #221
Silverback_VII wrote: post #195

Earlier 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…

"Sorry son, you're going to have to quit hockey because dad is having a midlife crisis and is going to switch careers" Is the problem here the external factor of my son's desires? Or is it a problem with myself, putting his desires above my own?

I think you will be a better role model if you show some courage to better your own situation.

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

#232

Post by iainctduncan »

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…

Ah but this is him defending himself after the fact. The book most definitely does create the "sufficient" impression, and deliberately, because it's such a nice story. This is attested to by the takeaways most people have from it. If they got the wrong impression, either he wrote it wrong or he's a shit writer - or both. Now he back pedals because he got called out on the bs.

Don't get me wrong, he's a very good story teller. But he's a complete crap "popular science" writer

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

#233

Post by teachrdan »

daveevad wrote: post #132
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…

My favorite Gladwell book to rip on is Blink. It is 296 pages long and the main point was one only needs a few moments to understand complicated things.

While I'm a huge Gladwell critic, I enjoyed that book quite a bit. But I disagree with your main point. I'd summarize it's conclusions as:

1. People make decisions very quickly -- like often in under a second.

2. These decisions are very powerful. 2a. Powerful in terms of accurately deducing things, and/or 2b. Powerfully emotional in how it sways you (not always in good ways!)

3. You can have some success in retraining your fast decision making.

This may seem slight, but I think these three main points are not necessarily obvious and are probably true. I've taken advantage of these by, for example, researching different mobile phones a bunch but consciously not making a decision until I walked into the store and I had a powerful interest in one of them on the shelf. That turned out to be the right answer for me.

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

#234

Post by [deleted] »

thebricksta wrote: post #211
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?

I studied a number of books in that field last year, and much of this entire thread is missing some key points. The learning psychology field often differentiates practice from deliberate practice, where practice is just about anything and deliberate practice is focused learning. In deliberate practice, you have to work at near your skill level, you need to apply proven learning methods, it should take maximal effort…

[deleted]

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

#235

Post by innocentoldguy »

I successfully switched careers at 51. The way I did it was to:

1. Figure out what I really wanted to do. 2. Build a plan to make that transition. 3. Test each phase of my plan and make adjustments along the way.

Since then, I've worked at two Big Tech companies doing what I enjoy doing.

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

#236

Post by twawaaay »

I wonder when people will stop unquestioningly believe this 10k hours crap.

If you spent a lot of time in one job there is good chance a lot of your skills are transferrable to the new one.

When I decided to change jobs I figured out I want to make good use of the skills I already had, supplement them with some new skills and create a niche for myself that is overlooked/unpopular because it requires skills that you can't normally find on the market when looking at people who spent their entire life doing just one thing.

Make the fact you are changing jobs your advantage, not your disadvantage.

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

#237

Post by shtopointo »

Yes, you can. You probably also want to take it step-by-step – i.e. test the waters before jumping in. If you are concerned about transition, take it slow: make a side project, then see if you can freelance on the side, part time it, then full time it.

Mastery will come if you have a passion for the subject, and probably will not come otherwise. No amount of perseverance will make you interested in something you are not interested in.

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

#239

Post by iainctduncan »

tinco wrote: post #136
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…

There is a much better lesson to take from practice theory, and that's the skill curve. You might see it and think "oh it takes 10,000 hours to become a master". But it only takes 10 hours of practice to become better at something than literally almost everyone at any task. And in 100 hours of practice you would be considered a worthy peer in almost any community. 1000 hours will make you a respected professional in…

this is on the money. How good you need to be to do a job for a career - if that career is not performing in some insanely competitive field like sports or music - is so, so, so much lower than what we are talking about when discussing the practice history of elite performers.

If you learn to practice correctly, and get a good teacher, you will be amazing to most people in 2000 hours - 3 years of consistent two hours a day of good practice produces a shit ton of expertise.

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

#240

Post by daveevad »

teachrdan wrote: post #233
daveevad wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite Gladwell book to rip on is Blink. It is 296 pages long and the main point was one only needs a few moments to understand complicated things.

While I'm a huge Gladwell critic, I enjoyed that book quite a bit. But I disagree with your main point. I'd summarize it's conclusions as: 1. People make decisions very quickly -- like often in under a second. 2. These decisions are very powerful. 2a. Powerful in terms of accurately deducing things, and/or 2b. Powerfully emotional in how it sways you (not always in good ways!) 3. You can have some success in retraini…

I enjoyed The Tipping Point and was excited to read Blink but did not enjoy it nearly from the beginning. It was simply too much cognitive dissonance for me to continue when your point 2a kept being explained.

Admittedly I did not finish the book so point 3 does seem valuable to me in a way I probably under-appreciated.

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