(no subject)

[lethargic_man]

I have read, in more than one place, that you can't become expert in anything without putting in I think it was ten thousand hours of practice. (To the objection "what about child prodigies like Mozart or Stevie Wonder?", the response was given that they were only prodigious as children for their age: had Mozart died as a child, no one would remember him today.)

I find this rather depressing: it means that I will now almost certainly never become an expert at anything again (except, probably, at work): I don't have the willpower to climb that hill again in my spare time. Certainly not after seeing the dream I poured thousands upon thousands of hours into in my teens and twenties deliver next to zero results.

*sigh* Is it really all downhill from here?

Discuss. [20 marks]

Comments

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

I have heard it said that success is 80% practice, 15% talent, and 5% luck. Perhaps you are mixing up expertise and (commercial/public) success? You seem to be very good at many things, after all. Is that so bad?

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you are mixing up expertise and (commercial/public) success?

I think you're right, there.

You seem to be very good at many things, after all. Is that so bad?

Well, more like jack of many trades, and master of none.

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

I thought you are master of your profession.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

I did except work at the top. I also said I would not become an expert at anything else; not that I'm not an expert at anything now. But it wasn't really work I was thinking of. (And even then, I'm only an expert in a very narrow field; in the wider realm of software engineering I don't regard myself as outstanding.)

[rav-hadassah.livejournal.com]

Don't sell yourself short! You are totally multi-talented!

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

I'm having difficulty in thinking of anything apart from my work in which I'm not less than top-notch. My writing isn't a patch on rysmiel's, I'll happily cede service-taking for the flagship Mussaf service to people who sing better, my foreign languages are all rusty, my calligraphy is wobbly, my instrument playing buried in the ashes of the last century, my web-crafting stuck in 1996, my cookery of varying quality (though admittedly often the problem is getting it to last in good condition and hot to Shabbos lunch), my candle-making scarcely suitable for public display, my photography indifferent, and for a bibliophile I fail to spot a lot of what goes on below the surface in a good novel. I suppose I can put together a talk and present it reasonably well in front of a crowd without stage-fright (though I've never tried in front of a large crowd), but I haven't done that much.

So what were you thinking about?

I suppose one thing I'm unintentionally good at is fooling people into thinking I know more about a subject than I do...

[rav-hadassah.livejournal.com]

I think you've mentioned many of your talents, not forgetting your encyclopedic knowledge on a lot of things. Knowledge isn't a binary system so stop selling yourself short. It's not a yes or no situation. You have a lot of gifts: you have a Ph.D. Be grateful for what you have and don't despair over what you don't because of some stupid piece of data.

This is why it's hard to quantify the social sciences. Just look at what happens when you do!

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

The other way of looking at it is that a field of expertise as it applies to humans is just the amount of stuff that one person one person can master in ten years/10K hours. Anything that's too big to master in that time just gets split down into subfields. Anything that's too small, just gets expanded as the experts within the field raise the bar higher and higher.

So, looking at it that way, you could still become an expert in less that 10K hours if you can find a new field that no-one else has gotten around to putting the hours into yet.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

the other way of looking at it is that a field of expertise as it applies to humans is just the amount of stuff that one person one person can master in ten years/10K hours

Hmm; if a PhD seems is a reasonable signifier of "expert in this field" (if sometimes for fairly small values of "field") does the work to get to that, being whatever fraction of one's undergraduate work is pointing in that direction plus the graduate study entailed, come out of the order of 10 Khours ? Back-of-a-metaphorical envelope calculation looks like that for me, though I would have guessed it was less than that.

[rav-hadassah.livejournal.com]

I think it's rubbish.

Set foot in a shul for the first time in 2001/2002 when I was about 23. Flaked in learning Hebrew for years. Only started really learning in 2006, and even that wasn't a great class. Took a summer ulpan in 2008 and now I am in rabbinical school and starting Gemara this semester.

I didn't grow up with any of this and my skills are almost as good as those who did. So there. I think it's rubbish and don't let it deter you.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Mmm. Decides how big a field you're talking about, I suppose. Small fields can be mastered in less time.

[rav-hadassah.livejournal.com]

I'm not just talking Hebrew here. I'm talking Judaic knowledge in general. Studying texts, Mishnah, Halacha, Jewish Philosophy won't do without knowing context. It's a big field.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

For reference, Black Belt (1^st Dan) in a Budo art requires about a thousand hours of taught practice, and two to three times that of solo and 'free' practice (ie: sparring or equivalent activity with a practice partner in the dojo to consolidate the taught lesson).

That level represents competence to teach beginners; 2^nd Dan is about the same amount of work, third is as much again or twice that.

piffle

[bluepork.livejournal.com]

I think this comes from a number of studies in which, typically, professional classical musicians were asked to estimate the number of hours practice they had done between when they started learning their instrument and age 16. I learnt this from a programme called The Making of Me about where Vanessa Mae got her skills from and she estimated the figure to be about 7,000. Apparently, this is in the middle of the range. (By comparison, I reckon my own figure would be more like 3,500, but I'm not half the musician she is!)

However, there's a lot of evidence to say that this doesn't count for anything, which is why this particular programme was fascinating. Look at the third myth - "children learn faster than adults" on this page for anecdotal evidence to the contrary:

http://www.soundfeelings.com/free/piano_myths.htm

Now, you may be a rubbish candle maker, but I don't know any better ones, the point being that there may be something that you are great at that you haven't even tried. Here's a list of people who became famous after age 40:

http://www.rankopedia.com/ZoneID=3/23117/Step1/3768.htm

Admittedly, a lot of these are actors that you might not know, but Barak Obama (or Baruch Ovromolech as we like to refer to him as), ruler of the America and the free world, is on the list. There's even Simon Cowell!

Ah, but you are not yet 40, you say. Well, here's some accomplishments that people your age (35, right?) have done:

At age 35:

Based on a nightmarish dream, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Russian ambassador Aleksandr Borosovich Kurakin introduced the practice of serving meals in courses.

Frederic William Herschel, an English astronomer, invented the contact lens.

American sprinter Evelyn Ashford won her final Olympic gold medal at age 35, old for a sprinter.

Amedeo Avogadro developed Avogadro's hypothesis.

Law School professor Anita Hill charged that Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas made indecent remarks to her.

Margie Profet proposed a new theory of menstruation which claims that menstruation protects against infection and won a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin achieved his life's ambition at age 35 and wondered, what do you do after that?

Mozart stopped composing and started, well, you know.


Alternative approach: Why do you place any emphasis on being expert at anything? What's wrong with just being a normal functioning person? (Oh sorry - I forgot - take normal out of that sentence. There you go - job done!) As a motivational speaker would say, just concentrate on being an expert at being you.

And, as a final consolation, many people's true talents aren't appreciated until after their death. This is especially true of artists, Johann Vermeer being the one example I can draw from my insignficant knowledge of the subject.

Anyway, enough rambling. You can find this stuff out on Google, you know?

Re: piffle

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

I think this comes from a number of studies in which, typically, professional classical musicians were asked to estimate the number of hours practice they had done between when they started learning their instrument and age 16.
[...]
However, there's a lot of evidence to say that this doesn't count for anything,

That article you sent me agreed with it!

Alternative approach: Why do you place any emphasis on being expert at anything? What's wrong with just being a normal functioning person?

I'll answer that by email; not on this public blog post.