Why The 10,000-hour rule for “Mastery” is NONSENSE!
A lot of conventional wisdom being peddled by people is absolute nonsense. Let me talk about one of them: “The 10,000-hour rule to achieve mastery.”
They say if you spend 10,000 hours practicing something, you will become a master. Well, this is nonsense. Either you are good at something or you are not. The number of hours spent won’t change a thing, if you are not naturally talented at it.
A terrible singer CAN never become a great singer by practicing for thousands of hours. The same logic can be applied to many other fields. If the 10,000-hour rule were true, a 19 year old Mbappe (in the 2018 FIFA world cup) wouldn’t be able crush some of the most experienced players of the soccer effortlessly, who themselves have probably clocked many more hours.
If it were true, a 13-year-old Magnus Carlsen wouldn’t have beaten the legendary Anatoly Karpov and drawn with Gary Kasparov in Chess.
Hours matter ONLY when the talent is present in the first place. And those too stop, mattering after a while. You will often see someone who has clocked 20,000 hours to have now become too Old or IRRELEVANT in their industry!!
What is more important is to identify your natural talents and figure out a way to monetize them as quickly as possible. If you are good enough, the 10,000 hours will happen naturally over the course of your career. And if you are not good enough, then please QUIT before you waste your life away chasing those 10,000 hours.
From my book Unlearn: A Practical Guide to Business & Life. You can download and read it for ABSOLUTELY free at anubhav323.gumroad.com/l/unlearnbook
