It Takes 10,000 Hours to Become an Expert

The Tipping Point

10,000 hours to become an expert.

I need to take better notes. I never remember where I first hear something amazing. I try very hard to remember. Some time this works, other times it doesn’t. My solution was to take better notes.

I was asked, “I'm a developer, but I only code at work, is that bad?” My response:

I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. I would say you’re just capping your growth. You are setting the maximum amount of time to learn by hands on experience to 40 hours per week (or whatever your normal work week is). I forget where I read this, but someone said it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill. You’re just slowing progress to mastery if you believe the 10,000 hour rule by focusing on coding only during office hours.

Source: https://www.quora.com/Im-a-developer-but-I-only-code-at-work-is-that-bad/answer/Eliot-Pearson

Malcolm Gladwell, is a great writer. I’ve read a few of his books. I drew from his idea that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill. In this case, I pointed out how only coding at work pushes mastery into the future. There is no problem doing this. My goals was to make the person who asked this question aware of what they are doing. It is up to them to make the decision if they would like to continue the practice of only coding at work.

I setup up a challenge for note taking. I decided to switch from Evernote to Joplin. I’m pretty sure you know what Evernote is. However, I don’t think you’ve heard of Joplin. Joplin is an open-source version of Evernote. My thought is that if I can use Joplin for 30 days without having to reinstall Evernote on my machine, I can delete my Evernote account. Yes, I deleted Evernote from my laptop. You can read about my challenge in this post.

For me, mastering note taking is shaping me into a better writer. Will I become a master at writing? Who know, but I think I’m heading in the right direction with better note taking. We will see how this turns out in the future.