10,000 Hours to Becoming a Master, Expert, and World-Class Performer

I watched Charlie Rose's interview of Malcolm Gladwell and Geoff Colvin. Malcolm Gladwell is a writer for the New Yorker and the author of Outliers: The Story of Success. Geoff Colvin is a senior editor at Fortune and the author of Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else.

Both Malcolm and Geoff talked about what it takes to become a master, an expert, or a world-class performer at a particular skill. A study on great, good, and average musicians says that it takes approximately 10,000 hours of deliberate practice become a great performer. They assume that mastering any skill will take the same 10,000 hours of deliberate practice and hard work. That is equivalent to 10 years of daily hard work and deliberate practice, 3 hours per day, 365 days per year.

Spending the time to becoming a world-class expert at a skill doesn't guarantee success. You also need an incredible amount of luck - being at the right place, at the right time, with the right skills, with the right people. But you need to master the skills before luck can bring you to great success.

Picking a skill to master
When I was watching the show, I realized (or at least think that) I don't have any particular skill that I've put in 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to master. The only skill I think I'm good at is being curious and learning - I can get intensely curious about a lot of things (almost any subject), and I'm a fast learner if I'm curious enough about the subject.

The problem, though, is that being curious and learning things aren't "productive" - they are "consuming" skills. I think I will need to master writing or speaking to allow something to come out the other end from the information I've consumed. Or perhaps I should spend my time mastering skills that would probably bring in more income - security analysis, value investing, and financial planning.

What skills have you mastered? What skills should you spend time mastering now? What skills does the world need the most? What skills do you need to have to take advantage of the luck that will come your way?

I can't predict what the future will bring to me, but I know I don't really have much time (at least not as much time as a newborn child). I've lived for almost a quarter of a century, and I probably have less than half a century of "productive time" left in me. Whatever I want to master, I must start practicing now and putting in the hard work now. I just hope that the skills I master will be useful in taking advantage of my lucks in the future!