/improve/ - Self Improvement

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY

Watch this guy and take it with a grain of salt. But he does touch up on a key misunderstanding of the 10000 hours research and that is that it was made wanting to know how long it took to be the best of the best. That it's turned into 10000 just to be good at something was a mistake.

You can be good at something with far less time than that. Think of something that you don't care about this is to remove bias and imagine pumping 500 hours into that thing. That's nearly 1.5 hours of concentrated effort a day for almost a year. Tell me that won't make a difference. It's a long time, yes, but it's still much less that 10000 hours.

I think what it ultimately comes down to is that the 10000 hour thing is for something that you will devote your entire life to. It's the one thing an individual will specialize in. It by no means means that you cannot be fucking good at something.

In fact, what the TED video guy states is reasonable. In 20 hours of dedicated hard work you can become just good enough to know what the interest is like, build a sizable knowledge of it, and decide if it's something you want to pursue.

tl;dr You don't need 10k hours to become good. We we think of as great is probably much lower than what it really is. With far less time, say 20 hours of dedicated work you can become proficient enough in something to take away something useful from it and to see if that is something you would like to pursue in the first place.

>>2775

It's kind of scary thinking about how much time I've already wasted and how much it requires to become good at things.

I wish I could say that realizing this will make me change :(

>>2776

"Look at that mess, might just give up completely now that I see all the time I've wasted, it's no use anyway"

And so he set out for a cycle of regret and apathy, until the day he died.

Stick to it, faggot.;)

>>2776

Did you even read what I wrote?

It doesn't take as much time as you think. Even 500 hours which is chump change when compared to 10000 will make a world of difference.

Work at something for 20 hours. Don't halfass them. And you'll have that much more wisdom for it.

>>2781

500 hours is still a lot of fucking time. There are only 8766 hours in each year. If you sleep 6 hours a night then you spend 2190 of those asleep (2920 if you sleep for 8 hours). If you spend an hour a day eating and an hour on hygiene (showering, brushing, etc), then you get up to a total of 2920 hours that are unavailable.

Assuming you have a job and you work at least 35 hours a week (and we'll ignore the commute or outside working because fuck figuring that out), then that number raises to 4740 hours spent on things you can't avoid.

There's plenty of other shit you can't avoid: doing your taxes, taking shits, maintaining your pets, going grocery shopping (unless you have it delivered), being social (you need to spend time with people you give a shit about eventually) and relaxing every once in awhile (because holy shit we all need to).

All in all, I don't think it's unfair to say that about 5200 (5930 if you sleep 8 hours a night) hours of each year are already taken and there's little we can do about it.

That leaves us about 2800 hours of time to fuck around with, a rough average of 7.6 hours per day. If we dedicated every single moment of that time to being productive then, yes, we could learn five different skills to the "500 Hour Level," but we don't do that. Focusing that hard for some people is borderline impossible. I've legit considered ADD meds to help, but I just can't bring myself to intensely focus for that many hours. So for me, the realistic number of hours I can focus on learning a new (technically unnecessary) skill each day is probably about 3, meaning that I could MAYBE get two new skills each year to that level if I managed to not miss a single day.

Like I said, it's scary to realize how little time I have, how much I've wasted, and how much I'll keep wasting.

>>2780

I didn't say I was giving up! I'm here trying to figure things out, aren't I?

I just know that I'm still going to waste a lot of time. I can't help the fact that I have shitty focus.

>>2784

>If we dedicated every single moment of that time to being productive then, yes, we could learn five different skills to the "500 Hour Level," but we don't do that.

Then take 20 hours for each of the 5 skills. Use a year to practice them and THEN decide on what it is that you really want. 20 hours is a lot of time as well.

The problem I have with the way you're thinking is that you just want the end game. You don't care about actual skill acquisition.

Why is that wrong you say? Isn't the endgame the purpose? No it's not, there is no endgame. A skill that you'll give 500 hours to is probably a skill that you will use for at least a few years. It's not just "well, lets see how much of it I can cram". There is no perfect.

>Focusing that hard for some people is borderline impossible. I've legit considered ADD meds to help, but I just can't bring myself to intensely focus for that many hours. So for me, the realistic number of hours I can focus on learning a new (technically unnecessary) skill each day is probably about 3, meaning that I could MAYBE get two new skills each year to that level if I managed to not miss a single day.

Then something has to give. I can tell you right now that imageboards probably tops the list of unecessary shit you use. Hell, that we ALL use. It's like TV. Mindless, numbing, entertainment. You have time. Plenty of time. That you can't manage it is your own problem.