Does It Take 10,000 Hours To Learn A Skill?

In Malcolm Gladwell’s blockbuster book Outliers, he tells a rule of thumb of learning anything — it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery of any complex skills.

But is that really the case? Josh Kaufman, the author of The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business says otherwise. According to Josh, it takes 20 hours to learn a skill. The purpose of learning is not to master every skill you ever learn, but rather to allow you to perform well enough for your purposes.

Regardless of the argument, it does take time to build a skill. Time isn’t the question. The question is your purpose.

Learning a new skill no longer requires time. You can get a learning certificate of “a skill” in less than 5 hours these days. Not to mention the number of learning platforms out there that overwhelms me every time.

What does learning a skill mean to you? Is it something fancy to place on the resume? Or do you want to learn for the sake of learning? What is the purpose of learning to you?

Why Do We Learn?

Studying the past helps to understand the present — an old Chinese proverb

Before we talk about skills, I want to explore why we learn. The meaning of learning is subjective, yet philosophical. Socrates suggests that learning is an unceasing search for knowledge without limits. I consider this to be true to my approach to learning new things.

However, I tend to get tired of a subject quickly, and I certainly do not like to review what I have learnt in the past. History teaches us morales and values, and it also tells us that the process of learning takes time. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Learning always takes time.

If you say — the purpose of learning is to gain knowledge from a subject, then you are not wrong. But does the knowledge fulfill your life? Many important learning tasks feel daunting and tedious to learners. So if learning a new skill isn’t fulfilling, then what is the purpose of learning?

Self-interest vs. self-transcendence

To define the purpose of learning, a study from 2014 declared that there is only one distinction — that between self-interest and self-transcendence.

Self-interest learners learn a skill in believing that it leads to a fulfilling career; while self-transcendent learners prefer to learn a skill due to an ideal and a cause.

Researchers found that if the subject of learning is uninteresting, creating personal meanings can increase the self-transcendent purpose for learning. In particular, connecting the learning subject to your values, purpose, and ideology can bring joy to learning.

As a perfectionist, who fears to fail, I’d completely abandon a subject at school if I knew that I was not good at it. Later, I realized that my purpose of learning was distorted by the societal values represented in Taiwan — you have to be good at everything. I wanted to be good at every subject, even though I wasn’t interested in many of them.

Now, I learn a skill because I find joy in it, and I’m happy to say that I found self-interest in learning.

Does it take 10,000 hours to learn a skill?

I’d have to agree with Josh Kaufman’s statement on learning. In his book The First 20 Hours, Josh says:

One of the easiest mistakes to make when acquiring new skills is attempting to acquire too many skills at the same time

I’d have to admit, this is a mistake I make. I see myself as a generalist. I am drawn to diverse topics, but I can’t seem to stick with one topic or skill. However, as Josh writes in his book, focusing on one skill is necessary to acquire such skill rapidly.

One of the biggest challenges people (and myself) often mention to others is a lack of time in learning a new skill. Although Josh claims that finding time to learn something is a “myth”, I see the challenge of lacking time as a problem of building a habit.

He’s not wrong about eliminating low-value uses of time, but there are many empty windows throughout the day we can find. I’ll make the following free time (although short) I use throughout the day:

• Morning routine (getting ready, making breakfast)
• Shower
• Long commute
• Pooping (no kidding, my dad used to poop for an hour-long because he’d spent 45 minutes on a book. Our bathroom was his reading room)

Why is it that these activities allow us to learn? It is because these activities have a much lower cognitive demand compared to any other activities. Activities with low cognitive demand allow us to multitask.

Generally speaking, I don’t think we need 10,000 hours to acquire a skill, but the time needed to learn a skill depends on the individual. If you make learning a habit, then you can pick up a skill quickly. If you are not consistent with learning (e.g., I lack motivation, that sort of talk), then you will not be able to learn anything, even if you had 10,000 hours.

Going back to the question of purpose — why do you want to learn this particular skill?