Getting to the bottom, he describes how he no longer beats himself up about not being better at tennis since he knows he could be better if he was willing to invest the time in it.
The same realization about foreign languages is what caused me to gradually stop studying them. The value in being near-fluent in something is pretty clear, but the value of being sub-conversational is usually not. Once I realized I was unlikely to travel and live in the countries whose languages I was studying, it made more sense to give them up.
The whole 10000 hour thing is both exciting and depressing. Exciting because it means you can do anything ("any (one) thing") you dedicate yourself to. Depressing because it suggests limits to how many areas you can reasonably excel at.
I read your comment from my iPhone while stuffing my face with cookies. Reading from the iPhone implies zooming in heavily if I want to upvote. Eating cookies implies having one hand covered in crumbs. Thus, I had to finish my current cookie, clean my cookie hand, and then zoom in before being able to upvote your comment. However, I found your comment worthwhile enough to do so—thank you!
The 10,000 hour thing pre-supposes you are genetically predisposed to it in the first place. The example I always give is Michael Phelps. It wasn't his 10,000 hrs of training that gave him his flipper-like feet or extraordinarily long arms.
Along those lines, it is not enough to force yourself into something you Think you may become top of field with. Although it is from Wired, many top performers "find" their niche through varied sports or actions before committing to becoming an expert. They have more access to a diversity of subjects and can identify their strengths on a larger sampling.
Perhaps some similarity to failed startups / job hopping.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/08/how-to-raise-a-sup...
I think it's mostly a matter of motivation. In my experience, Native English speakers are much less likely to learn a foreign language even when they're living abroad. In Japan, most non-anglo foreigners will learn Japanese to some extent and in fact they might communicate among themselves in Japanese. On the other hand, many anglos don't need to speak much Japanese in their jobs and, in their personal life, would rather restrict themselves to the tiny English-speaking population than go to the trouble of learning Japanese.
Remember: the 10000 hour rule doesn't mean you can't be very good at something without putting in the hours. If you want to be the very best, then the rule applies.
Also: a very important point for entrepreneurs (imho) is to focus on what you're doing. This means shouldn't have to worry too much about choosing on which thing you'll spend the hours.
yeah, but didn't we already know that we couldn't excel at everything? For me, its enough to know that I can excel at the thing I care about most and then excel at as many things after that that I care to devote myself to.
The same realization about foreign languages is what caused me to gradually stop studying them. The value in being near-fluent in something is pretty clear, but the value of being sub-conversational is usually not. Once I realized I was unlikely to travel and live in the countries whose languages I was studying, it made more sense to give them up.
The whole 10000 hour thing is both exciting and depressing. Exciting because it means you can do anything ("any (one) thing") you dedicate yourself to. Depressing because it suggests limits to how many areas you can reasonably excel at.