Making Yourself Worth More: Careerealism On The 10,000 Hour Rule

Here's an interesting article that I found stashed away underneath my mountain of bookmarks. It relates back to my post about working on things you're passionate about. My friend showed it to me a few years ago and I thought I'd share it with you all.

This piece is from Careerealism, a blog that is focused on providing career advice.
Read the post here: 10,000 Hour Rule: Why Young Workers Struggle after College (and why some seasoned professionals do too!)


In short, the article essentially states that if you want to be proficient at something, then you're going to have to invest at least 10,000 hours of your time working at whatever you want to be good at. This 10,000 hour rule applies to careers as well. The author gives a little anecdote about how when he was just thirteen years old, his father had him work in an accounting office from that point all the way into the end of his college years. As he entered the workforce, he found that it was easy for him to get along with others and to rise through the ranks. He attributes this not to luck or to talent, but to the experience that he had gained from all the hours that he had logged in working in that accounting office. He then goes on to encourage any professional (not just recent college grads) that want to succeed in their careers to go and start looking for ways they can complete the necessary 10,000 hours.


I am (unfortunately) a math minded person, so I decided to figure out what 10,000 hours really equated to.

10,000 Hours = 416.67 Days = 59.5 Weeks = 1.1 Years

If you devote 8 hours a day, everyday, to your 10,000 hour investment then it would take you 1250 days which translates into roughly three and a half years to complete those hours.

After doing that bit of number crunching, I decided that still I completely agree with what the author says about this "rule." Sure, three and a half years might seem like a long time, but I think that all too often in this fast pace world we are fooled into believing that we only need to spend a minimal amount of time working at something in order to be the best at it. When we take a look at other people's successes, we only see where they ended; we forget to look at where they started from and where all the hard work that was put in. Find a couple people that you believe to be professionals in their area and ask them how long it took them to get where they are. If you know anyone who does martial arts, ask him/her how long it takes to achieve a high rank (e.g. a black belt in Taekwondo or Karate). If you know anyone who you considered to be a skilled musician, ask him/her how long has he/she been playing the instrument and how many hours were put into practicing that instrument. If you know anyone who has a Ph.D., ask him/her how many years he or she spent in college, how many hours were put into late night studying, and how much work was put into the dissertation. I think once you listen to all their grueling stories, you'll find that spending only three and a half years (or 10,000 hours) towards getting better at your career won't seem that bad.


I'm going to try to find as many ways as I possibly can to rack up those 10,000 hours. The sooner I get started, the more experience I'll have. The more experience I have, the better the opportunities that will be presented to me. The better the opportunities, the faster I can make my way from rags to riches.