10,000 hours

[Christopher Charles]

Hello all,

Was just thinking about the proposition put forth by Malcolm Gladwell and others that to truly master or to have impact in a field it takes inherent talent + 10,000 hours of practice.

I've been pursing wood enthusiastically for about 5 years now. I manage to get about 3 hours a week on average in the shop (generously). Thus, (and assuming I have some inherent talent...), I have accumulated 780 hours toward "mastery".

At this rate, I'll hit 10,000 in 59 years....

Of course there are many roads to Rome ("mastery"), but the 10,000 hour rule seems to hold some water across a bunch of endeavours. What do all y'all think, and when will you make it to "Master".

Cheers,
Chris C.

[Chris Griggs]

Never. I don't think there is truly such a thing as mastering a craft. Mastering style, mastering a skill or technique, sure, but not a craft.

However, after 10k hours - yeah I bet one could master enough skills and techniques to be a Master within a craft - if that makes sense.

Don't know if I'll ever get there. I've been at this 3 years - lately I get 4-8 hours a week - sometime more, sometimes less. I'd say over three years 3 to 4 hours a week is probably a good average estimate since early on I did go through extended times where I didn't work at all for a number of weeks. That puts me at anywhere from 468 to 624 hours total. I've got a long way to go!

[Bill Houghton]

Gives you a goal, anyway.

[Dustin Keys]

Well I just completed my bench build this week, and it feels like it took me 10,000 hours. Does that make me a master? Probably not, I guess I'm supposed to actually practice for 10,000 hours...

D

[David Keller NC]

That's a good description of the Japanese model for learning/mastering a craft - the master gives you a (simple) task, and you practice 12 hours a day, non-stop until you'd just about rather take a bullet to the chest than do it one more time. Then the master gives you another simple task.

[Tony Zaffuto]

I have no specific goal. To have one, would make my hobby a job and I like my hobby because of the lack of constraints. It is bad enough to have someone ask if I'm ever going to finish something, let alone them asking me if I'll ever become a master.

[Jim Rimmer]

Aside from the discussion of whether or not you can ever master anything, if you worked at a craft full time (40 hours a week) it would take 5 years to accumulate the 10,000 hours. With all the variety of joints, inlay, veneering, finishing, etc involved in woodwork I don't think you could "master" it in 5 years.

[Marko Milisavljevic]

You couldn't become master of all woodworking knowledge, no more than a doctor would know all of medicine, or a computer programmer would know all APIs, languages and programming methodologies. Generally, it is accepted that being a master in a complex craft really means in a subset of the craft. For example, I suspect you could master all aspects of making Shaker furniture in 10,000 hours.

[Christopher Charles]

Ah, to be a bit more clear about the 10,000 hours idea, it comes from a comparison of what's in common among the best creators/athletes/aristists, etc ("Outliers" in a good way). In the case of woodworking, Maloof and Krenov would be obvious outliers. And they were recognized masters of a particular form, not necessilarly every single aspect of the craft (just as Hendrix wasn't the greatest guitarist of all genres), as Chris said above. Of course, a part of the first 10,000 hours is probably settling into a particular form or genre.

Cheers,
C

[Chris Griggs]

The wonderful thing about the Masters is they are often masters because they created their own style. Yes they built on the giants that came before them, but very consistently create there own amalgamations of the craft, style, etc...

This is certainly true of Krenov and Maloof. For musicians, Ringo comes to mind (I'm a drummer). He was/is technically nothing spectacular as a drummer, but his sound was his very own, no one sounds just like Ringo, no one will ever be better at being Ringo then Ringo.

[Niels Cosman]

I'd say 10K is about right

[george wilson]

You cannot put a figure up to say how many hours it will take to become a master. It depends a lot on natural talent to begin with.

Then,there are a LOT of people out there who have developed great skill,but have absolutely NO TASTE. This may or may not ever be mastered. Totally different thing,but every bit as important as the skill itself.

[Trevor Walsh]

I'd subscribe more to mastery in a technique by technique basis. Some tasks or techniques are particularly easy for a certain person to get good at. How many of those does it take to be a good woodworker? I don't know. I think after some indeterminate period of time you are familiar with enough techniques, seen enough, screwed up enough that you are better at it than others. The 10K hours thing is basically 8 hour workdays 5 days a week for 5 years with two weeks vacation. You can do something for five years and still not be good at it. Mastery is when you are good at it, and someone else says you're good at it.

[James Owen]

Another way to look at this is repetitions. The rule of thumb in martial arts is that it takes about 5,000 correctly-performed repetitions to create the muscle memory to reflexively perform a particular technique. I suspect that something like this is also true in woodworking, especially for operations like sawing, chopping mortises and paring with a chisel, and probably hand planing. Other operations like using an egg beater drill or a bit brace would probably also benefit from numerous repetitions.

[george wilson]

You cannot pigeon hole people.