[james_s_tayler]

Well it's likely a little more complicated than that.

Either way my model is 20, 200, 2000. Those are 3 milestones (roughly) where you progress through different phases.

Going on about 10,000 hours for skills isn't meaningful for most people because almost no one will use that info to decide "this only takes 10,000 hours I think I'll master it." It only applies to the people who don't need the advice because they're naturally on the path of doing it anyway.

But 2000 hours you can sit down and have a real think about. After that it's diminishing returns for that last 5%~10% that will take 5x as long.

[jammygit]

2000 / 20/WK = 100 weeks, or approx 2 years of part time hobby work. That's not too bad.

Where does the 2000 hour number come from BTW? I haven't seen it before.

[james_s_tayler]

Yeah, roughly 2 ~ 4 years. Call it 3. That's how I tend to think about skill acquisition.

Just personal experience of getting good at things over the years. It's a rough model and I'm happy for people to disagree if they want but the numbers aren't hard and fast they're more of a ballpark hueristic.

It's sort of a 4-tier order-of-magnitude pattern I suppose.

X0 hours (low hanging fruit)

X00 hours (pain period)

X000 hours (personal mastery)

X0,000 hours (world-class mastery)