Skip to main content

THE 4 STEPS FOR 10000 HOURS





Por Jorge Manuel Zelaya Fajardo
www.jorgemanuelzelaya.com
February  26th, 2020



These short lines have an objective. In fact, they really have two. The first objective is to strip the myth of the concept of 10,000 hours of practice (and do it in four steps). The second is to give credit to the true discoverer of that concept.
Paradoxically, yesterday I listened to Tom Peters, an extraordinary organizational development professional whom I had a very interesting communication via twitter on last year´s December 25th and writer of the book "In Search of Excellence" (first book of its kind to become a standard written in 1982). Peters confesses that he strongly dislikes the titles of 7 points, 4 actions, 5 habits etc, stating in a critical way,  that any human activity takes an incredible amount of effort and mistakes to be able to categorize it in a recipe of few steps. I will dare, with scientific data, to challenge master Peters this time.


Most of us, who practice reading as sport, we are inclined to think that the term 10,000 hours is due to the author Malcolm Gladwell, a brilliant and very particular Canadian writer who in his book OUTLIERS, emphasizes the fact that to have a remarkable performance in any professional human activity, the person must have exercised his talent, his art, his craft or his profession for at least 10,000 hours. However, this discovery is originally due to Dr. Anders Ericsson, a distinguished Swedish psychologist who currently stands out as a world authority in the field of the psychological nature of human performance on an extraordinary level.

Ericsson bases his theory on rigorous scientific research. After much evaluation work, he was able to discover that a human being who dedicates at least 10,000 hours to a job with deliberate practice will then have achieved outstanding mastery. The most important thing is that many people have thought that just by practicing an activity during the given time, will automatically generate a domain as an expert. Unfortunately, that is not so. The mere fact of having 10,000 hours of exercising the task of a plant supervisor, bank teller, university professor, taxi driver, medical doctor or any public servant,   does not guarantee at all the level of skill  of an expert. The practice, doing something just to do it, by itself is rather homeostasis (property of the organism to maintain a stable internal condition). We must not fool ourselves.


Dr. Anders Ericsson asserts that the 10,000 hours are based on what he calls deliberate practice with mental representations, which is defined as doing something in a consistent and disciplined   manner with the following 4   characteristics:

First, a very clear, defined and specific goal. If the practice of what we do, does not seek something to achieve, mentally, emotionally and even physically we will never live up to the demand.

Second, a focused approach without distractions. In each of my classes, seminars, courses or conferences, I always remind the audience that we suffer today from Digital Attention Deficit (DAD). It is hard for us to focus on one thing at a time with full and indivisible attention. We suffer from the illusion of believing that efficiency is to answer ALL messages from all our social networks and media immediately, interrupting the marriage that should be between attention and performance of an activity at hand.

Third, immediate feedback. If we do not know where we stand with our performance and its quality, we will not know what we still have to go to reach the goal, which is the most important thing to know.
Fourth, constant pressure to make an extra effort. This is perhaps the most difficult of all. It is breaking the barrier of what has been achieved so far but in a real and systematic way. It is the extra mile made an everyday reality. It's Kaizen (continuous improvement in Japanese) made habit. It is 101% effort.
Therefore, Dr. Ericsson's work is not only outstanding, but also very practical (not easy) to apply in relevant activities in our personal and professional life. However, the most significant part of his work, in my opinion, is that it gives us all hope, no matter what we do and where we are, age or academic background, that we should all look for what we are passionate about and in what that we have talent, to risk discovering, with concrete actions, how far we can go. I just did it ... and you?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

FERNANDO HERRERA: EL PROFESOR DE 33 AÑOS DE EDAD CON 137,000 ALUMNOS.

    Por Jorge Manuel Zelaya Fajardo www.jorgemanuelzelaya.com Junio 11, 2019                                        La primera vez que platiqu é en persona con Fernando Herrera me pareció un hombre sencillo, un tanto introvertido y con sinceros deseos de compartir sus conocimientos y experiencias. Me senté con él en un modesto café en un concurrido centro comercial de Tegucigalpa, Honduras en una tarde de miércoles.   Cuando terminé la reunión con él, yo seguía pensando lo mismo que al inicio; pero ahora yo tenía ciertos adjetivos que agregar para describir a Fernando. Adjetivos para describir los impresionantes números logrados por este joven nacido en Guápiles, provincia de Limón, en el caribe de la hermana república de Costa Rica hace 33 años.   Nunca me imaginé que estaba hablando con el instructor con más alumnos registrados (137,922 alumnos en 22 cursos) en idioma español (España y América Latina juntas ) en UDEMY ( plataforma en línea de aprendizaje cuyo p

EL DECÁLOGO DE MAVILA

  “Un viaje de mil millas debe comenzar con un simple paso” Proverbio Chino. En mis clases de Gestión de la Calidad en los distintos Programas de Maestría en la Universidad Católica de Honduras, hay un tema que me apasiona particularmente porque tiene que ver directamente con mi país, con la Región Centroamericana y con Latinoamérica entera. Es un tema teórico pero con una aplicación práctica real. Es un tema fácil de entender, pero difícil de aplicar. Es un tema en que todos coincidimos, pero pocos aplicamos. Ese tema es el Decálogo del Desarrollo de Octavio Mavila. Octavio Mavila, distribuidor de motocicletas japonesas en Perú durante décadas, viajó varias veces al Japón por negocios. Su inquietud por saber cuál era la diferencia principal entre los obreros japoneses y peruanos lo llevó a estudiar con detenimiento cada viaje y descubrir que la clave era la forma como los niños japoneses aprendían progresivamente los valores de la vida. Tal observación lo impul

EL LIDERAZGO DE SAN FRANCISCO DE ASÍS

    Por Jorge Manuel Zelaya Fajardo www.jorgemanuelzelaya.com Octubre 7, 2020         “Empieza por hacer lo que sea necesario; luego haz lo que sea posible y de repente estarás haciendo lo imposible.” --   San Francisco de Asís      Escribir estas líneas es enfrentar un majestuoso reto.   Estas líneas no son una biografía ni un escrito religioso. Son un análisis contemporáneo, desde el punto de vista humano, de un liderazgo transformativo como pocos:   El liderazgo de San Francisco de Asís.   San Francesco d’ Assisi nació en 1182 bajo el nombre de Giovanni di Pietro Bernardone   para llegar a convertirse en una de las figuras más prominentes de la espiritualidad cristiana de todos los tiempos. Las enseñanzas de su vida se mantienen con fresca relevancia y vitalidad    más de 700 años después de su muerte. Tal vez, hoy día, más que nunca. La vida de San Francisco de Asis es sencillamente una historia extraordinaria de inicio a fin. Está repleta de contrastes, luc