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from the he'll-never-make-it-to-Carnegie-Hall dept.
The Atlantic has an article on Dan McLaughlin, the "average guy" who spent six thousand hours working on becoming a professional golfer
Seven-plus years ago, aged 30 and unsure even of which hand to grip a golf club in, McLaughlin quit his job as a commercial photographer, took in lodgers to cover the mortgage, husbanded his savings for green fees, and set out to make the PGA Tour, home to the world's elite golfers.
He created a catchily named blog to document his quest, and in short order the Dan Plan commanded magazines spreads and TV spots. Along the way, it drew an avid community of followers riveted by the spectacle of a regular Joe living out an everyman fantasy. No less captivated: a salon of leading figures from the science of learning and human performance.
What could you achieve if you committed to something completely, all-in, no excuses? How far could you go? For five years, McLaughlin cast everything else aside—career, money, even relationships—to put this to the test. But then his back gave out. He pushed himself to the limit and still came up short.
The article follows Dan's attempt to follow the idea, popularised in Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, that 10,000 hours of practice is the main factor in developing any skill to world class expertise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @11:05AM (7 children)
Did he succeed or not?
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Monday August 14 2017, @11:25AM (2 children)
He did, but he forgot to stop right after the 10.000th hour. After the 10.001st hour all was lost, unfortunately.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday August 14 2017, @11:49AM (1 child)
Sounds like me playing pool: between 2 and 2.5 pints of beer my game is at its best, I am unstoppable. Any more or any less and I can't play for shit.
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Monday August 14 2017, @01:44PM
Just like programming (yourself): https://www.xkcd.com/323/ [xkcd.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @12:47PM (2 children)
FTFA:
"Barely over halfway through, he’d pared his handicap to an all-time low of 2.6—a mark achieved by fewer than 6 percent of golfers."
I'd say the qualifies, YMYV.
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Monday August 14 2017, @04:54PM (1 child)
If the skill were inherently useful, then the top 6% might qualify. As it's celebrity-driven reward, I'm not sure even the top 1% would qualify. You probably need to be at least in the top 50, or, to be generous, the top 100.
OTOH, does *he* think he succeeded? Given the kind of thing he's doing, then that's the only real criterion. (The headline said failed, and after reading the summary I didn't bother reading the article, so I'm guessing not.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @10:40PM
That would depend on how many of the 6% better than him also put in 10k hours. If all of them also have putt in that much dedication, then the difference between top 6% and top 100 is noise.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 15 2017, @03:08AM
By what standard, he achieved a level of notoriety and even fame - didn't win any tournaments, but was that really the goal? or was it more about the journey.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @11:58AM (1 child)
i love to lick it up yum yum i am yoga master
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @12:07PM
So in other words, golf is gay.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @12:00PM (16 children)
So he bets everything on an overly simplified, mostly bullshit idea...
... and has to quit partways because of health problems...
... which somehow proves that you shouldn't even try, or something?
Also, if his back giving out is related to golf playing, than he didn't push himself to the limit but over it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Monday August 14 2017, @12:20PM (8 children)
What I'd like to know is how did Dan interpret the part where it says practicing for 10,000 hours does not include expert guidance? If you start off wrong, you have no way of knowing and you keep going down the wrong path.
Reminds me of a contractor who did work on my grandmother's house who I had an argument with. Tiles in the kitchen were crooked and it was plainly obvious. His defence was "I have been doing this for 20 years!" Yea, poorly. Just because you have x hours of "experience" doesn't make you an expert or skilled in anything. Garbage in, garbage out.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @04:55PM (2 children)
There's also talent. Everything requires a certain combination of skills and you can't just develop them to the appropriate level just because you would like to - as a music teacher, I've had students work their asses off for years and never really get good, whilst others come in and all they really need is advice and a little discipline.
Even with that, you need a crapload of luck in such endeavours. Ask any one of the many incredible musicians who never turned a cent from their work.
This "10,000 hours" is stupid and cruel. I've noticed most people who dish out the "Just do what you love and it will all work out" are usually from wealthy, or at least well connected backgrounds, and have what it takes to "fake it till you make it".
(Score: 4, Insightful) by andersjm on Monday August 14 2017, @07:00PM
I expect McLaughlin has actually become an expert. And that would have been great, if only he had studied carpentry or computer programming, because then he would have a marketable skill. But in a competitive sport you can't make a living from just being an expert: You have to be elite, which means being a nosehair better than most of the regular experts.
The "10,000 hours" thing would be a lot less harmful, if people only understood that "expert" doesn't mean "elite". To be an expert is to know a craft in and out, but it doesn't mean you'll be at the level of the world's foremost experts as you see them on TV. If the craft is useful, then being an expert at it is useful regardless. Golf isn't useful, it's a zero sum game, and even experts can lose at that.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday August 14 2017, @07:31PM
Should word that as natural talent. But I agree. Some people have a knack for some things and the skill comes naturally. I am good with technology, electronics and computers along with mechanical stuff (I'm even okay with math as long as someone explains it to me in a way I can understand). I can visualize how things work in my head by thinking of them as smaller systems connected and working together. That has been something with me since I was a child. As far back as I can remember my toys were not action figures and other children's toys but extension cords, wires, and later on electric/electronic junk my father would bring home for me to play with. For some reason I always like the idea of connecting things together. Took to the computer like flies on shit and remember the first program I wrote in Q-Basic, a program to calculate the distance in miles for x light years. People ask me how I learned it and that's the thing, I didn't learn it, not from my point of view. I look at it as my brain was already wired for this work and all I needed was guidance to understanding these things via school, books, and the internet. It just clicks and I understand it.
I took a music recording elective in university. You sat in front of a workstation running multi track midi recording software and a keyboard. There was this one middle aged guy in the class, sort of an odd ball who was very quiet and spazzy. He would go into a zone and hammer on that keyboard like it was part of him. One day he was really intense, some of us in the back chuckled because he was so spastic. The professor, a professional session musician, took notice and went over to see what he was up to. He asked the student if he could have a listen and he was stunned with what he heard. I don't remember his exact words but they were along the lines of: "Wow! You are really talented. Do you play or compose professionally?" The student replied: "No. I only started playing last year after music 101". Professor was floored. He told the student he had the gift of music and he could even play professionally. Me? I couldn't compose twinkle twinkle little star if you left me locked in a room for a hundred years with that damn keyboard.
Some people's brains are wired for specific talents. And it must have to do with being able to visualize these things in your head. One film that even illustrated it was the animated Ratatouille, when Remy is explaining how he sees the foods and flavors as colors, shapes and sounds. That really clicked with me as I think of things as a sort of block diagram puzzle in my head. But I think there is a price to pay. I'm no neuroscientist, but I have a feeling that in order to tip the scales in intelligence, something else has to give. So you have quirks or mental disorders as a consequence. I have depression and anxiety issues. The keyboard virtuoso was spastic and quiet leading me to believe he might have been mildly autistic or aspergers.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @06:47PM (1 child)
In the 21st century, we have more access to reliable information than ever. This idea that you need an expert right in front of you to teach you is false for many fields and obsolete.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday August 14 2017, @08:59PM
Expert doesn't have to be a physical body but for certain tasks you need hands-on training. I played a little golf with a friend who was into it. It's not easy. The hard part is the stance and swing motion. But the biggest help was my friend standing there watching me set up and giving me pointers. Many times he would say "Stop!". He would then physically move me into a better position. Bend your arms like that, hold the club like this, twist your body like that, plant your feet like so, your legs should move that way, etc. After some practice at a driving range with him I did get a little better. Honestly, without someone watching you and seeing what's wrong, it is really easy to hurt yourself.
And Troll mod is unfair. Proper mod would be Disagree.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @06:59PM (2 children)
There are some people who can play rugby and many others who can't. The former tend to be tougher and recover faster from injuries. If you're in the latter group and still tried to do the 10,000 hours thing you'd probably end up a cripple or worse.
It's like those people who run marathons etc. Some can do it, others can't. You're less suited for long distance running if you're heavier than a certain level (doesn't have to be fat, could be bodybuilder type) all that weight will increase the impact and damage on your joints. You probably have to be a minority of a minority to be a long-term super muscular marathon runner and have little problems.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday August 14 2017, @09:17PM (1 child)
That's part of proper training. Going about something yourself without any real knowledge can easily lead you down a screwy path of trial and error. And the error can get you into trouble.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 15 2017, @06:16AM
I'd like to see what's proper training for getting a midget to slamdunk. Think 10000 hours of that will work?
If you don't have the natural talent/aptitude you're not going to be world class. There's just so much adaptation a body can do. http://www.boredpanda.com/athlete-body-types-comparison-howard-schatz/ [boredpanda.com]
Polishing granite for 10000 hours isn't going to turn it into a diamond. But you can make a really nice table top.
Nowadays with our technology there may be more advanced and efficient methods of figuring out aptitude without as much $$$$ investment. For example for motorsport, some video games are realistic enough to figure out whether a kid might have the potential to be a fast F1 driver. The kid can say "Dad, I want to be a race car driver", and Dad can go, ok beat this lap time and we'll talk. Then if the kid beats the lap time significantly, dad goes "oh shit, my kid might be one of those diamonds, dammit, this is gonna be expensive". :).
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @01:04PM (3 children)
> So he bets everything on an overly simplified, mostly bullshit idea...
This. I've had the chance to work with some Olympic cyclists and they are not like normal people. One had a resting heart rate of 25 beats/minute, could *smoothly* spin the pedals (under moderate load) at over 200 rpm and also had a reaction time about half of mine, based on the dollar bill test. He could consistently catch the bill http://sploid.gizmodo.com/the-mathematical-explanation-for-why-you-cant-catch-a-f-1776551693 [gizmodo.com]
He also did the 10,000 hours (probably more)--for a number of years it seems that he practically lived at the Montreal (indoor) velodrome and/or training on the road. Made possible because his wife was supportive and had a good Canadian government job.
Oh, and he wasn't (as far as I could tell, and I spent a lot of time with him) ever using banned drugs.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday August 14 2017, @03:13PM (2 children)
I think there may be a difference between Olympic quality and professional (not a sports fan, so could be wrong). Yes, the final "best in the world" tier needs something special genetically. But to sustain yourself based on payments from your sport probably doesn't need that level of expertise.
I'm not sure of his financials, but I think he may have achieved his goal early on. If his blog was able to sustain him during his practice, then I would consider him "professional". And that shows he has additional talents that are required of entertainers (athletes are entertainers, right?): charisma. He told his story and people wanted to know about him and his pursuit of sports.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @07:09PM
Lots of Olympic class athletes don't earn enough from their sports:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/08/10/i-won-gold-in-1984-like-many-olympians-today-i-worked-day-jobs-to-get-there/ [washingtonpost.com]
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-36-olympic-athletes-do-for-a-living-2012-8/?IR=T [businessinsider.com]
Not sure who the billions the IOC gets goes to, maybe it goes to some athletes ( http://www.businessinsider.com/olympics-inc-inside-the-business-of-the-ioc/?IR=T#ioc-subsidiary-1-the-national-olympic-committees-that-build-the-teams-in-each-country-5 [businessinsider.com] ) but it certainly doesn't go to many (most?) of them.
It's one of those star jobs. If you're the #2000 tennis player in the world nobody really cares, if you're lucky maybe you can have a job as a coach. Otherwise don't quit your day job.
Whereas if you're the #2000 tax accountant in the world you're probably doing extremely well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @10:06PM
The Dutch women's football team (soccer for yanks) just became European champion. In recognition of this achievement, the Dutch Olympic committee awarded the team an "A" status, meaning that from now on, the team members are supported more or less as if this is a job. For the coming 12 months, renewal after that is unclear.
In the USA, maybe top sporters can make a good living for themselves, even if they're not playing baseball, american football, ice hockey or basketball. In Europe, naah.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by requerdanos on Monday August 14 2017, @03:16PM (1 child)
No. It demonstrates that not only are we not equal in the "Diversity is really important" sense, but also in the less-politically-popular "Different people have different aptitudes" sense.
Just anybody can not do just anything. Some are better suited to this, others to that, and so forth.
This should seem obvious, but we educate against it in much of the world. We tell kids "You can be anything if you work hard." You can't. Practicing a sport intensely will help a very few people become world-class athletes, sure, but the vast majority will only improve to their astoundingly sub-world-class aptitude and there plateau. Telling them they can "Do anything" or "Be anything" is extremely counterproductive.
The key word in the above is "Aptitude," because that kid (or adult) who will never be a sports star may instead have the aptitude to be a world-class researcher (Einstein--no sports star), leader (Mandela--also not a sports star), aid worker (Mother Teresa--no sports star), or star programmer (John Carmack--not a star at sports).
It is foolish to spend your entire waking life, 100% all-in, working to get down the path to a goal that for you, is a short or twisted path that will never arrive at that goal. The folks listed above would likely have never, never been world-class athletes regardless of the number of hours or quality of practice and training undertaken.
A bad car analogy would be if you need to get from Miami to Los Angeles and you had a nice, durable car that you could choose to use, but instead, you choose to really work hard at bunny-hopping to California instead. The world has some good (bunny hoppers?), sure, but your hopping isn't likely to get you to LA and it will probably be a huge waste of time and effort.
We need to encourage each other, sure. But to follow our aptitudes--not pretend that everybody is the same in aptitude. Google can fire people who say this, and cover their ears with their hands and loudly say "I Can't Hear Youuuu," but that's still a takeaway truth here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @04:55PM
BUT MUH E-SPORTS!
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday August 18 2017, @11:49AM
I'll tell you, a back brace is a must for golfing. Never get married without a prenup, and never tee off without a brace. Very easy to get injured if you don't wear one.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Monday August 14 2017, @01:01PM (9 children)
You need three things to become exceptionally good at anything :
1) Natural skill
2) Detemination
3) Opportunity
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @01:06PM (1 child)
> 2) Detemination
Anyone else read this as a variant of "detumescence"? They do say that sex steals all your strength away...
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @03:19PM
> 2) Detemination
>> Anyone else read this as a variant of "detumescence"?
No, just you.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday August 14 2017, @01:18PM (2 children)
You also need a lot of luck. For instance, Dale Earnhardt risked death every time he got into his car for a race, and a lot of those auto racing deaths had nothing to do with the skill or lack thereof of the driver.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @03:26PM (1 child)
At first I thought you were using luck in the sense of connecting with the right people to sponsor you, work on your team, etc. There are many excellent race drivers that just don't get noticed for whatever combination of bad luck and circumstance. Also, there is very little room at the top (in all pro sports).
Dale Earnhardt's final accident was fatal, but it's possible that with better safety equipment (available at that time) he could have survived. More details are in this article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HANS_device [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday August 14 2017, @05:09PM
I filed that under "Opportunity", which Dale Earnhardt had in spades because his dad was a race car driver too.
But I was referring more for the luck he had in not getting killed when he was a nobody. Most NASCAR drivers spent time on dirt tracks and regional circuits in obscurity prior to joining the "big leagues", and could get killed on those tracks without ever making it to the top-tier races through no fault of their own. Same story in football: A few high school players are killed each year through no fault of their own, and occasionally a college player dies in training or in games.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday August 14 2017, @04:10PM (3 children)
"Natural skill" might not be as magical as we think. Even if you end up being really good at something, you still start out really bad at it.
If you start out as a kid, it doesn't matter as much that you suck because nobody expects better. Adults like Dan, however, have high barriers of "you suck" and "shouldn't you be earning money right now" to keep us from trying.
I propose that "natural skill" is actually about the desire a child has to do something, despite being bad at it. Given the opportunity, the encouragement, and a huge number of years before anybody expects them to be any good, it may just take consistent effort in your formative years to be good at something.
That and kids don't throw out their backs training for physically-demanding skills.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Nuke on Monday August 14 2017, @06:01PM
No, that is determination (correct spelling this time); mayby OK-ish at a low level but not enough in itself to get to the top. Natural skill is like a basketball player being over 6ft tall, and they say that Babe Ruth was an exceptional baseball player partly because his eyes were set further apart than the human average, giving a edge in his 3-D vision. Champion cyclists have much larger than average lung and heart capacities, which is an in-born characteristic and cannot be acquired : Vittorio Adorni [wikipedia.org], who won the Giro d'Italia in 1965 had such a large heart, and therefore low pulse rate, that doctors who examined him were alarmed at his freakishness.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday August 14 2017, @08:16PM (1 child)
> I propose that "natural skill" is actually about the desire a child has to do something, despite being bad at it.
You have a natural skill for creating newspeak.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday August 15 2017, @04:39PM
And you have a natural skill for butchering Orwell.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday August 14 2017, @01:18PM (4 children)
As TFA says, this probably appeals to people, because we all have "roads not taken", things we think we might have, should have, could have tried - but didn't.
If we look at "Dan the golfer", odds are his talent is somewhere in the middle of the bell curve. He managed to get his handicap down to -2.7. Any decent professional golfer is in the range +3 to +6. That means that, to get a score competitive with a professional golfer, he should stop playing after the 16th hole. His 6000 hours of practice made him a competent amateur.
Talent counts. I can program rings around anyone who lacks the talent. OTOH, I like the piano, but 10,000 hours of practice might...barely...make me less painful to listen to. Meanwhile, a classmate of my son gave a piano recital - wow! Then the bombshell: She decided to start playing just a short year before. Natural talent.
In the progressive world, people want to think that everyone is exactly equal: equally good at math, at golf, at art, at whatever we put our minds to. We cannot admit that people have different abilities; that each of us is the result of a genetic dice roll. Above all - horror - we cannot observe that talents correlate with any visible attributes such as gender [runnersworld.com] or skin color [iaaf.org].
tl;dr: Reality doesn't care what we want. Different people have different talents, and talent influences both speed of learning and what you can achieve.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Monday August 14 2017, @01:58PM
How is "High T" women only a recent phenomenon? One would assume that if naturally high levels of testosterone were what made women win the 800m then 80%+ of all winners dating back to the start of the modern olympics would have this trait? For how long have we been capable of and actively testing for testosterone levels in athletes, and have all women in the past with +10 nmol/L been accused of doping?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @04:07PM
10000 hours is a huge time investment. If you play the piano for an hour every single day, that takes close to 30 years to reach 10000 hours. If you actually did that then you would almost certainly be able to perform at a high level.
The thing is that playing an instrument for an hour every day for 30 years takes an awful lot of dedication. When you are wondering "What should I do on this lovely day?" the answer has to almost always be "I think I shall play the piano." So there is a lot of self selection going on: the only people who will actually reach 10,000 hours of playing time are those who are maybe kind of good at the piano in the first place.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday August 14 2017, @06:41PM (1 child)
"All men are created equal" doesn't mean people have the same abilities and talents, in equal measure. It means all deserve fair and equal treatment, no discrimination for religious beliefs, skin color, gender, height, strength, or any other excuse that's been used to divide people into insiders and outsiders, and deny the outsiders.
Seems that distinction gets lost too easily. Throughout history, there's been a lot of self-serving propaganda proclaiming that the disadvantaged are actually inferior. Wars are particularly effective at tempting propagandists out of the woodwork. Today, there is a gender imbalance in engineering, and computer science is the worst of all. Why this imbalance exists is the question. It is extremely politically incorrect to suggest that maybe women just aren't as good at engineering, but that idea is very much alive. Could there be something to that notion, or is it yet another case of bias, conscious and unconscious? History strongly suggests the latter. Used to be only the nobility could read and write. Peasants supposedly didn't have the ability to learn that. Then, Africans supposedly couldn't read, write, or do more than very basic math, thus showing they were fit only to be slaves. Even more recent is of course the whole notion of the "master race". Throughout all that, women have been relegated to 2nd class status, for instance not being allowed to vote, and today in Afghanistan being kept ignorant by zealots who think women shouldn't be educated.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday August 14 2017, @08:22PM
> no discrimination for religious beliefs
- "Your honor, eating that child is an ancient tradition of my baal worship, we must perform..."
- "Case dismissed"
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SunTzuWarmaster on Monday August 14 2017, @01:32PM (7 children)
I work in this field and I'd like to jot down some of my thoughts on the matter. Perhaps one day this will be expanded into a study/publication.
First - I'd like to say that I'm a huge Tim Ferriss fan. Don't get me wrong - he is a little bit of a pompous jerk California-person. That said - he is RIGHT *way* more often than he is wrong. Many of his opinions have been formed from data, so even when he is wrong it is because his *data* was wrong. He is rigorous.
Tim Ferriss indicates that you can become world-class (defined as "top 5% of the worlds' population") at many things in relatively short order. Many times on the order of weeks. This is a byproduct of two things - 1) there are a lot of people in the world, and 2) most of them aren't that good at very many things. His instructions for becoming world class are relatively sparse - find a teacher who is not especially gifted at the task (wrong body type, started very far from good), and train very hard in a very short period of time.
I've more-or-less observed this to be true. If you discount the "recovery" period where muscles have to build/reconfigure, it takes relatively little time to get (what non-experts consider) very good at something. Take something like "doing handstands". Most people can't. I'd venture to say that https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/08/the-dan-plan/536592/
Golf is a composite skill - putting, green, fairway, etc. are all different movement patterns.
After 6000 of practice, Dan had a +2.6 handicap. That is, top 6%, better than 94% of *golfers*. Certainly top 5% of the world. Notably, that handicap is good enough to teach golf professionally. Inside for a few years, he was easily top 1% of the world, and likely the best golfer in a room of 25 golfers. I'd say that this plan was a success and has reasonably proved that the relatively unskilled can become skilled in relatively short order.
(Score: 2) by SunTzuWarmaster on Monday August 14 2017, @01:34PM (1 child)
Bah - SN/computer mangled the comment. Better comment here:
I work in this field and I'd like to jot down some of my thoughts on the matter. Perhaps one day this will be expanded into a study/publication.
First - I'd like to say that I'm a huge Tim Ferriss fan. Don't get me wrong - he is a little bit of a pompous jerk California-person. That said - he is RIGHT *way* more often than he is wrong. Many of his opinions have been formed from data, so even when he is wrong it is because his *data* was wrong. He is rigorous.
Tim Ferriss indicates that you can become world-class (defined as "top 5% of the worlds' population") at many things in relatively short order. Many times on the order of weeks. This is a byproduct of two things - 1) there are a lot of people in the world, and 2) most of them aren't that good at very many things. His instructions for becoming world class are relatively sparse - find a teacher who is not especially gifted at the task (wrong body type, started very far from good), and train very hard in a very short period of time.
I've more-or-less observed this to be true. If you discount the "recovery" period where muscles have to build/reconfigure, it takes relatively little time to get (what non-experts consider) very good at something. Take something like "doing handstands". Most people can't. I'd venture to say that https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/08/the-dan-plan/536592/
After 6000 of practice, Dan had a +2.6 handicap. That is, top 6%, better than 94% of *golfers*. Certainly top 5% of the world. Notably, that handicap is good enough to teach golf professionally. Inside for a few years, he was easily top 1% of the world, and likely the best golfer in a room of 25 golfers. I'd say that this plan was a success and has reasonably proved that the relatively unskilled can become skilled in relatively short order.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @05:04PM
You may want to pick "Extrans (html tags to text)" rather than "Plain Old Text", but if you do use "Plain Old Text", use < and > instead of < and >. Above all, use the preview.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @01:37PM (1 child)
Is getting a teacher who is bad at the task one of those "data-driven" ideas? It sounds like the type of irrational nonsense that NHST would lead towards.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @02:11PM
Note that SunTzu (heh) didn't say "bad", but "not gifted", which is not the same thing. I understood that to mean "find a teacher who got good at the task with practice, not someone with innate talent." If you have talent, it's difficult to relate to those that don't have it, and that forms a large barrier when teaching them. No matter how hard a talented person worked, there is a different baseline and/or type of effort that a non-talented person has and needs.
Essentially, find a teacher that went through a similar ordeal.
(Score: 4, Touché) by bradley13 on Monday August 14 2017, @01:42PM
If you define "top 5%" that way, then it's pretty meaningless. Being in the top 5% of the population worldwide - including all the people who don't practice the activity at all is meaningless.
There are about 60 million golfers in the world. By your definition, when he played his very first round of golf, as the worst of those 60,000,000, he was already in the top 0.75% of the worldwide population. That doesn't make him "world class" by any sensible definition.
I'm a terrible piano player, by any definition, this despite years of lessons as a child. Given that the vast majority of the world's population has never even touched a piano, I'm world class! Whoopie!
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @08:32PM (1 child)
I play in the field of old school videogames (shooters), where games are a few minutes long and in my experience the amount of time spent in the game is not correlated with top skill players. A top skill players was steamrolled by me when n00b and steamrolled me in a matter of a couple weeks. If you want a sport other than golf where dedication and time pays off, possibly it's billiards, many variables involving the dynamics of the shoot are there. But for some videogames, sorry, practice only takes you to your best.
(Score: 2) by SunTzuWarmaster on Tuesday August 15 2017, @12:37PM
Please note that this is "dedicated practice" - practice, usually guided by an instructor, for the purpose of improving the skill. Saying "I've spent 100 hours in this game, but never read the manual, received any guidance, or took steps to get better" doesn't count. You will also note that Dan logged "game time" not as practice (counting towards 6000 hours), but as testing. He has another few thousand hours if you count "playing 18 holes" (but you shouldn't count it, and he didn't).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @03:46PM (1 child)
That competence has nothing to do with success (at least financial and status) and the inverse is often the case
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Monday August 14 2017, @05:15PM
I concur, I have often seen a dynamic of incompetence and confidence being leveraged in IT consulting (without the IT person being aware of possessing both due to being assurably stupid), and this increases any gained financial success in direct relation to employers who are incompetent and unconfident and are further unable to determine the difference between trained ability and and feigned capability.
Only when the stuff eventually breaks does the truth come out -- provided the same IT person that caused the preventable disaster isn't able to get the vendor to bail them out yet another time. (Sometimes it is hard for such people to fix the internet if they can't access the internet to find out what to do to fix what they broke on the network/firewall.)
Of course, outside consultants are usually crooks and criminals, you know--it's like the game Counterstrike, where the other team is always the bad guys. Either the consultants are stupid like the example above and are so undeservably well rewarded for it... or they are good at what they do, which gets them called names like being a crook or criminal by the example above, which leads to fun workplace challenges.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @03:47PM (1 child)
Lousy way to end a novel.
"It was a dark and stormy night ... blah blah blah ... but then his back gave out. The End."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @07:52PM
A bad way to end a novel, but a good way to save 4000 hours.
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Monday August 14 2017, @10:10PM (1 child)
He reduced his handicap to a level achieved by fewer than 6% of golfers, that sounds really quite good. While he didn't succeed in the PGA tour, he was at roughly 6000/10000 of his goal hours, so a little over halfway there. It's unfortunate his body physically gave out, perhaps he would have made his goal?
Few people really have the guts to pursue something so single mindedly, I applaud him.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @10:46PM
Agreed, especially since I'm sure most if not all of the golfers better than him have also put in their 6k more hours. The hypothesis is not that you'll become the best or one of the 10 best, but that you'll reach level of expertise. Your relative rank will then depend on how many other people have also reached world class expertise.