How Long Does It Take To Master A Skill?

In Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers, he suggests that 10,000 hours of practice are necessary to master a skill. Just for the sheer hell of it, I thought I would estimate how many hours so far I’d spent practising Wing Chun, and how much longer it would take before I achieved ‘mastery’.

A Poor Work Rate

I’ve been studying Wing Chun for three years now, and if we estimate that I’ve attended one class per week, that should take into account the highly motivated weeks where I went twice and also the demotivated weeks that I didn’t go at all. So 52 x 1 x 3 = 156 hours. Oh dear. Away from class I have done at most 15 minutes per day so that’s an additional 15 x 7 x52 x 3 = 16,380 minutes = 273 hours. My grand total of 429 hours of study in 3 years is less than one twentieth of what’s necessary to become a master (according to Malcolm Gladwell).

At my past rate, I would need a total of 60 years to reach this coveted level. Err… started a bit late for that…

The New Regime

However, my new training regime means that I go to 3 classes a week, and use my current ‘gym time’ to instead practice Wing Chun. This gives me 7 hours of Wing Chun practice per week. To accumulate the remaining 9,571 hours of practice, I now need only another… 26 years! In 2035, I will be ready. Nobody said it would be easy.

The Gift Of Residential Courses

I realise now the importance of the residential courses that our centre holds every year. I’ve not been to one yet (how foolish), but intend to go in 2009. The residential consists of 4 days of intense Wing Chun teaching. I don’t know what the hours are yet, but if we assume a conservative 10am – 4pm then that’s 5 hours a day (anticipating an hour for lunch). I’m told, though, that participants usually chi sau until the late hours so if we add a couple of hours on to the day’s total for this chi sau, that makes 7 hours a day. 28 hours per residential. Nice. Also, this kind of tuition will be better than a one hour a week class, as there is the unbroken continuity. Also, there will be a mass of new hands I’ve not touched yet – invaluable.

I’ve got my mathematician’s head on now, and I’m looking at the seminar schedule for 2009. In addition to the residential course, there is the Wing Chun Instructor’s course (10 hours), which I’m attending, a chi sau day (6 hours) and two touching hands days (12 hours). The touching hands days  involve the Chen students trying (clumsily) to beat up the Wing Chun students. The total ‘extra’ hours for 2009, then, are 56. If this is typical for all years then that reduces my apprenticeship to 23 years.

I obviously need to give up my day job.