Malcolm Gladwell Says It Takes 10,000 Hours to Master a Skill — But That's Wrong. Here's How to Quickly Learn Something New. Strategies for accelerating your learning curve with deliberate practice techniques.
By Aytekin Tank Edited by Jessica Thomas
Key Takeaways
- I use evidence-backed strategies to learn new skills quickly.
- Enlisting the best teacher is essential.
- Take breaks early and often.
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In The Sports Gene, author David Epstein examines the 10,000-hour idea. Popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, the idea is that mastering anything requires, on average, 10,000 hours of dedicated practice. Epstein discusses a study on violin students at the Music Academy of Berlin. The general finding was that the best violinists practiced much more than the good ones. Epstein pointed out that among that best group, some violinists "may use their practice time so efficiently that they reach a high degree of excellence more quickly."
In today's ultra-competitive work climate, skill acquisition is critical. The World Economic Forum predicts that 50% of all jobs will require a change in skill sets by 2027. In 2018, a Gartner analysis of more than 7.5 million U.S. job postings in IT, finance and sales roles required an average of 17 skills. In 2021, the same roles required an average of 21 skills, including at least eight new ones. Although not every skill demands a "10,000-hour" level of expertise — required skills are too dynamic to expect as much — becoming proficient quickly is critical. And perhaps, as in the violinist study, speed of acquisition will be what separates the most successful entrepreneurs from the rest.
As CEO of Jotform, I'm always looking for ways to achieve more in less time. The faster I learn, the more I can save my brain for the big stuff — more personally meaningful tasks like writing, strategizing and hiring.
Here are some evidence-backed strategies that have worked for me.
Related: The 3 Steps to Learning Any Power Skill
Preliminary questions
Before you even consider brushing up on a new skill, ask yourself if it's necessary. As author and workplace expert Amy Gallo writes for Harvard Business Review, gaining a new skill is an investment, and you need to know upfront what the return will be.
How do we decide what's necessary?
The answer, of course, is subjective. But in my new book, Automate Your Busywork, I describe an exercise for identifying your meaningful work that can help to answer this question, too.
Take 15 minutes to describe or sketch out your vision of work that matters to you and your career. What do you enjoy doing the most? What would you like to save your brain to do more of? What delivers the most impact? Include as many details as possible.
Remember this vision of your most meaningful work when deciding if it's worth investing in learning a particular skill.
Another preliminary question that Gallo also recommends is asking yourself how you learn best. Maybe you're a visual learner. Maybe reading materials by yourself is the most effective way for you to retain information. Or perhaps you prefer a hands-on approach. The right learning environment will help you acquire new skills faster.
Related: You Don't Need to Be an Expert to Launch a Business. Here's Why.
Enlist the best teacher
According to a Japanese proverb, "Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher."
Today, there's no shortage of learning platforms out there — Coursera, Skillshare, Udemy, and even AI-powered platforms like Sana Labs. But in addition to capitalizing on the latest learning technologies, you can take advantage of the resources available at your fingertips — that is, a great teacher within your organization. If there's a skill you want to learn, figure out if there's someone in the office who can train or guide you.
That's what JPMorgan recruiter Jaime Petkanics did when she was tasked with building an Excel model to track and report success rates of campus recruiting efforts. As HBR reports, Petkanics tapped her company's bankers, who built models on a daily basis, for help. Pretty soon, she was an Excel expert herself.
Related: Why Pay for Information When You Can Find It for Free on the Internet? Here Are 3 Good Reasons.
Tweak the challenge at hand
If you want to find out more about learning, who better to ask than a career changer? When professor and historian Nell Painter retired from Princeton University, she decided to pursue her bachelor's degree and MFA in painting — in her 60s. The author of Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over shared a lesson from art class that changed her perspective on her work and mistakes.
Painter would attempt to draw something, looking at the model, and then her teacher would tell her to "rub it out and draw it again, 10 inches to the right." Painter would try again, and the teacher would return, telling her to rub it out and draw it 10% smaller. This approach — tweaking, erasing, trying again — proved an effective learning strategy.
Studies have shown that the best way to learn a new motor skill is to introduce subtle variations. So while you're learning, keep tinkering with your approach. Try a slightly different perspective or challenge. And don't be afraid to make mistakes.
Related: 19 Best Skills To Put on a Resume That Employers Will Love
Take breaks early and often
I used to think I had to be busy all the time and that completing busy work = productivity = success. As long as I was doing something, I felt a sense of accomplishment. Looking back, I was not thriving. Instead, I often felt like I was spinning my wheels and running on empty.
It took some time, but eventually, I realized it's not about working the most; it's about choosing work that makes the most impact. And when you're not working, it's critical to rest. There is huge power in doing nothing at all.
Unsurprisingly, research has found that taking breaks can help you learn things better and even improve your retention rate. As Leonardo G. Cohen, a senior investigator at NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, explains, resting — early and often — might be just as critical to learning as practice.
It might seem counterintuitive, but to acquire and retain new skills, you must take a break from the learning to let it sink in. You'll ultimately learn a new skill faster and have more time to dedicate to the big stuff.
In the end, that's what matters. Whether you have 10,000 hours or 10 minutes, learning efficiently separates the goods from the greats.
