Benny's Blog

Ten thousand hours

Have you guys ever heard that "10,000--Ten thousand" is a great number. Actually, it is considered as a magic number by lots of physiologists and
scientists. They called it the number is "greatness".
 
That is to say whoever spends ten thousand hours in doing anything, he or she will become great. For example: Bill gates, before he founded microsoft, he had more than ten thousand hours programming, non- stop. Beatles, before they became famous, they had about ten thousand hours playing experience. And all these top soccer players have spent ten thousand hours to practice their skills before reach the world class level.
 
It is alos said that to reach a so-so level you need 4000 hours, to become professional you need 8000 hours. But for true expertise, that will be---ten
thousand hours.
 
This is really interesting to me, because my goal is to be the most popular Mandarin teacher in the world, to realize that goal, I believe I need to put
tremendous effort and time. Ten thousand hours is the minimum. I think I am not too far from this number since I have been teaching Mandarin for
already 7 years.
 
Dear friends, what do you think about this concept? Do you agree or think it's just a joke?

 
Views (2366)   Replies (5)  

Latest Responses to this Blog

newtype

Chinese Mandarin :Chinese Mandarin Level
Registered on : 2009-06-18
Language : English, Japanese
Posts : 2
Responses : 24
Comments : 16
 mobilesuit yahoo.com.cn 
2009-06-22 / 09:26AM

10000? That’s too much. I don’t think I can do that. maybe in 30 years time I can accumulate this much hours

竹内

Reply  
harrypotter

Chinese Mandarin :Chinese Mandarin Level
Registered on : 2009-06-18
Language : English
Posts : 1
Responses : 13
Comments : 0
 Harrypotter yahoo.com.cn 
2009-06-22 / 10:45AM

This is absolutely right, the problem is most people can’t or don’t have time to reach that goal.

I am trying and trying so hard.

Jouni

Reply  
frank

Chinese Mandarin :Chinese Mandarin Level
Registered on : 2007-07-11
Language : None
Posts : 13
Responses : 49
Comments : 4
 frank yahoo.com.cn 
2009-06-22 / 04:31PM

It also means the quality of your actual practice time, this is very important as well as the consistency.

Frank

Reply  
Aprz

Chinese Mandarin :Chinese Mandarin Level
Registered on : 2008-04-28
Language : English
Posts : 0
Responses : 9
Comments : 0
 Andrew Przepioski yahoo.com 
2009-06-22 / 04:35PM

Well, I wouldn’t take the numbers too literally. I would think those numbers are only an educational guess on how to label you based on the number of hours of whatever you do, but I am positive that some people deviate from those numbers even by a lot. Like any skill, you see, there are people who are naturally talented and then some who need extra help cough me and mandarin cough. ;) I think anyone who really does put 10,000 hours into a skill really deserves to be crowned an expert though.

Just so you know, you’re already labeled as an expert mandarin teacher in my book. o/

Reply  
ToshimiKira

Chinese Mandarin :Chinese Mandarin Level
Registered on : 2007-07-24
Language : None
Posts : 12
Responses : 96
Comments : 3
 Toshimi Kira msn.jp 
2009-06-22 / 06:17PM

I love playing hard! hehe

Reply  

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