Ideas can be useful, even if they're wrong.

Ideas can be useful, even if they're wrong.
Remember the 10,000-hour rule, by Malcolm Gladwell?

He popularized the idea that mastery could be achieved by 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. In the years since, critics have picked it apart from every angle.

Turn out, it's not true.
Some skills take longer.
And most take WAY less.

My response? So what.

The idea changed how I approached learning software engineering.
At the time, it felt insurmountable. Too much uncertainty. No clear path. Impossible.

The 10,000-hour rule gave me something to aim at.

I remember doing the math:

At 20hrs per week...
48 work weeks per year.
Mastery was 10 years away.

But what about 40hrs per week? 5 years
60hrs per week? 3 years

40 to 60 hours per week... for 3 to 5 years.
Woof.

It led to pile of questions I couldn't answer.

- Where could I find 60 hours per week?
- How could I sustain that for 5+ years?
- What will those hours consist of?
- What if this whole thing was wrong?

Around that time, a friend shared what would become my most repeated mantra, "engineers solve problems".

If I wanted to be an engineer, than perhaps my first and most important problem to solve was how I'd find the time to learn the skills I would need to be an engineer.

Looking back, most of my estimates were wrong.
But they were still useful.
They gave me direction.
And that was enough to keep moving.