Scientific Proof This Blog Sucks

Psychologists say that in order to become really brilliant at something, you need to spend at least 10,000 hours doing that something.  (To put that in perspective, that's about five years of 40-hour weeks.)  I've always had my doubts about that.  I bring this up because of a Wired article on the topic.  Specifically, it's an excerpt from a book by abattoir designer extraordinaire/autism advocate, Temple Grandin.

The article complains that the 10,000 hours concept has been blown out of proportion by people.  Rather than seeing these hours of practice as merely a prerequisite of genius, they've gotten the idea that you just need to put in all those hours and you'll be the best in the world.  Unfortunately, it's not that easy: you need "nature" to go with all that "nurture."

If you think about that, it makes sense.  Most of the workforce has at least five years of full-time experience in their current job, and not many of them are geniuses.

But it seems to me that there are plenty of other problems with this theory.  For instance, the idea of spending 10,000 hours doing something to get good at it may make sense for, say, playing a musical instrument.  But what about something harder to quantify.  Take a writer.  Does a writer have to spend 10,000 hours actually typing?  Because they do spend a lot of time just thinking about what to write.  And what about time reading?  That contributes a lot to their writing prowess, does it count?  Or scientists.  I hope they don't have to spend 10,000 hours actually doing experiments.  But if 10,000 hours thinking about science is enough, then just about everyone who has tried reading A Brief History Of Time would qualify.

And then there are activities you really can't rack up 10,000 hours at.  Can anyone really be an expert skydiver?  And that brings me to blogging.  Assuming you only blog in your spare time, blogs haven't been around long enough for anyone to become an expert blogger.  So what hope is there for the entire community?  Consider that if there is a blogging genius out there, it's Perez Hilton.