The Reason Why So Many People are Average
On one hand, renowned psychology professor and “expert on experts” Anders Ericsson’s research suggests it takes roughly 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert.
On the other hand, author and skills acquisition expert Josh Kaufman’s research suggests that you can go from knowing nothing to being “reasonably good” (i.e. average) at anything in 20 hours.
This gap between 20 hours and 10,000 hours is the reason why so many people are average. 20 hours is roughly 40 minutes a day of practice for a month. 10,000 hours is roughly 3 hours of practice a day for 10 years. This math is easy but putting in the work to go from average to good to great is not. Many try, few survive.