Practice – Time Scale

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers theorizes that in order to master something, you have to log 10,000 hours in that activity.  He uses a variety of examples to prove that there is always a general range of time required to be the best in any area.

On first impression, 10,000 hours doesn’t seem like that much.  After you think about it for more than ten seconds, however, you begin to see how daunting of a task it can be.  If you think about anything you consider yourself “proficient” or “very good” at, estimate how many hours you have in that activity.  It can be a related activity as well.  For example, if I were to claim I was good at drawing funny graphs, I would not only count the time drawing the graphs, but also the time spent making graphs in school, as well as time drawing in general.  In most cases, unless (even if) you are a professional, you don’t fall anywhere near the 10,000 hour mark.

I have a theory about how people develop in their activity over the span of 10,000 hours.  Note that none of this is based off of any scientific data, and I probably have no idea what I am saying.

0-10 hours: Just beginning, building interest, and exploring basic strategies.
10-100 hours: Becoming proficient.  At the end of the 100 hours, you are most likely better than the vast majority of people.
100-500 hours: Learning and in-depth analysis.  At this phase, you have mastered the basics.
500-1000 hours: Serious business phase.  You are now good enough that you have to really be engaged to continue improving.
1000-3000 hours: Waning development phase.  There is significant improvement during this time, but it comes very slowly.  You may even decrease in skill level for short periods of time (10-100 hours), but eventually improve in the end.
3000-6000 hours: Grinding.  Pure exposure to a multitude of situations.  “Expert” level.
6000-10000 hours: Mastery.  Everything is down to a science.  New experiences become very rare.  No outside instruction is any longer of much benefit.
10000+ hours: Payoff phase.  As one of the best in the world, you are legendary in that field.

Practice – How Did You Do That?

“Practice makes perfect.”  Of course we know this – our parents, teachers, and friends have told us this throughout our lives.  We understand that in order to be a great piano player or athlete you have to have a lot of practice.  However, in many cases, it is easy to fall into the belief that there is an exact methodology to being the best at something.

Let’s use the example of free throws in basketball.  Because of official basketball regulations, the distance between the player and the hoop, the height of the hoop, and the size of the ball are always constant.  Therefore, it would be easy to assume that there is a method to always make free throws.  All you would have to do is have an expert explain the mechanics, and you should be able to have a perfect free throw percentage, right?  Surely, there must be a way to throw the ball with the correct speed, height, and arc to make it in every time.  Unfortunately this is not the case, and to have a perfect free throw percentage, you need a lot of practice.  After a certain skill level, no more instruction is beneficial, and you have to experience the many outcomes of a free throw to master it.

Practice – Introduction

Over the next four days I am going to write a mini-series about practice.  There are a a variety of topics to cover, so splitting it up makes the most sense.

The general idea behind practicing is that you are exposed to nearly every possible situation.  Through massive numbers of trials and errors, you learn the best course of action in every circumstance.  In addition, you build up muscles memory.  Whether it is the arm motion in bowling a bowling ball or the hand movements of painting, you can develop a “feel” for your activity.

In general, people want to achieve great things, and the most surefire way to do so is practice.

Road Salt

Road salt is amazing and beautiful.  It is simple, cheap, available, and works well.  Not only does it lower the effective temperature at which snow melts, but it also provides a rough texture to the road to avoid slippage.

I guess there isn’t really much point in showing my appreciation of road salt, but if you came here looking for any more substantial content you were terribly mistaken.

Robot Confirmation

Even though they are always so simple, it always takes me a few tries to enter the correct words on those website security checks.  Half of the time I can’t even see what letters they want me to type, and the other half I type the words correctly but it marks me wrong.  After a few failed tries I start to question whether I actually am a robot.

Here is an example of the average word-typing-are-you-a-robot-checking-website-security-thing:

Automatic Oreo Slicing Machine

It’s not a very popular opinion to have, but I honestly prefer the cookie part of the Oreo over the frosting center.  Apparently the man in this recently popular video agrees:

Although this is obviously a campaign run by Oreo, who, for many reasons I won’t discuss right now, has an awful marketing strategy, the machine is a great idea.  Usually when I see or hear something I should of thought of I think, “Oh, why didn’t I think of that?”  However, in this case no such thought crossed my mind, since I am confident that I would have thought of this within the near future.  I would have posted about it, drawn a little picture with arrows labeling the parts, and praised the ingenuity of the invention, only to find out that someone had been actually building it in his garage.  Then I would have felt kind of sad, dismayed that my idea wasn’t as original as I thought, and moved on to different exciting contraptions.  Instead of feeling jealous that I didn’t think of this first, I genuinely found the video entertaining, despite it being downright fake.  Maybe it’s because I don’t want to be like the guy in the video.

Venn Diagrams

I draw Venn diagrams rectangularly.  If the Venn diagram is more of a joke or for show I will use circles, since they will not need any amount of in-depth information.  But for the majority of true comparison through Venn diagram, I draw them with square edges.

The tendency when drawing them is to make the middle section very small.  This is a natural response due to the nature of the intersecting circles and inconsistencies in estimation.

The middle section – what the two regions have in common – is usually the most informative in any comparative analysis, and suffers greatly from reduced space.  It becomes very hard to write and it doesn’t look good.

My design, using rectangular sections, allows for much more space in the middle, and makes it easier to write full lines of text.

In summary, for presentations and jokes (and logic) use circles, but for more practical, written applications try the rectangle method.

Internet Security Measures

Installing internet regulation and security measures is like setting up a baby gate to defend the entrance to your house.  I will provide an example.  Let’s say a café sets up a wifi system for their customers, but requires a password and many different steps before you can actually use it.  This may seem like decent protection, but it causes trouble for those who are genuinely trying to use the internet.  Also, if someone was intent on doing something malicious to your system, they would tend to have the expertise to get around it.  Therefore the security measure accomplishes nothing, and is a nuisance.

A baby, trying to crawl through the baby gate, would be unable.  But a baby doesn’t pose much threat.  If someone actually had the intentions to break into your house, they would knock over or step over the baby gate, rendering it pointless.  All it does is creates a barrier for the average person to get through.

Harlem Shake

For those of you who are unaware, or for those from the future who forgot the extremely temporary internet craze that was the Harlem Shake, let me briefly explain.  In a video, groups of people get together going about their normal day-to-day business.  One person, usually wearing a helmet, is dancing wildly along with a song (in all the videos the same song is used).  When the music in the song changes, the video cuts to everyone wildly dancing and doing random crazy things.

I think the Harlem Shake proves just how fast news and trends travel today.  After the first video was made, parodies came flooding in, ranging from the elderly in retirement homes to college sports teams.  The most interesting part, however, is that within a week, versions of the Harlem Shake came out that made fun of the whole process, telling people that the joke is old and no more videos should be made.  As of today, I can say with a fairly high amount of confidence that no more Harlem Shake videos are going to gain significant traction.

Besides news traveling fast, stories, events, people, and trends are rising and dying quicker than ever.  Because of the internet, the availability of video-recording devices, and faster networking, people can learn about way more things than before.  As a result, people gain and lose interest in events on an almost day-to-day basis.  The phrase “that’s so last month,” while usually meant to be a joke about fashion trends, seems more and more to be the case in many different areas.  Even a few months ago watching all sorts of 2012 recap videos, it was shocking to remember events that even happened in the summer, let alone January (remember balloon boy?).

As technology advances, it is becoming more and more important to get on the bandwagon before something takes off, because before you know it, it will be old news.

Random Interviews and Polls

Interviews to prove a point, especially with random people, are generally meaningless.  Unless video footage is provided of the entire interview (approaching someone, asking the question, and getting the whole response), they don’t say much.  With editing, the viewer has no idea what background was given to the interviewee, or what question was asked.

Let me provide an example.  If I wanted to show that most people are against animal cruelty, I could precede my question with a detailed explanation of how chickens are raised just to be killed.  I would throw in incendiary language such as “slaughtered” or “murdered,” and give a negative impression of the chicken farming process.  As a result, I would get a lot of responses agreeing with me and be able to edit together a video showing how the majority of people interviewed support the rights of chickens.

This same idea applies to polls.  By phrasing the question differently, I can easily pull out the results I want.

Whenever you see a video or poll like this, be skeptical and understand what might be going on that you can’t see.