There is a much better lesson to take from practice theory, and that's the skill curve. You might see it and think "oh it takes 10,000 hours to become a master". But it only takes 10 hours of practice to become better at something than literally almost everyone at any task. And in 100 hours of practice you would be considered a worthy peer in almost any community. 1000 hours will make you a respected professional in any trade.
You can apply it to any life skill. You could learn a new musical instrument every 6 months, you could be a plumber, a carpenter, an electrician. You could make learn a new way of fabricating things. Any sport, any dance. I applied it as a programmer, dabbling in compilers, operating systems, machine learning systems, web systems, games, various languages and paradigms. Now as the CTO in a small company my "expertise" in all of these fields makes me able to talk along with every team, no matter what they're working on.
You could be good enough in anything to impress a friend by practicing anything for 3 months. Not saying it's easy, real practice hurts your brain, not every day job leaves you with enough brain juice at the end of the day. But maybe you could practice in the morning.
When I was in college I had been playing guitar on and off for maybe 10 years. I didn't like practicing much and was mostly just playing the same bits and riffs for fun. There was a youtube hype around a guy called Andy McKee who played technically challenging pieces with a really cool vibe. I didn't even attempt it, considering it above my skill level. My housemate who hadn't touched a guitar in all his life, bought a $30 guitar and practiced for 3 months. By the end he could play the full song good enough for it to actually sound good and impress basically anyone. I'm pretty sure he could make some money playing on a street corner just playing that 1 song over and over again.
edit: the bootcamp I used to teach at trains junior developers from scratch in about 500 hours. If you pair them with a good mentor, employing them for about 500 hours more, and you'll have perfectly good software developers capable of maintaining and extending any existing product you have in your portfolio.
this is on the money. How good you need to be to do a job for a career - if that career is not performing in some insanely competitive field like sports or music - is so, so, so much lower than what we are talking about when discussing the practice history of elite performers.
If you learn to practice correctly, and get a good teacher, you will be amazing to most people in 2000 hours - 3 years of consistent two hours a day of good practice produces a shit ton of expertise.
You can apply it to any life skill. You could learn a new musical instrument every 6 months, you could be a plumber, a carpenter, an electrician. You could make learn a new way of fabricating things. Any sport, any dance. I applied it as a programmer, dabbling in compilers, operating systems, machine learning systems, web systems, games, various languages and paradigms. Now as the CTO in a small company my "expertise" in all of these fields makes me able to talk along with every team, no matter what they're working on.
You could be good enough in anything to impress a friend by practicing anything for 3 months. Not saying it's easy, real practice hurts your brain, not every day job leaves you with enough brain juice at the end of the day. But maybe you could practice in the morning.
When I was in college I had been playing guitar on and off for maybe 10 years. I didn't like practicing much and was mostly just playing the same bits and riffs for fun. There was a youtube hype around a guy called Andy McKee who played technically challenging pieces with a really cool vibe. I didn't even attempt it, considering it above my skill level. My housemate who hadn't touched a guitar in all his life, bought a $30 guitar and practiced for 3 months. By the end he could play the full song good enough for it to actually sound good and impress basically anyone. I'm pretty sure he could make some money playing on a street corner just playing that 1 song over and over again.
edit: the bootcamp I used to teach at trains junior developers from scratch in about 500 hours. If you pair them with a good mentor, employing them for about 500 hours more, and you'll have perfectly good software developers capable of maintaining and extending any existing product you have in your portfolio.