{"id":9225,"date":"2020-02-27T07:23:51","date_gmt":"2020-02-27T06:23:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/?p=9225"},"modified":"2026-03-26T16:59:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:59:15","slug":"becoming-an-expert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/2020\/02\/27\/becoming-an-expert\/","title":{"rendered":"Becoming an expert"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I wrote recently<\/a>, I like to learn things. I have always had a penchant for \u201cuseless\u201d [= rather random] information and pride myself on knowing a bit about many things. I am also interested in acquiring new skills and have been giving this possibility some thought \u2026<\/p>\n

For many people, acquiring a real skill means becoming an expert in something. I have always tried to avoid saying that I am an expert in anything – it just opens the possibility for someone to illustrate one\u2019s lack of expertise or show that is has limits or is out of date.<\/p>\n

A skill that I am currently endeavoring to acquire is playing the bass guitar. I have always wanted to play an instrument and finally started getting lessons a few months back. I have a great teacher and I am enjoying it. He is very keen to tell me that I should not aim to be an expert player. He is somewhat older than me and has been playing since he was a child. I do not need to reach that level, probably do not have the motivation and, perhaps most importantly, do not have the time. I recognize that the saying \u201cDo not let the perfect be the enemy of the good\u201d is valid in numerous contexts and this is one of them. I just need to be \u201cgood enough\u201d.<\/p>\n

I have been pondering the time issue. In his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell talks about his \u201c10,000 hours rule\u201d, which claims that the key to achieving world-class expertise in any skill, is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing the correct way, for a total of around 10,000 hours. This has been disputed, but I am sure it is a good ballpark number for the amount of effort needed. I did some calculations. If I studied\/practiced for 5 hours each day, 5 hours per week – i.e. 25 hours per week – which is very unlikely, it would take me 8 years to clock up the 10,000 hours. I guess that, at a pinch, I do have time. I have a birthday in a few weeks – I will be 21 for the third time. That means that I would be 71 by the time I would want to start forging a second career as a rock star. This is not going to happen.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I wrote recently, I like to learn things. I have always had a penchant for \u201cuseless\u201d [= rather random]…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71677,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[302],"industry":[],"product":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-9225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-off-topic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71677"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9225"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10867,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9225\/revisions\/10867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9225"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=9225"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=9225"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}