It’s an oft-quoted truism in books on learning and productivity that it takes 10,000 hours to achieve true mastery in any skill, from composing symphonies to playing tennis.

Is it true? I have absolutely no idea. It’s certainly an appealing concept, though. We’re used to thinking of genius as an elusive, magical thing that springs fully formed. Boiling down Mozart’s greatness to a regime of dozens of hours a week at the piano until he he’d hit the 10,000-hour mark (before his voice changed) makes the idea of learning to play the piano seem more approachable. It gives you a sense of the distance between point A and point B.

Still, at the rate of 20 or 30 minutes every week or two when you’re feeling restless won’t add up to even Yanni-level playing any time this decade.

Let’s take the baby steps approach.

What Do You Want to Learn?

It would be nice to know how to speak three languages, jam on the guitar, play a mean game of golf, and even swing dance like Vince Vaughn in a pinch. In fact, if you could do all that and also “fill the unforgiving minute / With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it.”

But life is short.

The subject of determining which skill is worth your time, which you’ll really enjoy, and which you’ll be able to afford is worthy of a few posts of its own. So let’s just assume that you’ve thought long and hard, weighed the pros and cons, and decided to become a master at building flat-pack furniture from IKEA. For the sake of example.

To Build It Up, Break It Down

Let’s call Mastery “Level 5.” See, learning’s a gradual thing. It’s not like you’ll suck after 9,999 hours of building flat-pack furniture and then wham, one more hour of practice and you rock.

In fact, after 8,000 hours of practice you’re bound to be amazingly good. Good enough to be a pretty good teacher to others. Not black belt, maybe, but brown belt. Let’s call that Level 4, or “Adept” level.

You see where I’m going with this:

• Level 1: Novice (2,000 hours)
• Level 2: Apprentice (4,000 hours)
• Level 3: Journeyman (6,000 hours)
• Level 4: Adept (8,000 hours)
• Level 5: Master (10,000 hours)

Instead of putting one of those pointless projects on your list like “learn French” (that one’s going to be there for a while), you’ll put “watch French in Action for an hour (approaching Novice).” And in the note for that task you’ll put a tally. Every time you complete a particular task toward the larger skill goal (the next level of mastery), you’ll increase the tally of hours.

Leveling Up

Time to party!

Give yourself a gold star. Go out to dinner. Tell everyone on Facebook.

Look back at the last 2,000 hours and you’ve suddenly got perspective. Do that same amount of practicing again and you’ll be an Apprentice. 3 more times after that and you’ll be the Mozart of building flat-pack furniture. Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA, will invite you to Älmhult, Sweden, to toast your incredible talents. Hurray!

I’m Good Enough to Know I suck

As you probably know, the better you are at something, the worse you think you are, at least in the early stages. A lousy writer will often think his own writing is just fine. As you gain in skill, your eye improves and the flaws in your writing become apparent. This can be paralyzing: your eye always improves faster than your hand. Getting over that hump can be difficult in any skill, but if practice duration is your goal instead of quality, the going will be a lot less stressful. Eventually, your performance will begin to catch up with your taste.

If 2,000 hours still seems too daunting, break it up again. Into 500 hours chunks, perhaps. And make sure to tell the world when you reach each milestone. Before you know it, you’ll be building a flat-pack IKEA house.

Photo by ninahale.