Debunking the "1,000 hours of practice" myth

Posted by Chris Murtland
Nov 12, 2011 at 08:41 PM

Yes, I do agree that concentration is a key to productivity. I was just reacting to the initially posted article and the fact that “practice” may not translate directly to productivity in general (although considering the possible parallels is interesting).

In my own case, I think I’ve given up a bit on info management software ever becoming exponentially or profoundly more useful in my lifetime, so I’ve tried to refocus my efforts on improving my own ability to focus in spite of technology rather than due to technology. Similarly with managing tasks - I can spend my time fiddling around with myriad algorithms and sorting to get software to present the right task at the right time (and one that I just happen to feel like doing right when it is presented), or I can use my judgment, intuition, and willpower in the moment to decide what to do and then do it. Software is still in the mix, but I have lower expectations of it. I guess I am going through a CRIMP rehab phase.

I think your idea of having other users’ feedback and workflows fed back into the program somehow and presented as guidelines or tips based on the current task would be great. Or an app could just embed this forum. ;-) The problem is associating a bunch of forum threads to a specific real-time use case… but I do find the “here’s how I use software X to accomplish task Y” to be very illuminating and useful. And I think as your particular insight on a particular workflow problem illustrates, you have to be able to capture your personal insights somehow in a way that will let you take advantage of the lesson learned if a similar situation comes up in the future. Maybe a personal procedures document/outline that actually gets updated and referred to as one works… And perhaps a community resource of specific workflow recipes?

Chris