10,000 hours is famously (and likely wrongly) quoted as the number of hours of deliberate practice one needs to achieve mastery in a skill. I was curious today, so I put together some calculations of how many hours I’ve put into different skills (to be fair, not all of these hours are deliberate practice – especially work items).

Here’s a graph of my skills by hours spent. Note that it’s on a logarithmic scale.

There is definitely a noted competency shift in the items from powerlifting on up (about 600+ hours).

I feel reasonably competent in those around 200-300 hours, but certainly would admit that I am mostly still a novice, but a skilled novice.

Things below 100 hours I mostly would say I can do in limited scope, but am still largely in the unconscious incompetence stage of learning. I feel like I cross from unconscious to conscious incompetence somewhere around the 60 hour mark.

Send me your graphs and observations! I’d be curious to compare notes.