Do Something New Every Three Years

I can relate about wanting to move on after mastering an activity. Sadly, in many cases it doesn't take the fabled 10,000 hours or otherwise becoming an expert. When what you do is in essence the same thing a lot of other people do, when you're not blazing the trail, staleness is reached much more quickly, and with it the need to rock the boat a little. Hm, I wonder why this has been in my mind the last few months...

The comment in the blog about 10,000 hours for expert performance is well put. The research supports 10,000 hours but 10,000 hours in deliberate practice rather than mere repetition. The effort of such practice can only really be sustained for about 4 hours a day. Thus 10,000 hours takes 10 years if done 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year. Just doing the same job for 3 years (even putting in 60 hour weeks) will not reach expert levels.

See: http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracti...

My recent layoff turned into a great opportunity to do this. My professional life is taking a strange new turn, and I like the direction it is headed. Enterprisey corporate development was getting really stale after a few years.

Resonates with advice from David Patterson and Richard Hamming: http://www.cra.org/Activities/workshops/academic.careers/200... (see pages 22, 33, and 34).