The Foundation

What is Entrepreneurship?

The world moves fast. New industries are now popping up at light speed and old ones dying out. The future can be one thing for certain, dynamic.

I find this to be quite exciting. We are no longer tied to a single career as folks in previous eras might have been. We are, in fact, able to fit multiple ‘lifetimes’ into a single one. The key is to be adaptable, open to learning new things and thinking long-term.

There’s an often-quoted rule that states it takes roughly 10,000 hours of practice to attain mastery in a field. At 8 hours a day, this would effectively be around 5 years. If you go all in and put in the work every day, you are looking at 3.5 years or so. If you just spend a few hours every day instead, it’ll probably take 7-10 years… Well, if you do put in the effort and become an expert, then I’d say it follows that after that, your learning can plateau, so you should either continue improving by learning new things, spend the next few years challenging yourself by attempting breakthroughs in your field or move on to something else entirely, taking all your acquired knowledge with you.

Or… you can take everything you’ve learned and turn that into a business which can help other people.

Personally, I don’t think it takes that long to make an impact. If you want to become the best in the world or are looking at something with intense competition, such as elite sports, or something with professional requirements, it may take that long. But I’ve found you can make great strides in a field just from a few months or years of highly focused effort. You’ll definitely get better the longer you stick to it, but you can get meaningful results way before. To do this, you’ll need to free up your time to put your primary focus in one area. Otherwise, it can take longer.

Regardless, the 10,000 hours rule can be a good benchmark for how long you might need to stick to something that is important to you.