Re: Have We Entered a Post-Literate Technological Age?

[voxwoman <voxwoman -at- gmail -dot- com>]

I heard about this number (and was talking about it with someone this
morning) -10,000 hours to become a "world-class" musician (based on practice
time for Julliard students, I believe).

10,000 hours may look like a very long time, but 10,000 hours is 5 years of
full-time work. I've put in significantly *more* than 10K hours writing. In
fact, I've put in, over the course of my life, 10,000 hours doing *laundry
and dishes* (one of the "joys" of raising a family).

That 10,000 hours (being a "master" rather than an apprentice or journeyman)
is what employers are looking for when they are asking for over 5 year's
experience.

-Wendy

On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 12:53 PM, McLauchlan, Kevin <
Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> wrote:

>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Gene Kim-Eng
> >
> > There is a difference between knowing how things work and how to do
> > things for yourself if you have to, and being able to do them well
> > enough for other people to admire you for your ability and be
> > willing to
> > pay you for it. :)
> >
> > Gene Kim-Eng
>
> As Malcolm Gladwell summarized in "Outliers", the difference between the
> two is roughly 10,000 hours of dedicated practice and pursuit of the skill.
> That is, the one who has the skill enough to be admired for it was probably
> not actually a "natural" - s/he just had enough talent or interest to keep
> at that pursuit instead of ten million other things s/he might have chosen
> to occupy her/his time, and so became a master of that skill... over the
> course of those 10 thousand hours.
>
> I think that many of us technical writers have not put 10,000 hours of
> practice-and-study into anything, but we've put (perhaps) thousands of hours
> into enough things to be good generalists... and to have a good basis on
> which to pick up the next skill or knowledge.
>
>  - KevinThe information contained in this electronic mail transmission
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Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help  
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices.
http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/

Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/

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