You can recall numerous instances in your life when you have spent time planning out an entire scenario in your head but at the actual moment everything goes haywire. Well, I am not saying that it will never turn out the way you plan the scenario in your head, but what I am trying to say that is there are way too many possible scenarios and disregard to any amount of preparation, you will never be able to foresee each scenario.
This reminds me of precisely two movie scenes: one from Up in the Air, where George Clooney, while onboard a plane asks his new subordinates to which she replies that she is working on an human decision marking flowchart to fire people and he just chuckles at it; and the second one from Avengers where Tony Stark inquires about the number of future scenarios in which the world does not end the way Thanos wants.
PS: No wonder, the ability to foresee each possible scenario is considered a super power. And that is also particularly the reason, elaborately explained by the theory of relativity, that you cannot measure both the position and the momentum of an object with equal precision. In plain English, it means that there are just too many possible future positions to be predicted by an empirical formula. If you work in finance and predict futures and options from past trends utilizing complex regressions, you might want to give it a try but the difference between 2D charts and 3D space is too overwhelming for most computers to handle.
However, there is one equipment that can handle the complexities of this kind of pattern recognition and processing. It is the human brain that masters recognizing and processing patterns to produce an output. And it begins to do so from an very early age with things such as learning a language or coloring patterns. As many of you might agree, especially those who speak languages other than English, that it is far easier to learn a language, especially the grammar, by picking up cues from conversation rather than memorizing grammatical forms. While our brain recognizes and processes such patterns at east, it takes millions of lines of code and computing power of 21st century to mimic somewhat effectively even without the depth of human logic.
Over a period of time, the brain masters the patterns ranging from languages, driving, arithmetic and even complex business judgement. And this is what brings us to the 10,000 hour rule. Maybe, now you understand why flight time is considered as a measure to gauge the skill and experience of an airplane pilot.
It takes 10,000 hours of practice to master any skill, whether computer code or tennis shots!
And this is absolutely non-negotiable. Even the ones that we usually considered including Bill Gates (Microsoft), Bill Joy (Sun Microsystem), Sachin Tendulkar (Indian Cricket Legend) and many others had surpassed 10,000 hours of practice by the time good luck struck them. In case of athletes and professionals such as architects, surgeons and lawyers, the co-relation between hours of practice and expertise is more apparent. As an architect refines his design patterns over dozens of buildings, a doctor grasping the complex correlation between symptoms and diseases and lawyers learn to read in between the lines and make more compelling arguments.
For myself, I may have surpassed or approaching close to 10,000 hours at understanding and consulting business problems. And trust me you can feel the confidence in your judgement once you approach this benchmark. Today, just as an experienced physician examines the symptoms of a patient to prescribe medication, I can identify and asses the pain points of a business, visualize the complex organizational mechanism and formulate a course of strategic actions.
Anyway, getting back to the main point. In life, apart from the fundamental requirement of knowledge, judgement is critical to make decisions and perform tasks. And such judgement only comes from experience that is accumulated by hands on practice. Also, this is why many professional certifications such as CFA (Certified Financial Analyst) or PMP (Project Management Professional) mandate certain work experience along with proficient subject knowledge.
Handbooks and knowledge banks produce enthusiasts, not experts.
Although I am not sure whether practice makes a man perfect, it does make you better. And from my experience, good experience comes from bad experiences such as failures and difficult clients. So if your boss passes on a difficult client or life brings you though situations (unless a matter of survival, life or death), feel grateful for the opportunity to face a difficult situations without substantial life threatening risks.
After all, what does not kill you makes you stronger!
And if you disagree or have an opinion, please feel free to post a comment.
Header Image Photo by Frank Busch on Unsplash
Savvy Munshi 