If it takes 10000 hours to master something completely then how many days would it take to master something if you only practice 4 hours a day

Question

This problem has been bugging me since a week and I need a equation to figure it out

Answer 1

"Too many times, people misquote Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule regarding being an expert.

“Malcolm Gladwell said you have to have 10000 hours in a subject to be an expert,” they will often state. The problem is, they’re repeating a misquote from someone else who has never read the book.

The 10,000 hour rule is from Gladwell’s book, Outliers: The Story of Success, which if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it.

The problem is, Gladwell never said you needed 10,000 hours to be an expert, you need 10,000 hours to be a phenom. To be so freakishly awesome, to be such a standout among your peers, that sometimes your first name is enough to tell people who you are: Peyton. Tiger. Venus. Kobe. Oprah."

     -- http://problogservice.com/2012/03/15/what-malcolm-gladwell-really-said-about-the-10000-hour-rule/

 

 

If start-stop time is not important, then (10000 hrs) / (4 hrs/day) = 2500 days.  That is close to 7 years.  However, many, many topics or skills have changed mastery requirements in that amount of elapsed time. 

Answer 2

I think it's probably the equation that is giving you trouble, and not the concept of the problem.  In a word problem, you should always let the variable represent the thing you are trying to find, so for this one, let x represent the number of days it would take.

 

If you practice 4 hours a day, how much practice do you get?     4 times x, or   4x hours    (Make sense?)

 

Now, you know that it takes 10,000 hours, so the 4x has to be equal to the 10,000, and there's your equation:

 

4x = 10,000