&gt; Maybe it becomes a little more agreeable if you flip it around: consider as &quot;basic&quot; whatever level people would reach after 100 hours of quality learning.<p>Yeah, I know what you mean.  You certainly <i>could</i> do that.  But I think that&#x27;s less useful.  If you use a specific number of hours as the benchmark you lose most of your relationship to useful levels of competence.  I think each domain has natural levels of competence that have meaning, and it&#x27;s probably better to keep the discussion oriented around that.<p>For a ukelele or guitar player, knowing enough to play the majority of pop songs is probably significant.  For a piano or violin player maybe the bar for basic competence is a bit higher.  For partner dancing it seems like the level you need to be to safely dance on a crowded public dance floor and make most partners feel comfortable is probably a pretty important level of skill to talk about.  These levels are also personal.  Maybe one budding pianist is happy with pop songs, but you&#x27;re not going to be happy until you can play a full piano concerto.  Perhaps your goal is just to be able to write a few computer programs, but a company hiring wants people who understand more about what it takes to maintain larger projects over a longer period of time.<p>When it comes down to how decisions are made in the real world nobody cares about how many hours you&#x27;ve practiced.  It&#x27;s all about what you can do.