Today I was thinking about the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours thing. That&#x27;s his theory from the book Outliers (which I haven&#x27;t read) which argues that to become a true expert in something requires 10,000 hours of practice.<p>Now, say I wanted to become an expert in programming. To the point where I was an elite 10x developer. If I quit my job and lived off my savings, I could conceivably work on programming 100 hours per week. So after ten weeks I&#x27;d have 1000 hours, and after 100 weeks I&#x27;d have my 10,000.  So that&#x27;s two years or so at a minumum.<p>But living off savings for two years would be incredibly costly. Working full time would let me squeeze in say 20 hours a week, so I&#x27;d now take 10 years to reach the golden 10,000 hours or experience. If I cut down to a part time job, it would take 20 years.<p>I think the latter two are unrealistic because they take so long.  The 100 hour per week option is more of a possibility. With universal basic income, everyone would have the opportunity. If lots of people pulled it off, the productivity gains for society would be enormous.<p>Obviously there&#x27;s lots of people in society who have this sort of spare time and simply do not use it. However I think there&#x27;s an argument that the people most likely to achieve this 10,000 hours goal are people who are gainfully employed and wouldn&#x27;t pursue it without some sort of income support.