I would take it even farther than that and say that people vastly overestimate the time it takes to get good at most things. It might take 10,000 hours (or more) to be considered an expert pianist, but you could spend a tenth that much time getting good enough to impress everyone you know with a few songs at parties, and with just 50 hours of practice, you'll be better at the piano than basically everyone you know (you might not be "good", but a lot of people are also easily impressed, if impressing people is your thing.)

I think this is true of practically everything that we don't personally make a profession of. A few tens of hours doing carpentry, fiddling with plumbing, or hooking up electronics, and you'll seem super handy to someone with no experience. What passes for expert-level in a lot of arenas is more like what an actual expert would consider passing familiarity, but passing familiarity is enough to feel good and to be really helpful to your community in a lot of circumstances.

I agree completely about hobbies. I think I read somewhere long ago that we ended up with a zillion apps for ordering food because that's the kind of thing that college kids think about. If we all learn a lot more about a lot of things, we'll end up with a much more interesting tech-ecosystem.

I wrote a book on this topic: https://first20hours.com

There's a ton of (replicated) psychology research that supports this thesis: the early hours of skill acquisition are very effective/efficient in terms of improvement-per-hour-invested. 20-50 hours is enough to see very substantial improvements in any skill, even if you have no prior knowledge or experience.

I wish more people focused on the early process of skill acquisition: that's what most of us will experience for most of our lives/careers.

Learning and practicing skills in many different areas is underrated: if you think of skills from an ROI perspective, spending a little time to get a lot better at a portfolio of useful things has a crazy high return.

I would add on by saying from personal experience that the wider your breadth of experiences, the more you find that experiences in seemingly unrelated fields overlap and synergize to make it even easier to pick up new skills. Anecdotally I found my background in software + college coursework in signal processing gave me a huge boost with getting into music production, and in line with the ROI perspective I feel like I'm passively reinforcing my understanding of Fourier transforms and whatnot when I'm playing around with Ableton so it's akin to the effect of compounded interest

The book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41795733-range argues a lot for this as well, and goes on to discuss numerous examples where generalists have made the breakthroughs and/or excelled in some way, due to synergy, overlap and inspiration.

I will second this recommendation. It has some great stories about people such as Van Gogh and inspired some new thoughts on machine learning.

Thanks for the link, the to-read list never seems to stop growing but that book certainly sounds like one I'll have to add

Sure but a course in the science of music production isn't unrelated to music production.

Right, and the example is meant to illustrate that. My coursework on signal processing approached it from a mathematical and computational perspective, so I didn't necessarily have an appreciation for its application in a music context. Once I picked up music production and started dealing with filters and EQs and all, though, the relationship then became apparent pretty quickly and certainly helped with understanding how all the effect processing worked.

As long as you don’t get stuck in the expert beginner trap.

I like to say that my long history of studying the art of studying helps me get over that hump quickly. But you’d have to ask other people if I have or I’m full of it.

Why is it a trap, though? I think the whole "T-shaped engineer" analogy applies really well here. Expert beginner of a lot of things, true expert of a few. Sounds like a great balance to me.

In this context you're not spending enough time on it to become an "expert beginner". You're not getting the same three months of experience a dozen times, you're getting them once.

Surprised to see you hang around here! Your TED talk with the ukulele + chords was also an eye-opening introduction to this idea.

Also check out this guy who documents his progress playing table tennis everyday for a year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y21uwFUgkE. I'm nowhere near his level but I can tell he got pretty good.

Yes! Expertise is good, but overrated. I've found that you can be much happier getting good enough at a broad range of skills that combine professional, personal and whimsical

Very cool! Thank you for the link.

>It might take 10,000 hours (or more) to be considered an expert pianist, but you could spend a tenth that much time getting good enough to impress everyone you know with a few songs at parties, and with just 50 hours of practice, you'll be better at the piano than basically everyone you know (you might not be "good", but a lot of people are also easily impressed, if impressing people is your thing.) //

I learnt piano for years (from relatively late, ~12-17yo), and could follow a piece of written music but never just play.

My son, who at 14 has just started lessons could already play and can work out a piece by ear with essential only a few hours. He can play something you'd recognise, I can't unless I have the music.

He has 'natural aptitude', IMO gained genetically from his mother and through environmental exposure to music. Your 1000 hours would work for him, with this skill, I feel; but not for me.

There are other simpler restrictions. In my middle ages I've started karate, no one has a hope of mistaking me for an expert karateka unless I also address general fitness.

I would absolutely agree that a 1000 hours in you can have rewarding interactions with actual experts. Even 100 can open up conversations.

And as a software dev it’s almost expected that you’ll do that at least a few times for some problem domains.

10,000 hours underestimates transfer learning.

I definitely feel like I'm more effective coming back to something with more world experience than I was when I only knew that thing. Technically adept? Maybe not quite as much (after all, I'll be rusty and the state of the art will have moved on). Able to make better things? Certainly.

As a software eng who has always had a lot of hobbies, it's almost alienating how so many people in the office are only into TV shows, super hero movies, sci fi books, video games... It's like, there's a whole world out there people!

Serious question, what other hobbies can one have?

All of programmerdudes examples are different modes of consumption. In my experience the most fulfilling hobbies are those where you create something. It really doesn't matter what specifically - the creative part is the source of a sense of fulfillment. In my neck of the woods it now is a good time to try to make wine by oneself, for example. Just harvest some fruits, order yeast and off you go. Woodworking is pretty fulfilling, too, especially the manual, non-electrical side. Or wood carving. Carving takes about zero amounts of space and is pretty meditative. Gardening is great, and can also be started indoors with LED lighting, if space is a concern. Sewing is pretty fun, the beginner stuff are things like tote bags, i.e. you can use your own creations after a few hours. Some people like drawing or painting, or writing.

The plus for most of these is that you can actually use your creations by yourself and have a great source of gifts for friends and family.

Those are all pretty low-tec-examples, but of course you could also look into diy electronics, game programming etc. For some those aren't optimal because they resemble work too much.

I would personally avoid hobbies that tend to devolve into collecting kit, e.g. photography. IMO Great activites are those where the fun part is the creative task itself, and which involve manual exertion (assuming you are a desk worker).

Pretty similar to my list:

- Woodworking

- Car maintenance

- Gardening

- Baking

- Painting miniatures

- D&D

- Home Brewing

I currently don't have time to engage in all of them on a regular basis, but tend to cycle through them throughout the year :)

Great list! Creation, especially in the physical world is somehow easily overlooked

I'd also add social/multiplayer stuff (although many of these things might be improved by sharing) like team sports, a band, board games.

Just learned how to ride a motorcycle (more or less) on my own over about a month or so.

I took a motorcycle course over one weekend. Took the license test another weekend. Bought a bike and filled out paperwork during the week (registration & insurance). Rode almost every day for the first month, practiced maneuvers (finding the friction zone, quick stopping w/o skidding) I wasn't comfortable with in a parking lot.

Now I'm comfortable riding almost everywhere. All told, it took one weekend of high effort (motorcycle class), medium effort for one week (1-2 hours daily of either: riding, reading a motorcycle riding book, filling out paperwork, researching/coordinating/buying the bike), and low effort for the rest of the month (15 - 60 minutes of riding -- FUN).

Only took a month of effort to acquire a lifelong skill

You might be overestimating your skill level. Let's see what you think after your first serious crash.

Thanks for the reminder brother; no such thing as a safe ride ATGATT

you might be underestimating your skill level.

Any sort of crafting hobby, which ranges from making clothes to making swords to making furniture.

Graphical arts, digital and analog (which covers everything from painting with all different types of paints to mixed media, large format, small format, from the side of a building to the size of a grain of rice)

These are all mostly looks-based, but you can also make things that do things, make electronics, restore old electronics, go antiquing for vinyl players, go antiquing for anything else.

Join a choir, join a band, join a barbershop quartet, go to the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival and listen to sea shanties.

The list goes on.

It always amazes me how many people are subscribed to /r/woodworking. There are some people out there living it up.

And I can never tell if my coworkers don’t have cool hobbies or the urge to bring them up has been beaten out of them.

For me it is brewing, cooking, infusing vodkas, and gardening.

Cooking is an interesting one because I try to learn various cuisines reasonably well and some of the dishes from places like Indonesia are very complex.

All of these have the point in common that they cannot be rushed so they force a mentality of taking it slow, which I think helps with the time anxiety as well.

cooking

here are the hobbies I have had

archery, bowling, pool, mountain biking, ice hockey, inline hockey, floorball, ultimate frisbee, sailing, windsurfing, kitesurfing, rock climbing, shooting, reloading, hunting, home improvement (has a lot of sub areas), games programming, tae kwon do, kung fu, krav maga, jiu jitsu, paint ball, role playing games, online games, being helpful on forums, scuba diving, piano, golf, camping, chinese, poker, chess, settlers of cataan, cooking.

These are all activities that I have done for at least 6 months on a regular basis.

There are many things Ive only done a few times but will definitely do in the future (surfing, snowboarding, drone flying, 3d printing,etc)

At this moment I mainly mountain bike, kitesurf, krav maga, and bjj. In the winter I will snowboard and on my next beach vacation I will hopefully surf.

That's pretty good, but you're not at Simon Quinlank levels yet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IRF4rIDhIQ

Kevin Eldon looks so young here! Loved Fist of Fun :-)

I make models. Metal Earth has some very nice aerospace ones [1]. Guillow's makes some amazing balsa wood models -- if you really want to, you can put RC engines in them and they'll really fly [2]. I currently play with Estes Rockets, but want to get into amateur rocketry like this guy who built a model Falcon Heavy with onboard navigational computer and engine gimballing [3]. Every Christmas, I add one more model building to my seasonal train set.

I'm also into photography, graphic design, videography, fishing, surfing, and backpacking. My wife's paints.

[1] https://www.metalearth.com/aviation [2] https://www.guillow.com/ [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18504117

I recently took up baking (as in bread) as a hobby. It brings me joy to produce something as well smelling and testing as bread. Cooking in general could also be a hobby. Going hiking could be a hobby. Just enjoying life and being mindful of the things around you might open up your mind for hobbies you didn’t even think existed. :-)

Really anything that you're remotely curious about outside of what you do at work. Engage with something with genuine curiosity and you'll almost certainly find it leads you to a hobby you can try out for a few weeks. Get deeper into it or move on to the next.

Just to get started: instruments/music, foreign languages, cultural events, theatre/art/design, local volunteering, civic engagement/politics, outdoor activities, cycling/sports/yoga/gym, pets, travel, investing and finance, continued education (moocs/math/history/etc), meditation, ham radio, tabletop/video/retro gaming, books/writing/blogging, gardening, woodworking, cooking. Even "programming" things totally outside your field (little overlap with your day-job) can make for a good hobby if that's your thing.

Some are more fun than others to talk about to other people but that's not the point. I find whenever I'm feeling burnt out or stressed my problem is usually that I'm focused too much on work and not getting satisfaction from the rest of life. Hobbies can make up the rest of life.

You can have literally any hobby. Two of my lifelong hobbies, skateboarding and surfing, may seem somewhat atypical for the average software engineer, but you'd be surprised how many do at least two of the three.

My favorite example, William Stein (https://wstein.org/). Math/CS Professor at UW - absolutely kills it on a skateboard.

Personally, this year I started getting really into Scuba diving--a sport/hobby I hardly thought about for my entire life until I tried a single "Discover Scuba Diving" dive four months ago. Lately I've been diving deep into the hobby (hah) at home and in Thailand. I've been connecting with so many other people here in Seattle and discovered a whole community that's otherwise invisible. Most excitingly, turns out there's a whole new world down there under the waves! No need to search for alien life when it's already here on earth :D

Finding this hobby has given me pretty great happiness this year. I suffer from a fair bit of existential time anxiety, and anxiety over having too many consumptive "hobbies". Diving isn't exactly a constructive hobby, but it's opened up a new avenue of happiness that isn't strictly input/output for me.

A friend of mine has the same story. Went on a intro dive during a vacation in Hawaii because "why not?" and 3 years later he's a certified Master Diver, teaching classes and doing very technical dives & rescues. All as a hobby.

Thanks for asking, it's fun to answer, plus the other answers are a treasure trove!

For me it currently is archery, underwater hockey, running, volunteering (as swimming instructor), keeping a (planted, tropical) fish tank, learning a new language (a local Filipino dialect), electronics (home automation).

In the (in some cases distant) past (yet could come make a come back): drums, guitar, drawing, writing, photography, origami, snowboarding, reading.

I work as a(n independent) software dev by day. So programming is my job, but it is also my all time (well, since 8) favourite hobby.

I started doing Muay Thai recently, and I quite like gardening

I recently bought a Onewheel, after never having done board sports in my life. Now I spend at least an hour on it a day, if not two. It's tons of fun.

If you look at my post from the new year you'll see I wanted to learn cha... but (happily) I became distracted by kizomba... try it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_XO7eOl9tQ&list=RDb_XO7eOl9...

For me: Running, Cycling (around different places), sailing, creating apps, creating games, creating AI models.

What? He listed 4 things in addition to software. Just do anything besides those 5 activities. This is a joke?

Wow I love how many people replied to you here. For me it's painting, acting, meditation, yoga, guitar, and lots of broad interest in media that aren't so conformed, like foreign, old stuff, etc.

Working on and racing cars is a) expensive, and b) actually not as expensive as you might think, and totally within the salary of a modestly paid software engineer with many other financial obligations.

Exercising, reading, volunteering, traveling, writing, hiking/boating/skiing and other outdoor activities, photography, studying a language, playing an instrument.

There's so many where do you even start? Arts, sports, cooking, reading can all be broken down into probabaly hundreds of things to do

well, my current hobbies are: flying (small aircraft), pen and paper role playing (think d&d + others), board games, photography.

How delightfully smug to look down on people who like different things than you do.

Hit a bit close to home?

I think that my similar experience may be how I discovered this problem in the first place.

I like to think that brogrammers were trying to solve this very problem. But they failed by going too aggressively the opposite direction.

"Brogrammer" is just a term that means "male programmer I don't like."

> TV shows, super hero movies, sci fi books, video games

Aw, come on, one of those is not like the others.

Now let's argue over which one.

I always think back to this comic when I'm feeling the passage of time: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-09-02

You'll need less hours for your second thing if there are concepts that you can translate, or if you maybe start with a third thing in between that can be a bridge between the other things.

Some study skills translate, but there are categories where one kind hinders another.

I’ve been studying in a domain that doesn’t intellectualize things and that was really a hard row to hoe. But now that I have around a thousand hours I’m finding learning other intuition-based fields is quite a bit easier.

Examples for the curious?

Really good points -- this kind of cheered me up.