#35 Time Yields Opportunity, Not Experience

This is post #35 of my #365 day series.

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I met an older gentleman on the golf course and he was giving me tips on my game. He started off the conversation with “I’ve been playing golf for more than 30 years.” I listened of course. You’d be a fool not to take free advice. Intrigued, I offered a small wager to the winner of a round 9 holes. Unsurprisingly, he took the bet and we proceeded to the front 9. Immediately I could tell he wasn’t joking when he said he was a regular at the course. He knew the ins and outs of the course only the way a regular would. His swing was, however, less than spectacular, but it was at least consistently chaotic. He had a bad swing and learned to play with it for the bulk of his golfing life. Was he going to change from it? No. Would I adopt the tips he gave me for my swing? Nope. Did I beat him even though I had 15 less years of experience? Yes, but here’s the thing, you can’t conflate time with experience.

There’s this disconnect between probable versus possible versus reality that people don’t seem to understand. If you’ve spent 20 years doing something, it is both possible and probable that you gained some experience doing something. That does not, however, mean that you actually gained experience. I use golf as an analogy here, but really any task or skill that requires repetition applies.

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times — Bruce Lee

When we hear the 10,000 hour rule, we just assume that every hour in the time spent is equal to the same output. That’s just not true.

The golfing example is obviously an exaggeration in what actually happens in life, but it makes a point. When I was younger I would always cite the fallacy of time versus experience because I was battling credibility. Now that I’m older, I find that I have to do that less because people just assume that I’m experienced. How ridiculous. I could have not progressed at all, but I’m assumed to have attained those skills because of the passage of time. Time does not equal work, and it certainly does not equal experience. If you practice the same swing, but that swing was wrong, then you have the experience of a bad swing. What does that say about experience then? It says it’s only one factor in determining the skill set of an individual, but it does not indicate the worthiness of the time spent. What does it say about time then? It says that it gives you the opportunity to gain experience, but it doesn’t guarantee it. I get it. It’s an easy mental model to associate time with experience and just assume, but we should be better than that. No two people are the same therefore no two seconds, minutes, hours, or days spent on a task are the same.