The Learning Curve
The learning curve is the relationship between proficiency and experience (i.e. ability as a function of time spent learning). In other words, how long it takes to acquire new skills or knowledge.
The Learning Curve is S-Shaped
For most skills, the learning curve is S-shaped and has three stages:
-
When you first start learning a skill, you start off at the low end of the learning curve, where your ability increases at a slower rate per unit time. This is often perceived as a barrier to learning due to the time invested not resulting in significant increases in ability. This is where most people give up.
-
Eventually, some kind of breakthrough occurs, and you get past the initial learning barrier. You reach the middle of the learning curve, where your ability increases at a faster rate per unit time than in the first stage—often at an increasing rate. Deliberate practice leads to improvement.
-
As you gain more experience and approach the higher end of the learning curve, the progress that you make per unit time begins to decrease as you experience diminishing returns. You eventually require significantly more time to improve your ability by the same amount than you did before as you approach the top percentile.
Understanding the three stages of the learning curve is important because it provides a roadmap of expectations on what is achievable at each stage and the time required for each stage. It allows you to better approach and optimize each stage.
Plateau of Latent Potential
Progress often does not appear until you break the learning barrier.
The barrier that you often experience at the beginning of learning a new skill (also known as the plateau of latent potential) is analogous to what happens when ice melts. Ice only melts once it warms past its freezing point. However, the potential that was built up through the temperature changes that led up to the freezing point was required for the ice to finally melt. Only a single degree change, which was no different than the temperature increases before, led to a significant change 1.
Learning is not linear. Breaking through the learning barrier is often the result of putting in the requisite effort, and building up the required potential to break through to the middle of the learning curve. There is often a period of frustration that is required before you break through. The results are delayed as the habits that you build that are required to learn a skill begin to compound.
Most Progress Is Made in the Middle
Going from 0% to 80% takes significantly less time than going from 80% to 99%, even though the gap is larger. Focusing on the 20% that leads to the 80% also means that less effort is required to make progress in getting to 80%, especially after breaking through the learning barrier. Once you start approaching diminishing returns, more time and effort is required to make less progress than in the middle of the learning curve.
However, by the time you reach the point of diminishing returns, you are usually above average. This means that becoming above average is more easily attainable than being in the top percentile, and is often more than enough for many things. You can achieve “just good enough” to above average results in a short amount of time and be close to the same level with people that have done it for longer. Deliberate practice matters more than the total time of experience.
It is usually unnecessary to get to the top percentile, which requires significantly more effort, where you will need to dedicate your life to that one thing and may not result in large tangible differences that are worth the investment of time and effort for what you get in return.
Achieving the Top Percentile Requires Significant Effort
As you gain more experience and begin experiencing diminishing returns, you move to the higher end of the learning curve. This is the part of the learning curve that distinguishes those that are good or above average, with those that are in the top percentile of their skill.
The very top end of the learning curve is the place that is referred to by the 10,000 hour rule, which states that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert or master at something:
The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything. 2
An important distinction should be made between the point at which you start to experience diminishing returns, where you are certainly above average but not in the top percentile, and the point where you reach the top percentile and are a world-class expert, where the learning curve is almost a horizontal line with no slope. The 10,000 hour rule refers to the latter point, and states that we reach that point after 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.
At the top, improvements are usually made on minor details that average people would not notice. This is what separates the above average from the top percentile, and often takes many more years to achieve.