Putting in "work"

People often equate "work" with visible progress on a task--and worse yet--equate "quality" with the visible complexity of one's work. Unfortunately, visible progress is often only a feel-good metric of actual work done, and the visible complexity of the work done is often an inverse indicator of the quality of one's work!

The hidden work that's done to arrive at a conclusion or subsequent plan of action is where the magic often resides. The thought experiments, the iterations/experimentation, the weighing of opinions. These tasks are circular in nature, showing no tangible progress for the work involved, but serve a vital role in refining the task at hand, perhaps even resulting in an insight that takes the task or project in another direction altogether.

Although I do subscribe to Malcolm Gladwell's concept of attaining mastery in an area by putting in at least 10,000 hours of work, one needs to be very clear about defining the boundaries of that area of proficiency. If you're talking about gaining mastery of "life," for example, that's clearly way too broad of a subject and might require significantly more than 10,000 hours even if restricted to say a sub-category of life (one's temperament, physical health, etc.).

If you're talking about a mastery of how to say code well in distributed programming, that amount of time is probably more than enough. However, even in that context, you probably still need to narrow down your scope rather than jumping around and learning about every language, domain, and technique that comes your way.

In trading, the work you put in is largely invisible (ok, unless you're creating an automated trading system), and yet profoundly consequential. The need for visible progress (e.g. forcing trades), proving one's competence at all times (i.e. not respecting the probability or risk/loss potential), or being a BS artist all back-fire. The last (BS artistry) is really just fooling yourself (and others in the process) of your greatness or worth. It can work well in certain situations (advertising, corporate ladder ascension, gaining celebrity status, and some sales roles), but absolutely kill you when facing real data that has real consequences (trading, sports, science, engineering, and some sales roles).

You ultimately have to get up every day and face yourself in the mirror, minus the BS that you might construct in presenting yourself to others. Wouldn't it be cool to work on things that reflect the ability to be real and true to yourself, and not have to sit behind a set of ego-driven assumptions? If you can put in 10,000 hours to shape your mind, pattern recognition, outlook, and ultimately actions to further this goal, you're making real progress.