The Find: This week Chris Anderson uses his blog this week to proclaim his three-year rule: to stay fresh and master new skills, make a major change at work every three years.- The Source: Anderson’s Long Tail blog.
The Takeaway: Best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell has offered the observation that to truly become an expert in something takes 10,000 hours of practice. This week Chris Anderson, of The Long Tail fame, picks up on this comment and does a little basic math:
If you really throw yourself into a job, you’ll spend 60 hours a week working. That’s 3,000 hours a year (allowing for vacation), which means you’ll hit the 10,000 hour mark a few months after your third year.
So after three years you’re an expert, what does Anderson suggest you do then? In short, something else. In support of this three-year rule, Anderson points to a stint he did earlier in his career at The Economist, a magazine where journalists’ assignments are shuffled every three years.
There was a policy to rotate everyone every three years. The idea was that fresh eyes were more important than experience. “Foreign everywhere” was the mantra, and around your second year in Cairo, you could expect to get a call from the editor asking you to consider Mumbai or Sao Paolo.
Being new, Anderson notes, allows you to “could ask dumb questions without fear and note that the emperor has no clothes.” Anderson loved the feeling of accomplishment when he scaled the steep learning curve and ever since, he has stuck to the principle, moving on to a new challenge every three years. He advocates all you managers out there consider doing the same.
The Question: Anderson’s argument rests on the belief that “fresh eyes were more important than experience” - do you agree with this assumption?
(Image of woman holding up three fingers by LollyKnit, CC 2.0)
