How Long (Actually) Does It Take To Be World Class?

I had my VA do over 10 hours of research to get a data-backed answer.

When I was young, I had a very skewed perspective of how “getting good” at a thing worked.

I largely thought that some people were naturally good at stuff… and other people… just weren’t.

Justin was poetic at soccer.
Joe was a wizard at piano and bassoon.
Aaron was godly at trumpet.
Jon was a natural distance runner.
My sister was an A+ student.

… and I was none of those things.

With 20+ years of hindsight, I now know what was actually happening:

I mistook hard work and deliberate practice for natural talent.

I thought, “Oh, they’re good at soccer, it’s cause they’re just more naturally talented — they were born that good and I wasn’t.”

This is a very shitty worldview/approach to life because it means that everyone’s skills are fixed.

This is what I thought my “natural” stats were growing up

I mean, that’s why I was depressed throughout most of high school. To feel like the only talent I had was being decent at sports and video games was quite a dismal experience.

It took me a LONG time to realize that all my “natural” stats weren’t fixed and were things I could improve on (just like how you can improve your stats most video games, ironically).

When I finally realized this, I became a learning machine and got excited to learn anything/everything!

Of course, this completely changed my outlook on life and gave me a deep sense of optimism.

But.

This didn’t stop me — for a loong time — from comparing myself to other people who were reeaally good at their craft.

Even though I became more hopeful after realizing I could learn things, I still felt a pang of jealousy whenever I saw someone incredibly masterful at something, especially if they were younger than me.

I remember, as an 11th grader, being jealous of the 9th grader who was in my Calculus class, acing every test.

Or the skinny kid who was super slow in cross country and then hit a growth spurt and became one of the fastest on the team in a single year — while I stagnated.

Or the musical, academic, and leadership prodigies who made it look effortless.

“Ugh, how did they get so good at such a young age?”
“Ugh, why are they already better than me?”
“I wish I was that good. Why am I not that good yet?”

This eventually led to a question I decided to investigate a few years ago:

How long does it take to become world-class-good?

I invite you, for a few moments to consider this question that I posed at a workshop last year:

Slide from a workshop I led in Oct 2023

Got a number?

So. Being my weird data-oriented self.

I actually had my long-time virtual assistant (VA) do the manual research on this.

I had her look up the last 40 years of winners for ALL of those awards, scrape through all their Wikipedia entries to see if we could figure out EXACTLY how old the winners were when they STARTED their craft.

We ended up with 185 data points.

These are the results:

The numbers:

• When it comes to athletics:

  • It takes about 10 years to become a top .01% paid professional

  • It takes about 8 years to go even further and become recognized as THE most skilled/successful out of those professionals and considered as “best in the world”

• Overall:

  • It takes, on average, 22 years to go from starting a skill to being recognized as “best in the world”

Seeing this data for the first time helped soothe those parts of me wishing I was world-class in more things. I literally haven’t lived long enough to be world-class at multiple things.

And I certainly haven’t had the obsession or focus for a single skill the way professional athletes and artists might have.

But this made me want to chart my own skills once I did this research:

Interesting right?

It’s really grounding to look at the areas of my life where I wish I was better and see how many years I’ve actually invested in it.

There are parts of me that are frustrated that I kinda suck at digital marketing, but I literally just started learning.

I wish I was better at Mandarin, but I only have an off-and-on 3 years under my belt.

But the stuff that I’ve invested over a decade in?

I feel solid about those.
I feel competent.
I feel a grounded, effortless mastery over those.

Have you ever enjoyed my writing online and wondered what went into it? 13 years.

Have you ever had a conversation with me or seen me host a social event and wondered what went into it? 20 years.

Have you ever seen me speak or teach and wonder what went into it? 13 years.

Now, whenever I see someone who is really good at their thing, I immediately think, “Wow, they must have put at least a decade into getting there.”

Now here’s the thing that gets me excited whenever I think about this stuff:

What do I want to start investing time and energy into… that my 10-years-older self would be SO GLAD I started today?

Who knows, maybe in 10 years, my stats will look like this:

Have a friend who might like this kind of content? Consider sharing it!

What’s your relationship with learning and growing?

How have your expectations of what or how many skills you have served you or hindered you?

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When’s the next post coming out? I no longer have a regular cadence of publishing, but when I publish, it’ll always be on Sunday afternoons at 12pm Pacific (3pm Eastern, 3am Singapore, 8pm UK).