The executive coach certification process, built around the Stakeholder Centered Coaching model, never asked how many hours had been spent reading about coaching or sitting in training sessions. What it required instead was a set number of real coaching engagements, each one followed by structured feedback from the people actually affected by the coaching, feedback that had to visibly change the next engagement.
That structure made something obvious that a simple hour count never would have: two people could spend the exact same number of hours doing something and end up in completely different places, depending on whether anything about their approach actually changed between attempts.
The question “how many hours does it take to master a skill” assumes hours are the right unit to measure. They aren’t. What actually determines the timeline is the number of corrected repetitions, attempts followed by real feedback that visibly changes the next attempt, not the number of hours logged doing the same version of the thing repeatedly. Someone who practices for a hundred hours without changing anything between sessions is in a different position than someone who practices for thirty hours and adjusts after every single one.
Key Takeaways
- The number of hours logged isn’t the unit that determines mastery, the number of corrected repetitions is.
- A corrected repetition is an attempt followed by real feedback that visibly changes the next attempt.
- Someone practicing thirty hours with real correction after each attempt can end up further ahead than someone practicing a hundred hours unchanged.
- Track corrections, not hours: how many attempts got specific feedback, and how many next attempts actually reflected it.
- Popular hour-based rules of thumb feel true for people with fast, honest feedback built into their role, and false for people practicing in isolation.
What to actually count instead
Instead of tracking hours, track corrections: how many times did an attempt get followed by specific, honest feedback, and how many times did the next attempt actually reflect that feedback. A skill built on twenty corrected repetitions tends to be sturdier than one built on two hundred uncorrected hours.
This also explains why the popular hour-based rules of thumb feel true for some people and false for others. Someone in a role with fast, honest feedback built in naturally racks up corrected repetitions quickly. Someone practicing in isolation, with no one telling them what actually needs to change, can log far more hours and end up with far less to show for it.
FAQ
So hours don’t matter at all?
They matter as a rough container, not as the actual mechanism. Time has to pass for repetitions to happen. But two people with identical hour totals can have very different skill levels, and the difference is almost always in how much real correction happened inside those hours.
How do you get feedback when practicing something alone?
Build in a way to compare the current attempt against a clear standard, a recording, a specific checklist, or someone qualified who checks in periodically. Without some form of outside correction, the repetitions tend to reinforce whatever the starting approach already was, good or bad.
Does the feedback have to come from an expert to count?
It has to be specific and honest, not necessarily expert. A clear standard to compare against, a recording you review critically, or even a checklist can supply real correction. What doesn’t count is repetition with no comparison point at all, expert or otherwise.
