Have you heard of the 10,000 hour rule? Even if it were true it leaves out more than it should about how skills are truly developed. That is, if you put in the time and effort can you ever expect to compete in a Grand Slam tennis tournament? Hit a home run in the major leagues? Run a marathon in 2 hours?
It is very unlikely that a reader of this blog can honestly answer yes to any of those questions. But how about winning a major radiosport event like CQ World Wide? Now I can reasonably expect that one or two hands will be tentatively raised. That shouldn't be a surprise since this blog is far more likely to be read by those in the latter group and not the former. Even so, few make it the top of any field despite a major investment of time and effort.
Years ago I stood in the batter's box of a recreational facility with a machine pitching balls at the distance and speed typical in the MLB. My hope was to at least connect with the ball. I failed in half a dozen attempts.
It has been claimed that this particular skill is unlearnable if you have not already had it "wired" by your mid-teens. The same may be true of many technical sports which require exceptional coordination of mind and body. By the time we become adults the ability to program our bodies to this degree is greatly diminished. I have poor coordination so I have always done poorly at most sports despite enjoying them.
What goes into being really good at something:
- Practice
- Coaching
- Motivation
- Talent
Practice, motivation and even coaching are insufficient if your objective is to reach the pinnacle. The truth can hurt: time and effort can't overcome a lack of talent. You can go far without it but you will plateau and progress no further.
Talent is often unappreciated. We believe, and are raised to believe, that we can do anything if we work hard and sacrifice. That means practice, practice, practice. If only that were true! 10,000 hours is a myth. It's an attractive lie that explains why due to our busy lives of raising families and earning a living there is no time to practice -- that could have been me hitting the game-winning home run.
All of us have talents, discovered or not. That's why many parents push their children to try a variety of activities -- sports, music, academics -- since that is a good way to discover talent and interest. I know of no deterministic method to predict talent.
Talent alone can be motivating, but what if you don't have it in the sport or vocation you've chosen? Competitiveness is bred in all of us so we are driven to excel when we're young. Failure to due to lack of talent may be explained away with excuses. As we grow to adulthood most of us give up those dreams and settle down to a comfortable life that is within our grasp. We lower our expectations.
What about radiosport? There is no money to be earned and little enough recognition, yet many of us are motivated to compete and improve our skills and results. The requisite skills -- CW, SO2R, 2BSIQ, etc. -- may not be talents of your, so your only recourse is intense regular practice. Are you willing to put in the time and effort to rise to the top and put that cherished plaque on the wall?
Coaching won't get you there. Like I have, you can approach talented or accomplished operators for tips and advice but in radiosport you are really on your own. You can always bury yourself in a multi-op team to spread the glory and blame, however development of your skills remains your responsibility.
But practice can indeed be boring. At least that's what I've found. This is true for me no matter the skill, be it one where I have talent or not.
A lack of talent can destroy one's initial enthusiasm. We hit one roadblock after another in our quest for improved performance. It takes a lot of motivation to not give up in the face of poor results. With talent discovered it is far easier to practice since we have quick and tangible results. It is thus that talent leads to success. Practice is mandatory whether or not one has talent. It's unavoidable.
You may be surprised to hear that I have no talent for CW. What I had was strong motivation when I was young. It took years of practice and fumbling to become proficient. I was barely able to copy and send well enough to get my first license (10 wpm). Every QSO risked embarrassment due to my many mistakes. I would pretend to copy text that I missed.
I tried everything: slower speeds, copying on paper, copying in my head, or undemanding "599" contacts. I might have abandonned the code forever after I upgraded with phone privileges had I not discovered contesting. That helped maintain my motivation to improve my accuracy and speed. I built an iambic keyer with memories to facilitate contests and to avoid a lot of mistakes. Well, at least after I painfully learned to send with the paddles.
It took years until I became truly capable of high speed CW. Without talent or coaching it took a lot of practice and motivation. Even today, without regular practice my skill degrades. It took me a few years to retrain myself after a 20 year hiatus from the hobby.
In contrast to my CW struggles, at the same time that I was first licensed I discovered a talent that I didn't anticipate: computer programming. Within days of starting the subject in high school I was miles ahead of the teacher and exploring novel algorithms and languages, and machine architectures. I had stumbled upon a talent. Several decades later my CW is very good while my programming ability has declined. The former has been practiced more than the latter. Talent is helpful but...use it or lose it.
I hate practice so I tend to avoid it. There are wonderful training tools available such as Morserunner (I use the version embedded in N1MM Logger+) and Rufz. I occasionally use them but invariably give up after 5 or 10 minutes. I know many top-notch contesters that use tools like this quite a lot in the days and weeks leading up to major contests. That's great for those that enjoy it. I do not, and I suffer the consequences.
Instead I focus on small contests for practice. They're real. Yet I avoid the short sessions like CWT since they don't feel real to me. Among the contesters that I know opinions are varied. Here are some of the ways I practice on the air in small contests:
- 2BSIQ for an hour or two
- High power on the high bands to Europe to practice running a pile up
- QRP to hone tactics for being heard by those running a pile up
- SO2R on the low bands, dealing with noise and poor SNR reception in both ears
- Quickly run up the mults using assistance (human and skimmer spots)
- SO2R phone, which is a new skill I need to practice
I have a similar attitude to physical training. I am a pretty good cyclist and runner with a modest talent for both. When I was in my prime I would spend many hours during the cold winter months on an indoor trainer to prepare for the coming season. In retrospect I'm amazed that I could endure so much practice. Really, it's boring. These days I get bored after 20 or 30 minutes even while listening to loud rock and roll.
I can't easily or safely run or ride for any distance in the winter so I strap on the snowshoes. That's my chosen alternative that is roughly the equivalent of operating in small contests. I get a good workout get the stimulation of being out in nature. I can go slow or fast, choose open fields or forests for the many obstacles. That activity is far preferable to practice on a bike trainer or treadmill.
You don't have to be talented to learn and enjoy a skill. Just be prepared to put in the time and effort, and reach out to those more skilled to see what you can learn from them; that is, get coaching if you can.
But my premise remains the same: practice can be really boring. Whether it's CW, running, drawing or shooting hoops, you can progress with practice. It'll be slow so find whatever it is that motivates to get you through the first stages when the cause might seem hopeless. Once you see results the motivation will naturally rise to help overcome the boredom.
Without practice to improve your skill you are simply pursuing a pastime. That's okay but don't deceive yourself into believing that you're doing more than that. Boring or not, practice works.
Postscript: A few of the pictures in this article were generated using a public interface to Stable Diffusion. It was an experiment to brighten up the wall of text. Finding human drawn artwork that is pertinent to the topic and also public domain can be difficult. Since the training data doesn't seem to include ham radio material the results were often amusing. Yagis, keys and many other objects common in our hobby are unknown to it so it guesses. The results can be surreal or plain nonsense. After rejecting the worst there are still absurdities in the pictures I chose to use.
