NOTE: This is a chapter from my exciting new book The Self Made Stand-Up, which you can purchase in Australia at Amazon or through Amazon in the US, or from Barnes and Noble, or Books.By – or lots of other places that I can’t keep track of.

It’s a whopping book with 68 Chapters so I don’t feel bad about previewing one of them here. Without further ado…

10,000 Hours

This chapter title sounds like a Tool album, but it’s a reference to a principle that Malcolm Gladwell discussed in his 2008 book Outliers. His “10,000 Hour Rule” alleges that success is a product of putting in the time, and that 10,000 hours is practically a guarantee of success in any discipline or field.

His book backs up the claim with loads of case studies and it seems like a solid theory. Everyone seems to believe and quote the 10,000-hour rule. Experience is better than no experience. Practice makes Perfect. That makes sense, right?

No. Not for anything, and especially not for comedy. I’m going to call Bullshit on this one.

I read Outliers when it came out. Malcolm Gladwell is a good writer, and he makes a persuasive case, but it’s hard to ignore this basic fact: All his evidence is a handful of cherry-picked anecdotes. Even Paul McCartney from one of those examples, The Beatles, has pointed out all the other bands that were logging the same number of hours without the successful outcome.

Is the “you’ll be good after 10,000 hours” idea is even possible for a comedian?

Ummm… nope. Even if you book an hour-long show, every single day without a break, getting your 10,000 hours of craft will take you more than 27 years.

If you can book an hour-long show every single day without fail, for decades, you’re already successful beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

I don’t know where he plucked that number from, but I think we can safely ignore it. Even if it were true for anyone else, it couldn’t possibly apply to comedians.

The only reason I bring it up is because the idea of getting experience to get good is so incredibly pervasive in your first years of comedy. Everyone’s going to tell you it takes forever. People will say it takes 5 years or 10 years before you can consider yourself any good at comedy, and that’s a depressing idea to wrap your head around.

Is it even true? Well, yes. And no.

Experience matters but it’s not everything. You can see a range of comedians with roughly the same experience level who are not all equally good. There’s comics I’ll never like, no matter how many hours they put into what they’re doing. Some comedians grind away for decades with no appreciable success while others find the fast track straight away.

If we’re talking about the quality of your work, experience helps but it’s only one factor. The others include your talent, insight and imagination. If we’re talking about the success of your career, experience helps but it’s only one factor. The others include luck, networking and professionalism. Logging enough hours of repetition might work in the gym, but it’s not enough to make you a great or successful comedian.

The advice to do so assumes that comedy is a meritocracy, something where the most rewards and improvement go to the person who put in the most work over the most hours. Comedy is not a meritocracy. Read that again. Expecting comedy to be a meritocracy will only break your heart and waste 10,000 hours of your time.

We discussed this in the Undeniable chapter. There’s no guaranteed reward for effort or hours, but it’s the part you can control. You don’t get much say about your luck, I’m afraid. All you can do is do the work to ensure you’re “luck ready” if fortune ever smiles on you. Doing the work without expecting a guarantee is what makes you extraordinary and allows to you get lucky without feeling guilt or “imposter syndrome.”

As you know, you must grow in public. You will also have heard that it takes longer to get good at comedy than it doesn’t in other disciplines like art or music. Nobody can tell you exactly how long it takes to get good, but everyone agrees that it takes more time that is reasonable.

I remember thinking I was pretty good in my first year, and for an open miker I probably was. I had the ability to make a room full of strangers laugh in my five minutes, and I was as good or better at it than some comics who’d been doing it for longer than I had. I could hold my own and account well in gigs where I was supporting professional comedians.

Looking back, I can be more objective. I’m not sure it’s possible to be great in your first twelve months. Was I good? Not really. Was I good enough? Absolutely. Good enough is a reasonable goal at the beginning. Good enough is a great result for a beginner.

I was disheartened hearing seasoned comics say that you shouldn’t be recording an album or special in your first five years. Now, I reluctantly concede that they were absolutely correct on this matter. Of course you’re perfectly able to. We live in a time where we can produce and publish content with unprecedented ease. I’m sure not going to tell you what to do. I’m not your father.

But I’ve heard plenty of comedians who made their recorded debut early, and all of them express regret about it. They regret making their first impression before it could be a good impression, even if they thought they were good enough at the time. They regret making the time and money investment into a release that couldn’t possibly be as good as the one they’d do later. They regret putting in all that effort for something that just disappeared because it didn’t make an impression.

Shooting your shot too early is demoralizing. All our awkward learning has to happen in front of people, but it’s prudent to not skip the tutorial. Going straight to specials and arenas might be setting yourself up for failure. 10,000 Hours is excessive and arbitrary but we should still learn the craft and pay our dues.

If you’re discouraged by how long the journey is, I’ve got good news. First, it’s a fun journey. If you were enduring something unpleasant for years while working towards an uncertain outcome, that would suck and I’d tell you not to do it. But doing comedy is fun.

I’m not doing comedy for a million dollars and a Netflix special at the end. I’m doing it because doing it is a lot of fun. I’m doing for for everything I get along the way. I make great friends, get a lot of positive attention and a real visceral thrill from doing it well. Once you’ve had your first “kill” you’ll be too addicted to worry about whether there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Also, you regularly “level up” with real tangible improvements that you consciously feel and use. If you’re any kind of gamer you might get what I mean, but I’d better explain it anyway.

I’m a nerd and I’ve played Dungeons and Dragons, and games like it, for decades. I’ve also indulged in some computer/video gaming from time to tine. In all of these games you’re rewarded for experience. When you hit certain milestones or accumulate significant amounts of experience, you ascend to the next level.

I don’t mean like we do in life. When you hit the next level in one of these games, everything changes. The magician gets extra spells and the fighter gets bonus combat powers. It’s not gradual at all. It’s instant and dramatic and therefore not that realistic.

Except, comedy also seems to work like this. There are moments, once a year or so, when you feel yourself “level up” and gain extra abilities. At least once a year I find myself noticeably better at writing . Or doing Crowdwork and handling Hecklers. Or doing longers sets. Or coming up with usable concepts and points of view.

Or I might just find myself speaking more comfortably and confidently. But it’s tangible and sudden: I know I’ve leveled up and have new powers. Leveling up is as thrilling and addictive as those exhilarating moments when we dominate a room in one of our performances.

I don’t know what happens after 10,000 hours of comedy and I doubt anyone on the planet actually does, but I do know that we do “level up” at regular intervals and that whole experience is enjoyable enough to keep us on the path. Don’t worry about whether there’s a pot of gold at the end of the trip. We do the trip because it’s thrilling and rewarding in the short term.

So when are you good? When will you be ready? You’ll know.