Matt Webb said a bunch of insightful and exciting stuff at Reboot. The best bit was his challenge about 100 hours. And I'm going to quote him about that at length, because it's enormously well put, but to really get the most out of it you should go and read his whole presentation and get the context.
Here's Matt:
"Look. Every time a person takes into their own hands the tools of production, it’s like they have eaten a macroscope. They see and feel the world in context. They are able to not just consume, but to produce, to invent culture...
...So I say our decisions about culture at large, about the question of how to spend our 100 million hours, I say these are rooted in personal ability to wield the tools of production. And as we said, 100 hours practice would get you a really long way.
Here’s my challenge. Right now, put aside 100 hours over this summer. Do it right now, in your head. Put that time aside. 100 hours. 8 hours a week for the next 12 weeks. One hour a day, or one working day a week. It’s one summer out of your entire life, it’s nothing. Okay, you’ve got that 100 hours?
Now for the next two days, go to talks and start conversations with people you don’t know, and choose what to spend your 100 hours on.
I guarantee that everyone in this room can produce something or has some special skill, and maybe they’re not even aware of it.
Ask them what theirs is, find out, because you’ll get ideas about what to learn yourself, and decide what to spend your 100 hours on. Do that for me.
Because when you contribute, when you participate in culture, when you’re no longer solving problems, but inventing culture itself, that is when life starts getting interesting."
Personally, I'm not sure what to do with my 100 hours. Not yet. But I love the way Matt's taken the '10,000 hours to develop expertise' idea and reframed/refocused it as something you can do something about, not just observe. V. good.
And surely someone, even now, someone must be building some sort of 100hours.com thing. Surely.
