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Hey friends, so we've all heard that it
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takes 10,000 hours to become a master
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at something, but what does that actually look
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like in reality?
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Is it true?
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Six years ago, I decided to test the
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rule out and began measuring all of the
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time I spent on art, and so far,
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I've logged in an exact total of
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11,770 hours and 40 minutes, and it's honestly
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been life-changing.
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When I began the experiment as a depressed
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uni graduate who had zero followers and drew
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like this, I never expected to reach a
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point where I could work with various companies,
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have over 200,000 followers across YouTube and
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X/Twitter, and even winning an award in
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this year's Honkai Star Rail creator competition.
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So in this video, I'm going to share
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with you the details of everything that happened
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in those 11,000 hours, from how my
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art changed at each 1,000 hour of
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the journey to all of the big challenges
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I faced and the key lessons I had
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to learn to overcome them.
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By the way, if you're new here, I'm
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Ori, an artist and soon-to-be VTuber,
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and on this channel, we dive
into all things drawing.
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From tips and tutorials
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to exploring how we can level up
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both our art and ourselves.
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Okay, let's start right at the beginning, where
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I was before starting the challenge and why
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I decided to do it.
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So I liked to draw as a kid,
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and I would often be doodling during classes
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and sometimes at home too, when I wasn't
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busy watching anime or
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feeding my video game addiction.
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I dreamt of one day becoming a manga
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artist, but as time went on, I found
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the dream kinda slowly getting further away as I
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got older.
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I was from Australia, and there wasn't a
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place that taught anime style art, and going
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to Japan to study art there was too
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expensive, and my Japanese wasn't that good yet
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at the time.
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My family also didn't support what I wanted
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to do, and told me to pursue something
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more stable and get a real job, because
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I could always draw in my free time,
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they told me.
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Which, spoiler alert for the younger viewers out
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there, you basically get less and less of
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the more you adult.
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And so after graduating high school, I went
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to do a teaching degree, because at least
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I got to study Japanese as part of it.
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And I got decent grades, and I didn't
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really mind teaching.
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But the thing is, when you have a
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calling to be a creator, and you ignore
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it, everything just feels wrong, and it just
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kinda eats at you on the inside.
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This was honestly a dark time in my
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life, and I became really depressed.
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On the outside, everything looked like it was
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going well, and I was doing everything you
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were to do, like getting good grades and
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doing a good job at work.
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But on the inside, I was a complete mess.
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I stopped seeing meaning in my life or
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anything else I was doing, and at some point
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I was like, "man, screw this,
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I just can't take it anymore."
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I was completely miserable and unhappy, so I
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quit teaching at schools, and instead decided to
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just work part time as a private tutor,
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so I could pursue my original goal of
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drawing manga.
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And because my art journey began from a
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really low point in my life, and feeling
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super depressed, I knew that managing my emotional
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well-being would be just as important as
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improving my art skills.
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I think we creators just generally deal with
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a lot of challenges on the inside, with
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things like self-doubt,
anxiety, and burnout, which
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can sometimes really hold us back.
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Which is why I'd like to thank BetterHelp
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done a therapy session before, but it turned
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So after quitting my job to chase my
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dreams, you'd think I'd just do the damn
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thing and draw the manga.
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But nope!
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I spent a long time coming up with
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all these different story ideas and characters and
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doing a ton of research and watching tutorials
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on YouTube, but never
actually completing anything.
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It was only when the girl I was
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dating at the time said to me: "Ori,
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you need to stop dreaming and start seeing
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reality" that I realized I hadn't gotten anything
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done.
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The relationship had a lot of issues so
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we went our separate ways soon after that,
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but I'm actually really grateful she told me
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that because it was the wake-up call
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I needed.
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And I was like, no, I know I
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can do this and I can prove it.
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So I spent the next few months forcing
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myself to complete a short manga and feeling
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confident with my masterpiece on the 2nd of
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May 2018, I submitted it to a competition
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held by the only publisher at the time
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that didn't require me to give a Japanese
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address in order to submit the work.
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And...
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nothing happened.
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I waited and waited, weeks went by and
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still no response.
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"Hmm, that's odd."
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"Did they not get my email?"
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I mean, you'd think it'd be obvious that
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there was no way the very first work
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of an absolute beginner was going to win
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any awards, let alone be worth the time
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for a publisher to give feedback to.
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But I had what's known as the
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Dunning-Kruger effect, where as a beginner,
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you tend to overestimate how good
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you actually are.
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It was only when I showed one of
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my friends my masterpiece that they kinda laughed
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and said "oh it looks like a
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B-rate manga."
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And that was when I realized my drawing
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skills basically sucked.
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Like, although I drew when I was younger,
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I never really learned how to draw properly.
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And because I also stopped drawing when I
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went to uni, my skills were pretty much
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still the same, if not worse, than where
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it was when I was in high school.
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But for some reason, I didn't really feel
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down about it.
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In fact, I actually remember
feeling excited because
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up until then, I had never completed anything,
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so I never got any feedback.
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But because I finally finished the manga and
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put it out there, I was finally able
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to get it from my friends, and also
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from the publisher since being ignored is also
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feedback that my skills weren't good enough yet.
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So this was the first important lesson I
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had to learn in my art journey.
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You need to not only get started, but
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also finish things and put it out there.
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It's only through completing
things that you'll get
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the feedback you need to know to figure
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out what the next step is.
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And because an object in motion stays in
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motion, you also start building this momentum and
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confidence in yourself, which
actually makes it easier
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to do the next thing.
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Coming back to the story, now that I
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knew the next step I had to take
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was to improve my drawing skills, I started
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doing research and putting together my own plan
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for learning art, and it wasn't long before
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I came across the 10,000 hour rule.
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A lot of the personal development type-y
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books I was reading at the time kept
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mentioning it over and over again, not to
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mention the YouTube gurus, and I literally had
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nothing to lose.
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So I was like, if 10,000 hours
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is what I need to do in order
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to get good, then why don't I just
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do it?
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And I decided to take on the challenge.
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So I downloaded this time tracking app, created
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two categories, input for the tasks related to
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learning and practicing,
and output for tasks related
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to actually making art.
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And starting from 27th September 2018, I began
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to track everything.
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To put it simply, the first 2,000
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hours was a mess.
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Upon taking some traditional
courses on the fundamentals,
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I quickly realized that I liked painting, and
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my goals changed from becoming a manga artist
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to becoming more of an anime style illustrator.
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However, I still had no idea what I
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was doing, and the number of things I
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felt I needed to learn was overwhelming.
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It's like standing at the base of a
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massive mountain, looking up and going, how the
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hell am I ever going to climb this thing?
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Looking back, I can honestly say that this
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was probably one of the most difficult parts
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of the entire journey.
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Because later on, once your skills improve enough,
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things get more fun since your work begins
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to resonate with an audience, and you start
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getting likes and fans and commissions.
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So it's easier to be motivated because you
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can kind of physically see the rewards of
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the work you're doing.
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But at the start, you don't get any
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of that.
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Like everyone else starting out, I was an
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unknown beginner with no followers, and I'd post
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the art I would painstakingly make, but barely
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get any reaction.
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And I'm pretty sure my friends and family
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probably thought I was wasting my time.
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So consistency is key, but motivation can be
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really really hard to come by at this stage.
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So one of the most valuable lessons I
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learned during this time was the importance of
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living by an "inner scorecard", which is a
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concept championed by the
famous investor Warren Buffett.
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The idea is about measuring success by our
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own standards and values, as opposed to external
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validation like getting likes,
followers, commissions, or the
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approval of our family,
friends, and even strangers.
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Because those things are
largely out of our control.
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So instead, I found it helpful to measure
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success by the effort I was putting into
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improving my craft, the number of hours I
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was logging in, and whether I tried my
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best and gave it my all on a
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given day.
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I trusted that if I put in the
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time and effort, the results would eventually take
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care of itself.
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And by focusing on this inner scorecard, I
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was able to keep going through these tough
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early stages, even when the progress was slow
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and it didn't seem like I was getting
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any closer to my goals.
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Between 2000 and 3000 hours, I felt like
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I was finally starting to make good progress.
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It started to feel like my art didn't
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suck so much anymore, and so drawing became
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more fun.
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A big part of it was due to
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how I started studying how the artists I
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admired created their art.
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Because for some reason, for a long time,
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I had this kind of naive notion that
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I needed to be completely original in my work.
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And I resisted the idea of imitating other
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people's styles because I thought,
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"I don't want to copy."
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"I need to have my own unique style."
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But the truth is, that mindset was very
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much holding me back.
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It was only when I came across a
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book called "Steal Like an Artist" by Austin
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Kleon, that I was able to change how
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I thought about creativity and originality.
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In the book, Kleon emphasizes that nothing is
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entirely original.
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Basically, every creative work builds on what came
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before it.
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So instead of trying to avoid imitation, artists
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should embrace their influences
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and draw inspiration from them.
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Just to be clear though, the concept of
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stealing talked about in the book means borrowing
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ideas and influences from various sources and not
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tracing someone else's work and trying to pass
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it off as your own.
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The whole goal is to transform these influences
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into something unique and personal to us.
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So this idea resonated with me deeply and
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helped me understand that I had just been
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thinking about originality in the wrong way and
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imitating and studying the art we admire is
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a way to develop our own.
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This also reminded me of an experience I
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had when I was studying to become a
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teacher at uni.
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Basically, each year, we were assigned to learn
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under a mentor for our practical exam.
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And one year, I was lucky enough to
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work with Mrs. M, who was the best
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teacher I had ever seen.
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Mrs. M was completely on a different level.
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She had this deep understanding of the science
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behind learning and she used
unconventional teaching methods
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that I'd never seen before.
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And she flew around the country to speak
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at teaching conferences.
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Plus, her students all loved her.
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And just to give an example, the typical
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way a teacher would teach Japanese is through
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having a textbook, saying a sentence and asking
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the students to repeat it and all that
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stuff.
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But the way Mrs. M taught her students,
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who were as young as like grade 5,
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would be by teaching them another subject like
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home economics, completely
in Japanese without using a
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single word of English, which I would find
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out later is a method known as CLIL
(Content and Language Integrated Learning).
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And she mentioned that through her testing, she
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found that the students both learned and enjoyed
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the lessons more this way compared to the
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more traditional methods.
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So I was just blown away by everything.
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And one day I asked her how she
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became so good at teaching.
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And Mrs. M replied to me with a
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quote from Isaac Newton.
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"You know Ori, if I can see far,
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it's only because I stand on the shoulders
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of Giants."
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She then showed me all of these books
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and research papers she was reading.
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And it was then I realized that she
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was just constantly learning from the Giants from
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the past and present, in order to keep
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improving her own skills as a teacher.
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And I think I finally understood what she
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meant during this phase of my art journey.
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Like, we don't need to reinvent the wheel.
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People further ahead in the art journey have
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already figured out a lot about what works,
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so we can start by learning from them first.
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Such as by studying from our favorite anime,
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which I've actually made a whole free guide
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on, and I'll leave a link to it
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down below in case you want to check
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it out.
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But oddly enough, I found that when we
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stand on the shoulders of giants, it actually
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becomes easier for us to find our own
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voice that's both unique and
resonates with other people.
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Starting from around 3000 hours onward, it really
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just became about the grind.
00:12:35
Unlike the earlier stages where I was still
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trying to figure things out, by this point
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I had a good idea of what I
00:12:41
needed to do to improve.
00:12:42
So it was pretty much just about putting
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in the work and creating as much output
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as possible.
00:12:47
Fortunately, this was also the time when I
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started to see external results.
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I personally started to feel that my art
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looked pretty good, and
people also started resonating
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with it.
00:12:57
Every time I posted a piece, I was
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consistently receiving a
few thousand likes and get
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these encouraging comments, and I was building a
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small but decent size following.
00:13:07
Finally having this kind of positive feedback from
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the outside world after three years of nothing
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really working was definitely
motivating, and it helped
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make going through the grind a bit easier.
00:13:17
Around this time, I also started getting feedback
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from a mentor, and in one of our
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feedback sessions, I remember him telling me that
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it would take another three years for me
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to reach a pro level.
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I think some people might hear that and go,
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"Three more years of this?"
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"Really?"
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But for me at the time, that was
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actually super motivating, because in my mind I
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had already prepared myself for it taking another
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five to ten years.
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So hearing three years was really exciting, and
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I remember responding to him with
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"Kakugo shitemasu", which in
00:13:46
Japanese means, I'm prepared for it.
00:13:48
Here's the actual notes I took from the
00:13:49
feedback session back in 26th of January 2021.
00:13:53
"At my current level, it will take me
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three more years to become a pro."
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"This is motivating because it's three years, not
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five or ten."
00:14:00
"It's not that much more time."
00:14:02
"At my current level, he couldn't ask me
00:14:03
to do work yet."
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"This is the brutal reality I must face,
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but I also believe I'll prevail in the end."
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"I will improve."
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This was a memorable turning point for me,
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and I just accepted that I wasn't good
00:14:14
enough yet.
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And so what I needed to do was
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face reality and all of my flaws and
00:14:18
weaknesses head-on, and believe that if I
00:14:20
did that, and continued to put in the
00:14:22
work and improve, I would
eventually reach that level.
00:14:26
Looking back on the journey now, this mindset
00:14:28
was very helpful to have, and I actually
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ended up reaching it faster than three years
00:14:31
as well.
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Around the 5,000 hour mark, I started
00:14:35
to feel like I was hitting a plateau.
00:14:37
My progress was slowing, and I wasn't seeing
00:14:39
as much improvement as I had in the
00:14:40
earlier stages of the journey.
00:14:42
Knowing what I do now, the correct thing
00:14:44
to do would have been to analyze all
00:14:46
the things that were currently holding me back,
00:14:48
and identify the biggest one,
00:14:50
which is called the 'bottleneck',
00:14:51
and to hone in on it completely.
00:14:53
But at the time, I was also getting
00:14:55
kind of bored of what I was drawing,
00:14:57
so I decided to start learning 3D and
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concept art techniques, which I had long been
00:15:01
interested in.
00:15:02
From a social media growth perspective, this was
00:15:05
a terrible decision since if you want to
00:15:07
grow an audience quickly, sticking to one thing
00:15:09
and doing it over and over again is
00:15:11
generally the way to go.
00:15:13
But I felt it was something I needed
00:15:14
to do for my own artistic growth.
00:15:17
And at the time, I had also just
00:15:18
read the book "Range" by David Epstein, which
00:15:21
argues that creative achievers
often have broad interests
00:15:24
that span multiple domains, and he makes the
00:15:27
case that by learning from various fields, we
00:15:30
can apply insights from one area to another,
00:15:32
leading to breakthroughs
that aren't possible when we
00:15:35
focus too narrowly on one thing.
00:15:37
So this idea really resonated with me, but
00:15:39
I do want to add the caveat that
00:15:41
I think it's important to get deep in
00:15:43
at least one area if you want to
00:15:44
stand out as a creator.
00:15:46
To give an RPG game analogy, it's more
00:15:49
like picking warrior as your main class, and
00:15:51
then later learning fire magic to boost your
00:15:53
damage, rather than trying to become both a
00:15:56
warrior and mage at the same time, because
00:15:58
you'll be spread too thin and won't excel
00:16:00
at either.
00:16:01
But overall, I don't really regret making this
00:16:03
small detour into 3D and concept art, and
00:16:06
it definitely allowed me to pick up some
00:16:07
techniques and knowledge
that I probably wouldn't have
00:16:09
encountered otherwise had I
stuck purely to illustration.
00:16:13
Another important thing
that happened in this period
00:16:15
was that I read Cal Newport's book "Deep Work",
00:16:18
which turned out to be a complete
00:16:19
game changer for me.
00:16:20
Newport explains there's
basically two types of work,
00:16:23
'deep work' and 'shallow work'.
00:16:25
Deep work happens when you
do cognitively demanding
00:16:28
tasks without distraction,
like drawing with your complete
00:16:30
focus and attention.
00:16:32
On the other hand, shallow work involves tasks
00:16:34
that don't require much cognitive effort, which we
00:16:37
often do while distracted like answering emails or
00:16:39
posting on social media.
00:16:41
Understanding this difference
is important because deep work
00:16:44
is where all the important stuff that push
00:16:46
the needle happens.
00:16:47
It's where we truly improve our skills and
00:16:49
create our best art.
00:16:51
So it was then I realized that it
00:16:52
wasn't just the quantity of hours I was
00:16:54
putting in that mattered, but also the quality
00:16:56
of those hours mattered as well.
00:16:58
Because back then, I'd often draw while watching
00:17:01
VTuber streams or listening to podcasts.
00:17:03
But when I started to differentiate and be
00:17:05
conscious of when I was doing deep work
00:17:07
or not, and focusing entirely on my art
00:17:09
without distractions, I found that I just got
00:17:12
so much more done and the quality of
00:17:13
the work improved too.
00:17:15
Overall, these two things helped me get through
00:17:17
some of the plateau problems I was facing,
00:17:19
but it was what happened next that really
00:17:21
changed things for me.
00:17:22
It was around 7,000 hours into the
00:17:24
journey when I finally
realized that the bottleneck
00:17:27
holding me back was my drawing skills, and
00:17:29
that I needed to focus all of my
00:17:31
attention on improving it.
00:17:32
Because up until that point, I had just
00:17:34
spent a lot of time practicing painting, but
00:17:36
I had never really focused on practicing my
00:17:39
drawing skills, which in
hindsight is basically the
00:17:42
foundation of anime style art.
00:17:44
The reason I neglected it for so long
00:17:46
was because I had this
incorrect understanding that
00:17:48
since it's anime and it's all stylized anyway,
00:17:51
you can do whatever you want and there
00:17:53
are no rules.
00:17:54
Although that's technically true, I found out that
00:17:56
there are principles that lead to good stylization
00:17:59
which resonates with people.
00:18:01
So I basically decided to stop everything I
00:18:03
was doing and completely shift all of my
00:18:05
attention on tackling it.
00:18:06
One key lesson I learned during this period
00:18:08
was that there isn't one big skill called
00:18:10
"drawing" or "art" that you can master and
00:18:13
suddenly be great at it.
00:18:15
Instead, it's made up of hundreds of smaller
00:18:17
specific skills that you can learn and improve
00:18:20
individually.
00:18:21
It's kind of like those isekai anime where
00:18:23
the protagonist has the 'identify' skill and they
00:18:26
can see all the different skills people have,
00:18:28
like poison resistance level 1,
00:18:31
fire magic level 2,
00:18:32
strength level 3.
00:18:34
With art, it's similar but instead you have
00:18:36
things like hand anatomy level 1,
00:18:39
head drawing level 3,
00:18:40
facial expressions level 2,
00:18:42
and so on.
00:18:43
And this is basically why it takes so
00:18:45
long to get good because there's a lot
00:18:48
of these small individual skills you need to
00:18:50
pick up to create at a high level.
00:18:52
But instead of feeling overwhelmed, I found this
00:18:55
realization to be incredibly
empowering because every single
00:18:59
one of these skills can be practiced and
00:19:00
learned and we don't need to master them
00:19:02
all either.
00:19:03
In fact, it's entirely up to us to
00:19:05
choose which skills we want to learn and
00:19:07
how much we want to level them up
00:19:08
based on our art goals.
00:19:11
So during this period, I just spent a
00:19:12
lot of time hunting those specific skills and
00:19:15
getting really good at them in order to
00:19:17
break through the plateau.
00:19:18
And that led to some major improvements to
00:19:20
my art which brings us to the next phase.
00:19:23
Okay, so I found that the journey of
00:19:25
a lot of creators who make it and
00:19:27
establish themselves in the space follows sort of
00:19:29
this trajectory which I call the "Creator Curve".
00:19:33
The idea is that at the start, you
00:19:35
barely make any noticeable progress.
00:19:38
And for years, you're just toiling away, grinding,
00:19:41
putting in the hours, and you have no
00:19:42
idea when or even if it's going to
00:19:45
work out.
00:19:46
But eventually, you reach this
initial breakthrough point.
00:19:49
And from there, the amount of success you
00:19:51
have starts to compound and grow a lot faster.
00:19:55
By the way, not everyone's goals are the
00:19:56
same, so you can define success in whichever
00:19:59
way you find meaningful.
00:20:00
For me, this breakthrough
happened after I addressed
00:20:03
the bottlenecks in the previous phase.
00:20:05
Because it was then my art finally started
00:20:07
to resonate with a lot of people and
00:20:09
I began gaining a lot of traction on
00:20:10
social media.
00:20:12
I didn't realize this until I added up
00:20:13
the numbers, but it was actually right around
00:20:15
the 10,000 hour mark that I reached
00:20:17
my initial breakthrough point.
00:20:19
That was when my YouTube channel started blowing
00:20:20
up and I also did a commission for
00:20:22
Hololive's Watame.
00:20:24
But I don't think there's anything magical about
00:20:26
the number 10,000.
00:20:28
Some people will reach their
breakthrough point earlier
00:20:30
in the journey, and some a little later.
00:20:33
So instead, I think the key takeaway is
00:20:35
that the hard work and effort we put
00:20:37
in builds up over time, even if you
00:20:39
can't see it in the moment.
00:20:41
And eventually, it reaches critical mass and we'll
00:20:44
experience a breakthrough.
00:20:45
But after this was when things got very
00:20:48
confusing for me.
00:20:50
Because for the past 10,000 hours, it
00:20:52
was all just about getting better and putting
00:20:55
stuff out there.
00:20:56
But what I found is that once you
00:20:58
start breaking through, the game changes a bit.
00:21:01
You begin to get a lot of opportunities.
00:21:03
And since you're still not used to it,
00:21:05
you kind of just want to accept everything
00:21:08
that comes your way.
00:21:09
But it ends up scattering you in a
00:21:11
million different directions.
00:21:13
Eventually, you reach this point where you just
00:21:15
have more opportunities than you can
00:21:17
physically take on.
00:21:19
And that's when I found that prioritizing and
00:21:21
understanding who you are as a creator and
00:21:23
what you really want to do becomes the
00:21:26
key skill to practice and learn.
00:21:28
So a lot of this phase for me
00:21:30
has been about figuring out my own identity
00:21:32
as a creator and what I truly want
00:21:34
to focus on.
00:21:35
Art has always been an ongoing journey of
00:21:37
self-discovery for me,
00:21:38
and that's still true today.
00:21:40
But I do know one thing, and that's
00:21:41
the fact that I love creating and I'll
00:21:44
never stop.
00:21:45
Whether it's through the form of a painting
00:21:46
or a video like this.
00:21:48
If you're someone that's just starting out and
00:21:49
just witnessed the entirety of my
00:21:52
11,770 hour journey
00:21:54
and just feel daunted by everything,
00:21:56
don't be.
00:21:57
Because art is a journey, not a destination.
00:22:00
And it's something you can take one step
00:22:02
at a time.
00:22:03
If you're still watching, thanks for making it
00:22:05
all the way to the end.
00:22:06
And you'll probably be interested in this video
00:22:08
where I share the 4 things I wish
00:22:09
I knew when I began this whole
00:22:11
11,000 hour art journey.
00:22:13
This was Ori, and I'll see you guys
00:22:15
again, hopefully, at 20,000 hours.
00:22:17
Bye!
