Dave Hoover recently posted on 50% Time. In the post, Dave argues that every professional software developer should work 40 hours per week for their employer and 20 hours per week for themselves. This idea comes from Uncle Bob Martin.
A vexed commenter to Dave's post thought it a dangerous idea to set the standard for employers to demand that software developers work 20 additional hours per week on self-improvement.
I agree with that commenter. Nobody should demand an extra 20 hours of a developer's free time every week.
But, one can demand it of one's self. If one aspires to be a master, that is.
Most people don't aspire to be a master at their chosen profession or avocation. But if they do, Uncle Bob and Dave are absolutely dead-on. Of course, the 20 hours is a convenient round number that plays well off of a 40 hour work week. The absolute number, per se, is not important. It is the sustained, prolonged dedication that is important, that leads to achieving the 10,000 hours of effort that Malcolm Gladwell proposes in his book Outliers as a necessary condition of becoming an expert (or software master).
I can easily believe that John Elway, Warren Buffet, Pablo Picasso, and software masters such as Ward Cunningham and Richard Stallman, have all followed similar routes to mastery, have demanded more of themselves than their employer.
Those who don't demand that effort of themselves don't truly aspire to be masters. And that is okay too.
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