After taking part in the Information Visualization MOOC by the University of Indiana, and the D3 MOOC at the Knight Center for Journalism I got curious how many hours I have spent in my career on work related to data visualization.
I created a simple table in which I estimated my experience in number of hours worked per year, the productivity on the job (actual work excluding meetings, flex days, training and such) and what percentage of these productive hours were applicable to count towards data visualization.
The following graph shows three cumulative-hours-lines: one for a bare minimum estimate, one based on generous estimates, and a last line showing the average between the two. The bar graph at the bottom shows the average (non-cumulative) hours per year.
From Wikipedia: "Gladwell repeatedly mentions the "10,000-Hour Rule", claiming that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours.