Leave your answer seriously

 

Make a lot of things that don't work, then find out why they don't work.
(You don't need to make things that don't work deliberately, it will just happen that way)

 

Take some basic courses, particularly math for electronics courses, either in person or via books.

Take Ian0’s advice above.

don’t restrict yourself to a narrow aspect of electronics.

Repeat several times

 

I was going to mention the maths. You need to understand the maths.

You will learn at the fastest rate by the above method when you think you know how to design things. . .

 

Relentlessly design, build, troubleshoot, and solve problems- all while under pressure is best.
Repeat for decades.

 

All of the answers above are the result of genuine and hard won wisdom and should be taken seriously.

But, I have a question: how do you define electronics in your question?

 

Someone studied experts in a wide range of fields, and concluded that it takes 10 years of full time work to become an expert in anything.

 

Someone studied experts in a wide range of fields, and concluded that it takes 10 years of full time work to become an expert in anything.

The way the original study was reported would make your interpretation reasonable, but the study itself didn’t say that.

The focus of the study was the effect of deliberate practice on skill level, and the conclusion was a very strong correlation. Unfortunately, the study (in 1993) has not proven very durable and the popularized “10,000 hour rule” not only morphed into “it takes ten years of experience to be an expert” it has hasn’t be able to stand further scrutiny in the much narrower domain of deliberate practice.

A much more recently published, more rigorous study failed to replicate the 1993 findings. From the abstract:

We sought to replicate Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer's (Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer 1993 Psychol. Rev. 100, 363–406) seminal study on deliberate practice. Ericsson et al. found that differences in retrospective estimates of accumulated amounts of deliberate practice corresponded to each skill level of student violinists. They concluded, ‘individual differences in ultimate performance can largely be accounted for by differential amounts of past and current levels of practice’ (p. 392). We reproduced the methodology with notable exceptions, namely (i) employing a double-blind procedure, (ii) conducting analyses better suited to the study design, and (iii) testing previously unanswered questions about teacher-designed practice—that is, we examined the way Ericsson et al. operationalized deliberate practice (practice alone), and their theoretical but previously unmeasured definition of deliberate practice (teacher-designed practice), and compared them. We did not replicate the core finding that accumulated amounts of deliberate practice corresponded to each skill level. Overall, the size of the effect was substantial, but considerably smaller than the original study's effect size. Teacher-designed practice was perceived as less relevant to improving performance on the violin than practice alone. Further, amount of teacher-designed practice did not account for more variance in performance than amount of practice alone. Implications for the deliberate practice theory are discussed.

So, it turns on that while practice is (usually) important, it can’t account for the wide variations in expertise over time.

Once again, a comfortable ”rule” extracted from a single, small population study falls to better science. It’s kind of a shame since it makes things much more complicated and pretty much as chaotic as everything else. But this is the way of well done science—the utility of the conclusion in terms of “explaining things to match our prejudices” notwithstanding.

I felt worse when Dunning-Kruger suffered the same fate*, though this has not gotten through to the blinkered cognoscenti who, so enamored of the concept simply stop investigating when they find it and it matches their surmise about the world and other people. I will readily admit to a feeling of loss when I decided to look harder into a theory that felt so correct, but whatever truth humans might have access to, it is clear it is no respecter of feelings.

*It turns out this is very complicated and a non-insignificant contributor to the invalidity of the original study was misinterpretation caused by the choices of data visualization. The D-K effect may actually have some utility in describing something real but it does not merit its effective promotion to the D-K law and lack on skepticism it receives.

 

In addition to practice, which as mentioned, is very important, there is also a fair amount of both interest and talent required. That relates to focused attention, which for a lot of folks is simply not possible.
Certainly there are those who will challenge that, claiming "that anybody can do it", but the reality is that NOT EVERYBODY can do it.

 

You don't just become an expert in electronics by learning. You also need to understand what you learn. Understanding comes from starting with the very basic principles and building more knowledge using those basics. That allows you to understand more complex ideas.
Lawyers learn. Engineers understand.

 

Expert barely has any meaning these days.

When I was coming up "expert" meant working as a professional at a specific profession for at least 15 years.

 

In addition to practice, which as mentioned, is very important, there is also a fair amount of both interest and talent required.

I agree. There are several long time members of this forum who I am convinced do not have the capabilities to ever understand electronics. Some people (perhaps even most) just cannot think the way an engineeer needs to.

 

I agree. There are several long time members of this forum who I am convinced do not have the capabilities to ever understand electronics. Some people (perhaps even most) just cannot think the way an engineeer needs to.

I might say this a little differently.

Before someone can use the information they learn about electrical and other engineering disciplines they may need to be taught how to do that—that is, how to conceptualize the information so it can be generalized to new situations and become part of a way of understanding everything they encounter and not just the narrow cases involved in the context they learned it in.

Some people–as relatively small percentage of the general population—have a natural affinity for this kind of synthetic thinking and don’t have to be explicitly taught about it because they are autodidacts.

Others—a larger group—have the potential capacity to think this way, and can can be taught if the instructor understands how to teach it.

And still others simply can’t work out what you are even talking about if you try to teach them, even if you approach it as competently as is possible.

This last group, I believe, is the large majority of people.

Unfortunately, that substantial group of people who could learn probably won’t encounter an instructor who can teach it leaving the potential untapped. My experience is that for these folks is it almost like lighting a fire. If you can get it started it will burn on its own and they will supply the fuel. It can be like flipping a switch that they didn’t know was there, and you don’t have to tell them much more, they start seeking out what they need on their own.

 

I agree. There are several long time members of this forum who I am convinced do not have the capabilities to ever understand electronics. Some people (perhaps even most) just cannot think the way an engineeer needs to.

It's one of those things IMO you're are born with (like musical talent), the 'engineering' brain. It's sometimes a curse, as some see it as making learning things like electronic technology 'easy'. They don't know the endless hours spent keeping that brain satisfied for a lifetime. There are times when the OFF switch does not work.

 

In addition to practice, which as mentioned, is very important, there is also a fair amount of both interest and talent required. That relates to focused attention, which for a lot of folks is simply not possible.
Certainly there are those who will challenge that, claiming "that anybody can do it", but the reality is that NOT EVERYBODY can do it.

As per my Einstein quote at the bottom of my posts!
"Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
Albert Einstein

 

Off the top of my head, I can think of at least three that apply to the quote, none had any formal education or extremely little, but their names have gone down in Technical history.
Michael Faraday, Leonardo De Vinci, even Benjamin Franklin warrants a mention.

 

The curse of the engineer or "engineers are born, not raised".

 

The curse of the engineer or "engineers are born, not raised".

When I'm hiring or doing an evaluation for a newbie electronic technician I normally don't really ask many electronics questions (double true for the Navy nuke types we like to hire), I ask about mechanical projects, non-electrical things built and interests. Electronics is important but it's not the most important thing for complex industrial machine maintenance and repair. Having natural mechanical talent and experience IMO is more important as I can teach (and have seen the military teach) just about anyone with a basic electrical background, basic repair electronics in 6 months but it's almost impossible to teach the physical mind-body intuition one needs to see what and how the electronics controls machines.

 

. Electronics is important but it's not the most important thing for complex industrial machine maintenance and repair. Having natural mechanical talent and experience IMO is more important

The Mechanical side of my education started with a Meccano set !

 

The Mechanical side of my education started with a Meccano set !

I had a few Erector sets too.