Athletes that try to get good at a activity don’t do the activity 24⁄7. I have seen even the case made of intentional practise where a 4 hours per day vs 8 hours a day would favour 4 hours. Doing twice the time doesn’t mean you are doing twice the exp curve.
I would think that if the goal is just to get good at the end then doing research/practise would have a decent chance upping future capability more than doing it more. That is it seem plausible to me that doing full time research of a field for half a year could have similar expertise building as doing a year of that activity as a day job. I think they are likely to have different gains and might be ackwardly cross-dependent, ie some research is inaccessible or inefficient unless one has 3 years of experience practising. But it might make sense to study wider/more rather than make your studies short. It can also be akward to start studies again once one is “done” with them.
Athletes that try to get good at a activity don’t do the activity 24⁄7. I have seen even the case made of intentional practise where a 4 hours per day vs 8 hours a day would favour 4 hours. Doing twice the time doesn’t mean you are doing twice the exp curve.
I would think that if the goal is just to get good at the end then doing research/practise would have a decent chance upping future capability more than doing it more. That is it seem plausible to me that doing full time research of a field for half a year could have similar expertise building as doing a year of that activity as a day job. I think they are likely to have different gains and might be ackwardly cross-dependent, ie some research is inaccessible or inefficient unless one has 3 years of experience practising. But it might make sense to study wider/more rather than make your studies short. It can also be akward to start studies again once one is “done” with them.