According to Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, you need 10,000 hours of continuous sustained practice to become an expert.
There are 168 hours in a week. If you never sleep and you eat as you practice, you can become an expert in 60 weeks. (Around 14 months)
If you sleep 8 hours a day, you only have 112 hours in a week. If you eat as you practice, you can become an expert in 90 weeks. (Around 22 months)
If you sleep 8 hours a day and spend 4 hours a day for meals and leisure (TV, movies, etc), you only have 84 hours per week. At this rate, you can become an expert in 120 weeks. (Around 2 years and 4 months)
If you sleep 8 hours a day and spend 4 hours a day for meals and leisure and have a day job that takes 9 hours (including travel time), you only have an extra 3 hours per day, or 21 hours per week. At this rate, you can become an expert in 477 weeks. (Roughly 9 years and 2 months)
Are there shortcuts to expertise? Probably talent can help some. But for most of us, it takes a whole lot of hard work. You can make things go faster if you like, but you need to sacrifice a lot.
Personal note: I mentioned before that I had my own effort data from 2003-2015. The total is 23621.36 hours of work in various software development projects. I shouldn’t be shy about calling myself an expert, impostor syndrome be damned.
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