I'm pretty good at picking up languages and I really want to learn Mandarin so I can have an edge when I go into business. I would really like to learn to speak and write it decently by the next four years (by a Mandarin tutor). Is that a realistic goal? Is it worth my time?

Yes learning Mandarin is worth it and if you are willing to invest four years of study, you can do it.

You will be able to speak sooner than you could probably read or write since the Chinese characters do take some time to learn - it's a combination of memorization and frequent practice.

You don't even have to go to China to use your Chinese language skill. In many Chinese communities around the world, it will be beneficial in business.

Consider the 900 million people speaking Mandarin worldwide plus if you can read/write Chinese - you will be able to communicate with another 200-300 million who speak other Chinese dialects but could still read Chinese.
http://www.ethnologue.com/14/show_language.asp?code=CHN

Yes of course I love it! 1000 characters is nowhere near enough, I'm at that level after one year of my degree and I will need about 3000 before I can pick up a newspaper! I will be spending 5 weeks in Beijing on a language course which will add at least 500 characters to what I know now. As for spoken, the tones can be tricky, but with experience it's very possible. Just learn plenty of characters all the time because they are amazingly easy to forget and get confused. Work hard and you will reap the benefits. Good luck!

Well the spoken language is not overly difficult apparantly. If you have a tutor and work hard at it you could certainly acheive a high level of oral proficiency in much sooner than four years, probably in a year in a half or sooner.

But the written language is the major difficulty as you know. Apparantly they say you can get by decently with a knowledge of say 1000 characters, but even this would take time. I'd say within 4 years if you study hard you would still have a hard time in reading comprehension and writing when it comes to more advanced things, but you could easily master the basics that would carry you through on business related matters in that amount of time.

As for being worth your time, well China is opening up more and more all the time and is certainly a market with tons of potential for business. It's the world's most widely spoken language, though pretty confine but still, it's hard to call a language with over a billion speakers useless. Why not go for it? It's a difficult one and the accomplishment of learning it alone is bound to be extremely satisfying.

With hard work and an actual tutor I'd say that a high level of oral fluency and a very respectable amount of knowledge of reading and writing within four years is a very reasonable goal. Good luck.

I think that is a realistic goal and i believe that the more you learn the better you know. Besides speaking mandrain is quite useful, as China's economy is booming. ^-^ good luck with your carreer.

I'd say go for it, honestly. I think in next few years, Mandarin, Japanese, and English will take off as the major languages of every business transaction (even more so than they are today!), and it'd definately help you out knowing two of them (if you don't already know Japanese).

To detirmine if it's worth it - it all depends on what you're going to be doing. If it's something that you can benefit from your new language, then I would say yes, but that's really a question only you can answer.

Four years is a good amount of time to speak/write decently, but you must work very hard at keeping it. They say that 2 weeks in a foreign country immersed in the language is the same as 1 year in class, so if you have the time and money, go get immersed! (Don't use it as substitution, but rather a supplement to your learning)