In his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell talks about the 10,000 hour rule.
He says that if anyone can practise 10,000 hours worth of a skill in any field, that person would become an expert. Practise 10,000 hours of coding and you would become one of the best computer programmers in the world. Or 10,000 hours of piano practise and you would be ranked amongst the best pianists in the world. Presumably, 10,000 hours at my job, would make me indispensable, and likely to be very highly paid and sought after.
Assuming a 10-hour-per-day effort, this would translate to about 3 years.
There are several disparaging articles on this – about how the number 10,000 is wrong, and that it should be less (or more), and how deliberate practise is more important, and so on.
Completely agree, and completely disagree with all those. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is to get started, and then plough on, as much as possible.
Also, in our world today, material achievements abound aplenty. But these laurels mostly leave us feeling empty within.
What if we apply the 10,000 hour rule to spirituality and happiness as well? If we practise charity, practise generosity, practise smiling, practise giving, practise meditation, practise empathy and so on, we will only get better at it.
Let us put our 10,000 hours to good use.
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