So I was watching some sort of TV show, and I heard a statistic that it takes 10,000 hours of doing something to become an expert. Interesting concept.
Reading around the interwebs, it apparently came from a book called Outliers by some guy that I don’t care so I won’t go look it up. I believe that he didn’t just say 10,000 hours of doing something, but 10,000 hours of directed practice.
I believed that a bit more. It is too simplistic to say that just by doing something over and over again will you become an expert. I really like the phrase “directed practice.” It implies intentionally making yourself better - looking at something that you are doing wrong, and working at it until you are no longer doing it wrong. No matter how long that takes. And then finding the next thing. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Take music, for example. I don’t know as I would be called an expert at playing the clarinet - I did play from 5th grade through my first year and a half of college. I did a significant amount of directed practice, but I don’t think I ever got 10,000 hours in. 4 hours a day, day in, day out, would take nearly 7 years. Oh, I probably (in all of that time) got in well over 5,000 hours, maybe 6,000. I got pretty good. In fact, I can still pick the thing up and play a lot of what I used to play. But I never got to be an expert. Any wonder why I don’t play for a living? (Although maybe I could have, if I had gone that route. I just didn’t see making enough money to support a family.)
Now take the guitar. I’ve recently started playing, at the end of November. I’m rather off-and-on with it, as I really am pretty busy - life just kicks in that way. But sometimes I’m frustrated with how slow it is going. I can’t just pick the thing up and play, as I can with the clarinet, or the wooden recorder. Why is it taking so long, I have wondered. It’s been over two months now!
Why? I’ll tell you why. I’ve spent an estimated time of 20 - 25 hours playing it. And I’ve taken exactly two private lessons. (Hey, they were free.)
Why am I not doing well? Because I’m not doing directed practice. Oh, I’ve got a method book, and I’ve got some songs, and I’m learning, but I don’t think that I’m doing any kind of directed practice. I’m just fiddling around.
Oh - and it’s also because I’ve spent next to no time doing it. Compared to 6000 hours on my first instrument, 20 hours is nothing. It’s a drop in the bucket. It’s noise. It’s nothing.
Yet.
So the end result of all of this ruminating is that I have decided three things:
1) I am never going to become and expert at the guitar. One hour per day would take the next 27 years. Half an hour per day would take me 54 years. Could it happen? Yes. Will it? Not probable.
2) What I really want is to become proficient at playing the guitar. I want to be able to play almost any relatively easy song, a lot of moderate songs, and even (with sufficient practice) a few very hard songs. How long will this take? How many hours? I don’t know. More than 100, I suspect. More than 1000. 2000? 2500? Who knows. But I want to find out.
3) Finally, I have decided to track how many hours I practice, to see how long it takes me to learn new things. I’m going to start at 20, because I think that’s a fair assessment of what I’ve done so far. I will post milestones, probably every 50 hours, with how I think that I’ve been doing, just to keep track. At the milestones, I’ll post what songs I have learned, and what things I think I have “mastered.” And where I think I need to go.
Ambitious? Freakin’ absolutely. But overriding all of this is a single principle that has been nagging at me recently, and which I think I need to start living by. And that principle is this:
I need to start living my life way more deliberately. Becoming someone else. Someone better. On purpose.
I spend a lot of my life, going from moment to moment, letting things pass me by. It’s not a bad way to live - really it’s not. I’m getting along. And I could probably do just fine in my life by doing this. And I could probably even be happy doing it.
But I know that there is so much more that I could be doing. I could be more fulfilled. I could be more creative. I could be more…well, who I want to be.
So there it is. I know who I am, and I know who I really want to be, and the only way to get there is to actually get up, and take that first step on the road to becoming that person. After the first step comes the second. And then the third. (Astute readers will notice the pattern that will arise from that).
“The journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one’s feet.” -Lao Tzu
The more often quoted one has to do with a single step, but I like this more correct translation even better.
So here is to a new step, a new way of doing things, and being deliberate. I want to become. So I will take the steps to do so.
-Silas
silascrutherton