I’m not much for rules and numbers but this is one which seems to stick with me. The idea that one would need to practice around 10,000 hours to master pretty much anything. I’ve also heard it said as ten years but ten years can mean a lot of different things so I prefer it as 10,000 hours. After all one can study something for years on end without really putting very many hours or effort into that study.
Take learning a new language for an example. Let us pretend you were trying to learn French and spent a couple of hours a week studying it. After a year it is unlikely that you would be able to speak it that well. However if you had moved to say Montreal or Paris and been totally immersed in the language hour after hour you would likely have a much better understanding at the end of that same year.
Why because more hours were spent on its development despite the same period of time passing. Hours and not years makes a big difference.
When I first made the rather odd decision to learn to play harmonica I was terrible. I did however carry that first hohner special 20 with me everywhere and I blew on it every chance I got. Sitting in the park, waiting for a ride, reading an article basically any spare moment in which I was standing still I had it in my mouth. Within 6 months I’d blown half the reeds from playing so often.
What happened from all this practice is I got better and I got better fast. I didn’t believe for a moment it was some hidden natural talent. It was the hours of practice I spent playing. Eventually I reached a level I was content with and although I still play fairly often it’s not nearly as often as in those first few months.
Not surprisingly I’m also no longer able to see such marked improvements in such short periods of time. I’m still getting better just not as fast and it all comes down to the hours I play. My talent for harmonica hasn’t reached some pre-determined peak, I know I can still get better and I know it all comes down to the time I put into it.
It’s like that with all things. The effort and time you put in makes you better at whatever you are pursuing. Sure there are people who seem to have a natural inclination or “talent” that others don’t have but perhaps it isn’t actually a talent but a passion.
Passion which leads to hours and hours of practice in their chosen field and so they excel not by nature but by nurture. Personally I choose to look at this rule as meaning we can all master something if we choose to put in the effort and work hard. It may not be the most romantic of notions, hard work rarely is but I see it as hopeful.
Sure the first time, the first few thousand times in fact that you try to play guitar like Jimi Hendrix, act like Tom Hanks, write like Ernest Hemingway, dance like Anna Pavlova, or play a harmonica as well as Buddy Greene you may not be able to but it doesn’t mean you never could.
It is up to each one of us what we become through our own efforts and not some pre-determined level of talent. The 10,000 hour rule means we can indeed do anything but only if we choose to pursue it.
