10,000 Hours to Mastery

Once upon a time, I was a gymnast.

I was very dedicated to the sport, and never missed a practice. I also practiced at home in my time off because I enjoyed it and always wanted to master any new techniques I learned.

As a result, I have about a dozen gold medals on a shelf at home. I don't know what the other medals looked like.

Then I got bored with it, as many of my friends left, and I quit the sport.

It was fun, and I was good at it (better than most).

So how do you get good at something? You practice, right? You do it.

Exactly.

Why was I better at it than the other boys I competed with?

I practiced more.

It was fun for me so I did it all the time. I loved the challenge. Once my friends left and I had no one to compete with it wasn't fun anymore.

There was no reason to practice, but I still did a few of the exercises because I liked them. Now, I'm even better than I was for a few of them (like handstands).

Now, when some people see me do them, they tell me that they could never do that. They say that I am so talented and am so lucky to have been born with these gifts.

I wasn't born with any special ability to do these things. Have you ever seen a baby do a backflip or a handstand pushup? Of course not. Most can't even walk.

So how do they learn to walk? Practice.

We are all born without skills. Any skill we have has come from the practice of that skill.

If you don't have a serious physical or psychological handicap, you can achieve anything you set your mind to do. And even if you DO have some kind of condition, more often than not, with a little bit of research you can probably find someone somewhere who achieved success despite that condition.

No matter what excuse anyone uses to try to explain their lack of success in any area (hormones, genetics, social environment, not having the right shoes, not being born with the right muscles or brain, etc...) there is only one way that anyone gets good at something. They practice.

You can look at this two ways:

1. You hate it because your own failure to achieve a certain goal cannot be blamed on anything other than yourself, and you wouldn't want anyone to think that you're lazy or undisciplined. Hey, you're probably just not inspired yet (but don't use that as an excuse, inspire yourself).

2. You love it because you realise that it means that if you practice enough, you will become good at anything you try. You could even become great...or extraordinary.

According to research done by Dr. Daniel Levitin, no matter what activity or skill is being developed, it takes about 10,000 hours of focused practice to reach mastery. Or about 3 hours daily for 10 years.

So every "overnight success" that we hear about on the news actually took about 10,000 hours behind the scenes.

Here's how you could break it down (according to David Seah):

• "at 1 hour ... you know some basics
• at 10 hours ... you have a pretty good grasp of the basics
• at 100 hours ... you are fairly expert
• at 1000 hours ... you are an experienced expert
• at 10000 hours ... you are a master"

So... depending on what you are trying to learn, from a new language, building a business, or flying a helicopter, you now have the scientific support telling you that the more you practice, the faster you will succeed.

If you practice 6 hours every day, you will achieve mastery in about 5 years, and if you practice 9 hours per day you will be a master in 2.5 years. AND if you practice 12 hours per day, mastery is yours in 1 year and 3 months.

Wow.

That's when you ask yourself how dedicated you truly are to becoming the greatest that you can be. There ARE 24 hours in a day after all. We all have the same amount of time. We simply choose to do different things. If you practice a little, you'll improve a little. Practice more, you'll improve more. Pretty simple, right? It all comes down to the basics.

What will you do with your time?
What skill can YOU practice?
How far do you want to go?
What are you willing to do to get there?

Go over these questions again, in depth, and figure out what you will do.
Get inspired (use what inspires you).
Do it.

For true mastery and true lasting success, there are no shortcuts. If you don't put in the time and the practice, any success you achieve will have no strong foundation and will not last.

Build it right, build it strong, build it to last forever (that's big thinking!).

Do it.

CHB

Copyright © Charles Begin

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