My 2010

With the end of one year and the onset of another comes the inevitable attempt to take all our learnings and define new guidelines for whatever lies next. I wanted to document and share two of the lessons I learned during 2009 that will set the tone for 2010 and many years to come for me.

10,000 hours

Malcom Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule, described in Outliers, has been in the back of my mind ever since reading it. The takeaway is that across any activity or occupation, the best of the best have put in 10,000 hours of practice. The Beatles, were well into their 10,000 hours of practice even before they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.

This 10,000 hour number had two effects on me. The first was that it quantified expertise, if I wanted to be one of the best I knew the requisite amount of time. In many ways, the number was liberating because expertise was no longer illusive. With that said, I’m not fooled into believing that being great at something precludes success; however, it doesn’t hurt to be prepared incase the opportunity for success came my way.

The second important effect of the 10,000 hour number is that it restricted diversification of interests. That amount of time is a lot of dedication and since I’m limited on time, even at the age of 24, it meant I had to make choices. Do I want to be mediocre at a number of things, or killer at one or two things? My answer was that I wanted to be great at two things. Having sorted that out, I now had to decide which two.

For months I’ve been questioning what could possibly be worth 10,000 hours of my time. It’s been such a difficult question to answer because it seemed so definitive and would require years of dedication before I was satisfied. As 2009 comes to an end I think I finally have the answers.

Writing would be one of the two skills that I’d hone over the years. It wasn’t until college, where I learned the fundamentals of storytelling and conveying one’s opinion, that I became fascinated by writing. Combined with my passion for the internet, I’ve decided to take writing much more seriously than I have in the past and know that it’s worthy of at least 10,000 hours.

The second skill is guitar. I’ve been playing the guitar and writing songs for many years now and probably have a few thousand hours under my belt already. However, music is my passion in life and I think it’s finally time to give it my all.

It wasn’t easy narrowing my interests down to two activities, but now that I have, I feel more determined than ever before.

Labor

Once I decided that writing was worth 10,000 hours, I started paying attention to those who had already put in their share of hours. It was in Steven Pressfield’s Writing Wednesdays series that I found a quote taken from the Bhagavad-Gita where Krishna tells Arjuna, “We have the right to our labor, but not to the fruits of our labor.”

This was a very empowering quote. It slaps you in the face and forces you to forgo pettiness and to take action. I knew what I wanted to do, write and play guitar, but there was still a pressure to become a “success”. This self-inflicted pressure results in self-inflicted doubt; moreover, it distracts me from the only thing I can control – the amount of effort and labor I put into my passions. Wealth is only tangible when you obtain it, until then it is simply a myth and the only control I truly have is over my actions.

Back to 2010 and the Internet

Having made these decisions has helped me realize what is beneficial to me and what is simply a detractor. There’s so much going on online that it becomes almost too easy to dabble in things that are a waste of your time. There are plenty of people who can spark a mix of jealousy and inspiration as they detail their own stories of success. After cementing my passions it became much easier to ignore any half-hearted opportunity for a different path to success.

So for 2010 I’ll be making a concerted effort to keep writing and playing guitar with a diligence and fervor that haven’t been there in the past. I’ll be working towards clocking in 10,000 hours for both over the next few years and hope to remain focused on the practice, rather than the results, of my labor.

Tagged as: 2010