Talent - 10,000 Hours

author malcolm gladwell talks about the myth behind the idea that talents just come naturally for some people, in his book 'outliers'. it's the idea that some of us are just BORN with talent coming out of our ears--as it would appear happened with this little 9-year old banjo prodigy. but malcolm breaks down this myth with a less sexy explanation saying that any "prodigy" or expert has become one because of "the 10,000 hour rule." this is the idea that anyone who puts 10,000 hours into their discipline will have become an expert at what they practice.

10,000 hours = 417 days worth of practicing = expert

do you realize that means it takes only 1 year and 52 days to become a prodigy at something??? which means that it actually makes sense that a 9-year old can become a banjo expert. if we love anything enough to repeatedly practice that behavior for the equivalent of a little over a year...we become masters of our craft.

granted, no one is awake for 24 hours a day, so technically at max we are able to practice our craft for 16 hours a day. but, even those of us who are way past having that kind of free time could certainly devote 3 or 4 hours a day to something, right? sure we've got to reorganize our priorities, but get this? if we devoted 4 hours a day to the thing we want most to be great at, we'll be that professional in just over 6 years. if we can devote our life to what we love to do most, we can spend 8 hours a day at our passion area...and we become experts in just over 3 years. And if we're lucky enough to have good direction in our childhood years, we become experts almost accidentally by simply having the most amount of free time to devote to our expertise.

all of this points to a thought: how are we drawing out our children's (and our own) talents? are we noticing what we're good at naturally, and investing our "hours" in the arenas where those talents will be practiced? are we helping our kids take advantage of the talents they've already begun expressing by creating opportunities for them to spend their time "practicing" (which feels more like playing to them)?

if so, we may be raising up mini-experts in our homes, and reminding ourselves that the dreams we've let go of...may not be that far out of our reach if we'll just take a little time each day to invest in ourselves (and our kids).