the 10,000 rule.

Its time to get red hot again, haha. yeah, after having not having anything meaningful to write for about the last two weeks (i mean, who could top owl city?, anything? yeah, I thought so. haha).

Anyway...so I think I've figured out the reason why I suck at a lot of things, and a jack of all trades (medium skills) at a lot of things. Psychologists have come up with this magic number of hours that it takes to become a master at something. Bill Gates and Bill Joy both logged in 10,000 hours of computer programming time by the time they hit college and Berkeley respectively. Even Mozard had ten years of experience before he composed his first considered classic. Consider the Beatles... they had already performed live 1200 times in Hamburg when they started having success in 1964, often playing eight hours a day, seven days a week. I mean, how many bands can say they've performed live 1200 times...ever? In the studies, psychologists divided violinists according to talent and ability. There were 3 groups, "future world-class stars", "good", and "future public education teachers". The difference between the three groups was time practiced since they first picked up a violin (the students were at Berlin's Academy of Music at this time).

Group A = avg. 10,000 hours

Group B = avg. 8,000 hours

Group C = avg. 4,000 hours.

They did the same with pianists. Same result. They concluded that once peopled reached a certain level of skill, the only thing that further distinguishes them is hours practiced. So...talent is good, and there does seem to be innate talent for some people, but work trumps talent and I've been getting by on talent cuz I'm lazy.

So I did a rough estimate of my hours practiced in a particular thing...and here are my results. (note: very rough estimates)

Gaming = 5100 hours (haha)

Piano = 1560 hours (started at 8)

Basketball = 1613 hours (started at 14 and this is probably underestimated)

Preaching the Gospel = 5376 hours

Dancing = 288 hours (started sept. 2008, at 21)

studying = 768 (in the last two years.... not a whole lot if you think about it)

So what does this mean? Hmmm....well.

1. I spent too much time on gaming. So I'm not bad. :)

2. I need to take up some new hobbies and spend less time doing distractions and time wasters.

3. Face it, since I'm not going to be a professional gamer, NBA player, pianist, or back-up dancer to BoA none of this actually translates to real-life application except the Gospel. So its time to start doing something "real".

4. I need to put talent to work...or God will take it away....

5. I wonder if this applies to dating...?

6. I'm extremely good at facebook