If you've ever watched any cable news channels you might have noticed the amount of so-called experts they present to discuss whatever topic they are hammering away on that particular day. But how many of them are what could be called world class? Malcolm Gladwell stated that it takes 10,000 hours of practice/learning to become world class at something which got me thinking what have I spent 10,000 doing in my life that I could claim some type of mastery in?
Basketball came to mind as something I may have spent that many hours of my life doing but I am certainly not world class, if I were I would be playing in the NBA making a nice bit of change. But besides being proficient at playing the game I would also need world class athleticism (I don't have that but I'm certainly above average). Nonetheless I do have a certain ability to play the game that is now ingrained in me for life. For example I recently started to play in pick up games regularly again after playing maybe 15 times in the past 5 years but what is great is that besides a little rust and fatigue I am still competitive with or better than the other guys on the court. Do I have what it takes to be world class if I were to devote my life to the game and physical training? I don't know, probably not but I don't ever like to tell myself that I cannot accomplish something.
Is there anything else that comes close to the 10,000 mark? Reading perhaps? But that is too broad to be world class at. For the past few days I have started to immerse myself in the history of the Roman Republic for the course I am taking this upcoming semester. Putting in these hours isn't going to give me the doctoral knowledge equivalence within a few months but it should certainly give me mastery over the topics covered in class (maybe not as much depth). But what if I were to pick a specific topic and in one 6 month burst studied everything that I could on that topic? (182.5 days x 8 hours per day = 1460 hours) If it were a specific enough subject I could definitely climb to the top 1% of the population in regards to knowledge. Then by further expanding into related topics you could become a master in a much broader field.
There isn't really anything that I want to be world champion at or have any recognition as being the best there is but there are things that for financial or other reasons that I would like to have great understanding of. Unless you have that burning desire to be the best at one thing it might make better sense to be great at multiple things as long as you don't spread your knowledge to thin across too many interests. For me I believe the best option is intense short term focus on one thing then maintaining and enhancing my performance through repetition. I like lots of different topics so having a single passion in life isn't for me but I definitely have related interests.
Obviously what separates average from the best is the extra commitment of time, learning, and execution which begs the question what have you done today to help propel you forward?
