10,000 Hours

I've never been a huge reader. I have dreams, goals, and aspirations of being a reader but it still hasn't happened. Greg on the other hand is a reader. He can get so engrossed in a book that he does irresponsible things - like miss work. Ok he's never done that at his current job, but he did sacrifice a whole day of his postdoc because he couldn't put "Jane Eyre" down.  Is anyone else scratching their head?

So like most things in marriage you have to learn to play to people's strength and weaknesses and I have used this strength/weakness to my advantage.  I often pick up books at the library with intents on reading them for book club or pleasure and on my nightstand they sit, longing to be read. But if they happen to catch the eye of my bedfellow and can pitch an enticing sell, they are quickly transferred to the west side of the bedroom and can be seen spilling their contents over several weeks or hours depending on their mind controlling powers.

The added bonus that really makes this whole thing a win win is that while Greg gets his reading fix I get the next best thing because he has an amazing ability to remember important details and facts about books, so much so that I can grill him for an hour or so and know all important details and meanings of books without ever cracking them open myself.  A real life walking cliff note. It's great!

With this as a backdrop you can imagine what happened when the two of us snuck away from our kids a few years ago and found ourselves in an airport bookstore. I found a book I was interested in and pitched it to Greg. The book we bought was entitled " Outliers". I'll give you one guess as to how much of that book I read myself. That's right -zero. However I know several stories and key points because Greg retold them to me.

Outside of knowing that if we were Canadian, Jack would have had a good shot at being a professional hockey play simply because his birthday falls in January, I found the section where he talked about what it takes to be an expert very interesting. What he states is that while talent and interest  do play a part in success, how long we do something plays an even bigger part. Basically you will be an expert if you do anything for 10,000 hours. 

Do you know how amazing and terrifying that is all at the same time?  It gives me hope that I can be really good at something while at the same time making it painfully obvious I probably never will be super good at one thing because I don't have the time daily or remaining lifespan to dedicate that many hours to just one thing.

However, it did make me realize that I can still dedicate time to something and get better even if I barely make a mark on the 10,000 hour chart. And so I give you the first post of what I hope will be many more that will hopefully get me closer to becoming an expert writer.

Only 9,998 more hours to go!