Forget 10,000 Hours

 

Have you ever thought about all the things you know how to do and how many of them are self-taught?

How many of them do you consider yourself ‘good’ at and how many do you do for the sheer joy of it, even though you don’t consider yourself ‘proficient’?

I realized the other day that I am only ‘certifiably’ good at one thing – my job (IT) – which I went to school for and suits my natural logical, analytical mind and aptitude. All the other things I do for interest and pleasure – are all self-taught!

• Painting – I learned through watching You-tube videos. I paint purely for the joy of it. There’s always music in the background when I paint and sometimes I even forget I’m hungry! Which says a lot about how one can lose oneself in something.
  
  
  
• Poetry – I’m just hacking my way through it. Trying to write it though has opened my eyes (and ears, poetry must be read aloud) to the poetry of others and how the exact right word, a nuance, can make a sentence dance.

• Swimming – Having learned as a child, splashing around in a pool, a neighbour holding my tummy to keep me afloat, I now swim twice a week in my condo pool. If there is someone else (not usually) in the pool who has ‘learned’ how to swim, I admire their technique, how they slice through the water so effortlessly, every few strokes gracefully lifting their heads to take in a big gulp of air. (I have not mastered that rhythm of breathing). Mostly I swim alone, enjoying the sensations of arms and legs moving through the water, or floating on my back, letting my thoughts drift.

• Tennis – see Poetry (i.e. hacking my way through it), a few group lessons taken many years ago (more wild chasing down a ball rather than learning technique). Hours of watching the pros on TV have certainly helped and I consider myself an average club player.

• PickleBall – a recent addition to my repertoire. A lack of skill does not detract from the enjoyment to be found in connecting paddle to plastic waffle ball with a satisfying whack.

• Writing – a smattering of group and online classes (certainly no MFA) taken as an adult and writing groups where we encourage and help each other along and, of course, reading, reading, reading. Learning by reading; learning by listening to podcasts by other writers, learning by doing. 

• A new language (Spanish) – self-taught on my phone app. Strangely enough, whenever I try to think in a language other than English, it is French (learned at school) that comes to mind first, followed then by a struggle to think of the equivalent in Spanish. The mind is a fascinating thing, compartmentalized, a separate section devoted to language, seemingly influenced by which stage in your life you acquired it. This is just my own interpretation, not scientific fact.

It makes me wonder how good I would be in any/all of the above if I had taken some proper training. But one can’t think like that. Besides the limitations of time (there aren’t enough years left to train in all of the above), there is a tendency to want to be ‘good’ at everything we do, to reduce the risk of failure, to limit the possibility of being mocked or laughed at. We want validation!  It’s human nature.

But what would we be missing out on if everything we considered a ‘success’ needed to have the stamp of approval from others, needed to be measured in terms of  skill?

You know how they say you have to practice something for 10,000 hours in order to master it? That the difference between being a novice and a master is: practice, practice, practice? But what if there is no wish to be a ‘master’? (It would be nice, but it’s never going to happen). What if it’s fine to be just good enough and enjoy what I am doing, immerse myself in it, revel in the activity, without worrying about the result?

 As humans, we are mostly risk-averse, which is why we hesitate at seeking out new experiences. But new experiences are what allow us to see things differently; they allow us to grow and find fresh perspectives, discover new things to bring us joy.

Forget the 10,000 hours. Use whatever hours you have.

                        “You are not too old and it is not too late to dive into your increasing depths where life calmly gives out its own secret” – Rainer Maria Rilke.