10,000 Hours

By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

This amount of time was made famous by Malcolm Gladwell in his book “Outliers: The Story of Success”.

You can achieve proficiency in your skills whether teaching, swimming, singing, welding, cooking, any sport, etc. if you devote at least 10,000 hours doing that skill provided you apply constant improvement as you try to reach those 10,000 hours.  One of Gladwell’s examples in the book was the Beatles. The Beatles according to a great number of music authorities is the all-time most popular band.  They were not successful because of their talent alone but because they have composed songs and performed at least 10,000 hours.

According to Gladwell they got successful because in Hamburg, Germany where they were performing in a club for a fee, they would play eight hours nonstop from Monday to Saturday, between 1960 to 1964. By the time they returned to England, the music capital of the world, the band “sounded like no other.”

Another example in the book is Bill Gates. Bill Gates started software programming at the age of 13 in 1968. He would sneak out of his house at midnight to run to school, slip into the computer room and key in computer programs until wee hours of the morning. He would go back before dawn to get ready to go back to school.  You can look at other celebrities like our very own Manny Pacquiao, and others such as Jacky Chan, Elon Musk, Michael Jordan, etc. They’ve devoted at least 10,000 hours with their craft to get where they are now.

Practicing or performing your skill at least 10,000 hours is not a guarantee that you will become famous or rich but you are guaranteed to be competent if not become an expert of it. Many workers around the world have been doing the same tasks every single day at the office or in the factory and surely have clocked in at least 10,000 hours can attest that they have mastered their particular task. But if you want to get ahead in life, try to master a skill that gets paid well such as a managerial job, computer programming, basketball, boxing, etc.

There are activities in life that are guaranteed to get effective results if you give time to them at least 10,000 hours. Bo Sanchez would say that if you give at least 10,000 hours to your family and to God it is guaranteed without fail that you will have a great family and a great relationship with God. Things in relation to loving others and loving God if you just nurture that love day in and day out will surely grow and become fruitful.

Bo Sanchez would say, “Why is it that before the wedding, boyfriends and girlfriends spend so much time together? They love talking to each other, laughing their hearts out and hanging out together. But the moment wedding happens, they forget all that. If you want your marriage to work, work on the relationship. Spend time. Go out on dates each week, more if necessary. The same thing with your kids. Kids are drifting away from God and hanging out with the wrong crowd because parents don’t spend enough time with them.”

The same thing happens if we spend time with God.  God guarantees that you will get close to Him if you seek Him. He said, “Seek and you will find.” (Matthew 7:7) In fact it is the only relationship in the world that is guaranteed to grow if we invest time in it. You can spend enough time with a family member and that relationship could still fail no matter how much you try because humans have the choice to resist. But with God any amount of time invested in growing our relationship with Him will never go to waste because He can’t resist loving us. “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13)