Ten thousand hours. That is the minimum number of hours required to become a world-class anything, according to Anders Ericsson. He's a psychologist from Sweden, working at Florida State these days. Whether you're into chess, football, violin, mathematics, fashion, basketball, writing, bartending, tennis, basket weaving, pole dancing, painting, cooking, whiskey drinking, doodling, playing pinball, erotic body-painting, mandolin playing, golfing....fuck, random list-making, for all I know. This cat says it takes TEN THOUSAND HOURS to become a world-class anything, whatever you're into.
How long is that really? That's like 416-something days, almost 417. Not so long, when you put it that way, but let's get real. We all have jobs. Or we're looking for one. Shit, when you think about it, I'm a world-class seeker of jobs; I'm POSITIVE I've pounded at least 10,000 hours worth of pavement. The local city governments should tax me extra for all the wear-and-tear I've put the local sidewalks through. Damn! I shouldn't say that, that'll be a talking point in the next Republican debate, and it'll be all my fault. My point is, is doesn't sound like a long time, less than a year and a half. To become WORLD CLASS. Better than 99% of everyone else on the planet. Is that so hard?
OF COURSE IT IS. That's a huge investment in time and effort. Think about it; just having a job that pays the bills takes at least eight hours a day, forty hours a week. And that's exhausting. We bitch and bitch about it, as adults, having to work that much. And as adults, our brains have pretty much shut down to learning new things. What is that like for kids? A year and a half to an eight year old, that's like eternity. My five year old daughter can't sit through an episode of Spongebob without grabbing a toy or wanting to break a window, what does ten thousand hours mean to her? It means, of course, twenty thousand episodes of Spongebob. And a hell of a lot of broken toys and windows.
How much time have you put into your passion, whatever that passion may be? Television doesn't count, the average American spends four hours a day watching shit on television. That's 1460 hours per year. Porn? That's a question that's hard to answer, but the best I can say is that the average American watches 40 minutes of porn per WEEK. So you're probably not world-class at watching porn, either. Before I had internet access, I used to read a book a day, no matter how many pages were in a book. Since then, it's been about a book a year. Stupid Facebook. I suppose we're all world-class at Facebook by now.
How about sex? HAHAHAHAHAHA you must be joking. I would love to say I'm a world-class lover... Shit, now that I think about it, it really does take me a really long time, now that my hips and knees are degenerating and the pleasure I get from sex is totally overridden by the pain I feel, sex with me is like a Meatloaf song on karoake night, too long and too loud....
Finally, I can say I am world-class at something. Something I still suck at. Sex, and the close second place, apologizing for sex.
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