December 29, 2008
Dear friends, family members, googleBot, and random web travelers,
Merry Solstice, Happy New Year, and Irie Three King Days,
Another year has come and gone, I turned 30, and this is the first new year's celebration in a long time that I haven't been moping around wondering how I let another year go by without accomplishing anything. That said, I didn't accomplish anything this year, but I didn't slide further into the void either.
I've learned, or rather been introduced to, since it's something we all inherently know, about a concept called the 10,000 hour rule. I'm reading a book called Outliers and it introduces this 10,000 hour rule as the understanding that to be REALLY good at anything you need to spend 10,000 hours honestly practicing. The idea that it's not the good people who practice, but those who practice that are good, is one of the fundamentals of Martial Arts and I'm sure the last three years in the dojo have helped me to understand this concept. So, all that said, what is 10,000 hours? Three to four hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, for 10 years. Wow. That's a lot of time. What if you just want to be good instead of really good. You still need 8,000 hours, which the 3 hours a day doesn't quite get ya. Damn. If I ever want to be REALLY good at something I'll need to devote 1/8th of every day, or 1/2 of every day after you subtract 8 hours for sleep and 8 hours for making a living for 10 years?
So, in the spirit of the new year I will be dilligently deciding what thing it is I want to be REALLY good at when I'm 40. I need to start now if I want to get there.
Sincerely,
Carson Evans
P.S. I recently helped my mom setup a website for my step-father, Dale Martin, who is a Pastel Society of America Master Pastelist. I am adding this link to give him some google juice.