Want to Be Great at Something? Can You Spare 10,000 Hours?

Rules. Most of us don’t like them, except when we can use them to our advantage. I’m thinking of the cynic who defined the Golden Rule as “he who has the gold rules.” He had a point – doesn’t it seem the folks with lots of money are wielding the greatest influence these days? 

But getting back to rules, we see evidence at how much people abhor rules (or laws) almost every day. The persons who not only defy the highway speed limit, but also weave recklessly from lane to lane just to get a few feet ahead of the next driver. I observed several of those just the other day. (No, I wasn’t one of them.)

 

Kids are notorious for disliking rules. Tell them something reasonable, like ‘Don’t touch the stove,’ and that only makes the stove top touch even more enticing. Rules like, ‘You have to clean up your room before you watch TV’ or, “You can’t have dessert until you finish your dinner’ are sure to ignite their rebellious streak. No parent in the world ever said, “I’m going to raise a little rule-breaker,” but that’s what typically happens.

 

We might blame such behavior on childish innocence or naivete, but as we grow up, we maintain our propensity for breaking rules. Often, with experience we get more skilled at concealing our ‘un-ruley’ behavior.

 

My typing skills have progressed a long
way since the days of 'a-s-d-f-space.'

This thing about rules goes all the way back to the Old Testament, when God was giving the no-longer-enslaved Israelites literal marching orders. When the Lord presented the Ten Commandments to Moses, as recounted in Exodus 20, the Israelites initially welcomed them and promised to keep them. ‘Sure, Yahweh, whatever You say!’

However, they soon found the commandments – only 10 – much too restrictive. So, in very short order they succeeded in breaking every one of those divine rules. Not once or twice, but so many times they lost count. You could say the remainder of the Old Testament is the story of God’s chosen people’s insistence on enthusiastically breaking all of His rules. 

 

Then, after a prophetic silence of hundreds of years, Jesus Christ arrived to become the ultimate remedy for chronic rules-breaking. At one point, someone asked Jesus to identify the greatest commandment. Perhaps thinking about how 10 commandments had proved too burdensome for most folks, He boiled them down to two: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:37-40).

 

Pretty simple, huh? Love God with everything we’ve got, and love others just the way we would want them to love and treat us. What’s so difficult about that? I suppose it gets back to our propensity for breaking rules – we can’t even consistently keep two of them.

 

Years ago, I discovered an interesting rule that God didn’t originate, at least not explicitly. In his book, Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell explored what he termed the “10-000-Hour Rule.” He cited neurologist Daniel Levitin who concluded after exhaustive research that, “The emerging picture…is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert – in anything.”

 

Levitin said this applied to any discipline: “Composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again.” His studies showed that amount of time spent in practice and preparation didn’t guarantee success, but “no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time.”

 

I’ve thought about this a lot. When I took personal typing as an elective class during my junior year of high school, I had no idea I’d spend my entire professional career with my fingers flying around a keyboard. I’ve far exceeded the 10,000-hour rule – to the point where if you were to ask me where a specific key is located, I couldn’t tell you. But thanks to countless hours of practice and muscle memory, my fingers know.

 

That’s why accomplished pianists devote so much time to practicing the scales, and outstanding basketball players spend so many hours practicing free throws. Aware of it or not, they were applying the 10,000-hour rule.

 

But how does that relate to things like the Ten Commandments and growing spiritually? I believe there’s a direct correlation.

 

More than 40 years ago, when I first became involved in parachurch ministry, I’d attend Bible studies and marvel when the “veterans” would spontaneously refer to relevant Scripture passages. ‘How do they do that?’ I wondered. 

 

Then I determined to read the Bible daily, even setting goals to read through the entire Word of God over the course of a year. At the same time, I resolved not only to read and study the Scriptures but also to memorize specific verses, meditate on them, strive to apply them, and endeavor to share them with others whenever opportunities presented themselves.

 

Now I understand how those godly business and professional leaders of years past could be so adept at knowing and teaching the Scriptures. Intentional or not, they’d been applying the 10,000-hour rule to their spiritual lives.

 

In effect, Deuteronomy 6:6-9 affirms this principle. Moses told the Israelites he was leading, “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts…. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up…. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”

 

If one were to practice this faithfully over the course of a lifetime, the 10,000-hour rule would be long surpassed – and spiritual maturity would be a very likely byproduct. Are you willing to put in the time?

Success, and the ‘10,000-Hour Rule’

Do you consider yourself successful? What would you cite as necessities for someone to achieve great success?

Whenever there’s a discussion of what constitutes success, opinions are plentiful. Innate abilities, sometimes also referred to as “giftedness” or aptitude, can certainly make a huge difference. Education and training usually are significant contributors. And you can’t discount the level of one’s determination and perseverance – willingness to continue pressing forward in the face of obstacles and adversity.

As someone has said,
before trying to climb
the ladder of success,
make certain it's
facing the right wall.

Years ago in Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell examined success from many perspectives. He introduced the “10,000-Hour Rule” as a key factor for attaining high levels of success. Drawing from Swedish psychologist Anders Ericsson’s research, Gladwell proposed spending at least 10,000 hours practicing a specific skill as a prerequisite for mastering it.

Predictably, Gladwell’s declaration met criticism from experts arguing time and repetition alone can’t guarantee success. The saying, “practice makes perfect,” falls flat if you practice making the same mistakes again and again, they noted. Maybe that’s why the adage was later amended to “Perfect practice makes perfect.”

In reality, both sides are right – and wrong. Large quantities of time will produce success only if practice and repetition are done with quality. And practice, even if done with precision, will foster success only if done in sufficient quantities to make excellence almost second nature.

Thinking about Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule, only a handful of things I’ve done over the years would qualify. When I took Personal Typing as a junior in high school, learning the “home row” seemed impossible, and I couldn’t imagine typing without looking directly at the keys. After many years of work as a journalist, learning to think and compose at the keyboard, I became very proficient as a typist. In fact, my typing surpassed many of the secretaries and administrative assistants wherever I worked.

I couldn’t begin to calculate how much time I’ve spent writing, over more than 40 decades as a newspaper reporter and editor, magazine editor, book author, columnist and blogger. But the hours must total tens of thousands. On happy occasions when someone is kind enough to compliment my writing skills, I’m thankful. But it also occurs to me, “Well, I’d better be a pretty good writer. I’ve spent enough time doing it!”

Contrast that with pursuits I’ve enjoyed but never invested enough time to perfect. It was fun playing the drums in high school, but after a couple of years of formal lessons, my percussion practice consisted only of random “bang sessions.” As a result, I never became the drummer I would have liked to be.

In college I spent many hours on tennis courts playing recreationally. Over time I became reasonably skilled given my athletic limitations, but because I never invested the time demanded to become a good player, I never advanced beyond mediocre. Ten thousand hours practicing tennis? Not even close.

So what’s all this got to do with anything? Well, for one thing, the mantra, “It’s the quality that counts, not quantity,” is a copout. For instance, in parenting, children want quality time – but they like it in quantity. If you want to have a good, growing marriage, you need to give your spouse quantity time – not an occasional quality hour or two. Successful parents – and successful partners – aren’t afraid to invest whatever time is necessary. Maybe even 10,000 hours or so.

Spiritually it’s much the same. The average Christian seems to think attendance at a worship service and maybe a Sunday school class or small group is sufficient for spiritual maturity. “Hey, God, I gave you a couple of hours on Sunday. What do you want?”

Granted, we have work, family obligations, time for eating and sleeping, maybe a few community activities thrown in. And we need time for TV and just chillin’, right? But how can we experience success spiritually if we spend more time eating chips than we do speaking and listening to God?

In reality, He wants us 24/7. That doesn’t mean we walk about with hands folded and heads bowed. But the Bible does say, “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), which means doing that in the classroom, during a business meeting, while disciplining our children, cooking meals, even driving the car. Praying does not require closed eyes or opened mouths.

The verse preceding that tells us to “Rejoice always” (1 Thessalonians 5:16). This applies to good times and bad, victories and defeats, happy times and sad. Because being successful spiritually involves trusting the Lord is with us no matter what.

Do you really want to know God? It’s going to require a lot more than reading “the verse of the day” that arrives by email every morning. King David understood this from personal experience when he wrote, “How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word…. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you” (Psalm 119:9,11).

Imagine if, over the course of your lifetime, you were to invest 10,000 hours or more in prayer, Bible study and meditation. Do you think that might result in spiritual success? It sure would be worth a try.