10,000 Hours

Silence is one of those essential elements that people crave when they're lives are too cluttered or busy. It's also the thing we try to avoid when our lives aren't busy enough. When there's too much silence our thoughts can consume us too quickly.

Driving has always been a therapeutic activity for me and especially lately because the stereo in my Subaru is on the fritz. I've often done the five hour drive from Pembroke back to Markham/Toronto with friends, hitch hikers and other travel buddies but this time I was alone with my thoughts and a car full of my belongings (finally moved out!).

At first I really despised my car for not having any music to listen to but thats changed in the last few weeks. The endless kilometers started to rack up on the way home and my brain started to run numbers. It might seem strange at first but I think on long trips of any kind you start to wonder how far have I gone exactly? how many litres of gas have i burned? how many paddle strokes have i taken? how many meters of rock have i climbed? how many? how much? how long?

(May 2009-May 2010) (Estimates)
This year i've driven over 35,000km, climbed over 500m of rock, spent over 100 hours tied into a rope, bouldered more than 100 hours, hiked more than 100km and taken over 4000 photo's of people participating in things they love.

Some of these numbers are impressive others are just notable.

In my third semester this year my professor Jeff Jackson brought up an idea. Malcom Gladwell a writer for the New Yorker wrote a book called "Outliers" and in this book he repeatedly mentions the rule of "10,000 hours". Too be truly great at anything (painting, climbing, writing, driving ..anything at all) you have to reach the 10,000 hour mark in your specific activity.
It's only there, at the 10,000 hour mark that you can seperate yourself from the field of the merely average.

There are obviously other factors that play into this theory and i recommend people take a look at this book. But what i'm trying to get at is finding out what you really love doing.

What is it that you want to be great at? How many hours, kilometers, paddle strokes, meters of rock and brush strokes have you committed already? Run the numbers, find out how far you have to go to be truly extraordinary.

My goal for this coming summer and year is to double those numbers. Go farther, go faster, climb harder and get closer to the 10,000 hours.

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