My 10,000 Hour Challenge

Some of you are likely to have heard of or about the 10,000 hour rule which was popularized in Malcolm Gladwell's book 'Outliers'.
The 10,000 hour rule in summary, is a theory that suggests that in order to become an expert, or to gain mastery, in a field of one's choice, one must put in enough deliberate practice to get to that level...10,000 hours worth in fact.  
The term deliberate practice refers to practice where you are engaged and fully concentrating on what you are doing, not just messing around or doing what you like, but challenging yourself and pushing yourself to improve. 

There are mixed opinions when it comes to the '10,000 hour rule'. Some people are fully behind the concept 100%, whilst others are more on the skeptical side. I won't go into the arguments for and against as you can just Google them, but I will state my opinion on the theory.

I believe that it differs from person to person, different learning-rates and intelligence being a factor, also depending upon how you learn/the way you are taught.. I've heard that practicing 2 hours a day the wrong way is equivalent to 30 minutes practicing the right way, which is why 'deliberate' practice is mentioned, or 'quality' practice. I wouldn't say that 10,000 hours is a magical benchmark in which you automatically gain mastery status upon achievement of, but 10,000 hours is a lot of time put into a field of choice and so is feasible that you could become an expert. 10,000 hours whatever the outcome,is going to leave you in a much better position than when you first started. 

Intrigued with idea however, I decided that I would test out this theory for myself. I know that there is going to be a long road ahead and that it won't be an easy feat by any means, and is going to reveal how committed I can remain, and if I have enough self discipline for the task in front of me. If I do manage to get to the end of this long road (which I plan to), I'll be able to see if hard work really can get you to an all new standard.

To put into perspective about how much practice is required to meet the 10,000 hour benchmark, it will take you 10 years of practicing 3 hours every day of the year (365 days) to reach 10,000 hours...well 10,990 hours to be more precise. You can see the level of commitment that is required to achieve this ambitious landmark. Some inspiring and motivating present 10,000 hour challenges can be found here: TheDanPlan and DevinWilliams712.

So what is my 10,000 hour challenge? Well, some of you may be aware that I play the piano. I've managed to get past grade 8 but am definitely not an expert. I've never enjoyed practicing and have always found it a chore, so I would do the minimum I could get away with or none at all.

Around a year ago, maybe a little less, I quit lessons for various reasons. As a result of quitting lessons, I no longer 'had' to practice, and stopped playing almost altogether, familiarizing myself once or twice every couple of months before stopping again. 
However, I am now wanting to get into a consistent and self-disciplined routine where I see myself get to a much higher level.

I started the piano coming up to 10 years ago now, but because I hardy practiced - I would be surprised if I had even reached 1,500 hours of practice, and I'm guessing that around 500 of those hours is all you could say were 'quality' hours. So you can probably tell that even though I'm not new to this field, I still have so much to improve upon to even come close to an experts level.

The amount of determined practice per day that I'm going to aim for is 2-3 hours minimum. From only touching the piano a few times in the last year to setting myself a target of 2-3 hours of practice a day is going to be a big shock, but is something I'll need to get used to. 
I didn't want to do an hour a day as I felt that that was too little time to spend on improving, taking 28 years to finish!!! No, 2 - 3 hours seems like a good daily target, and I can always play much more than that if I feel like it. 

At the time of you reading this post I will be already 7 days into this monumental challenge. I will be giving updates to how I'm doing every 30 days or so.