I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation to work out how many hours of trauma therapy I had done in my career. The answer is about 15,600 hours. The interesting thing is that I am not burnt out. I LOVE what I do and plan to do another 15,000 hours if my body and spirit allow it.
As I wrote that number yesterday, I remembered a magic number of mastery somewhere in my mind. I couldn’t remember if it was 100,000 or 10,000, so I jumped online to look and remembered it was in Malcolm Gladwell’s groundbreaking book Outliers.
In the book, Gladwell emphasises that the secret to mastering any skill is to practice it correctly for at least 10,000 hours.
He introduces this idea with the “10,000-Hour Rule” in the second chapter, using the Beatles as an example. By playing music together in Hamburg, Germany, from 1960 to 1964 over 1200 times, the Beatles accumulated more than 10,000 hours of practice. This intense practice session helped them become world-famous musicians.
What have you practised over and over for more than 10,000 hours? I’d love to hear.
Love, Jen
