Malcolm Gladwell is famous for his 2008 bestseller entitled Outliers: The Story of Success. The book highlights the factors that lead to success. While many factors are in play, according to Gladwell, what seems to matter most is what he calls the "10,000-Hour Rule."
According to Gladwell, the key to success in any field is a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of 10,000 hours.
Being a numbers guy, my mind immediately went to work.
The primary examples used by Gladwell are the Beatles and Bill Gates. He claims that once the Beatles hit that target of 10,000 hours, their music rose to an entirely different level. And the same thing happened with Bill Gates and his prowess with computer programming. More personally, Gladwell says that it took him exactly ten years to reach his 10,000 hours. (That works out to about twenty hours each week for ten years.)
His claim is that this theory works for almost any skill - in almost any field.
And I'm wondering if the theory holds for spiritual maturity too.
Let's say that I devote ten hours a week to my walk with Jesus. I'd probably feel pretty good about that. I realize that my spiritual growth can't really be quantified that way. Still, at that pace, I would reach my 10,000 hours in about nineteen years. Of course, that wouldn't mean that I had reached some magic level of maturity - but surely something would have happened to me if I had prayed and studied and practiced the disciplines for ten hours a week for nineteen years.
And maybe ten hours a week is asking too much. At four hours a week, it would take forty-eight years to reach 10,000 hours.
But that seems a little wimpy to say that I'm willing to invest only four hours a week on my spiritual growth. I'm wondering how many hours a week a passionate pianist might practice - or how many hours a week an actor might devote to his or her craft. I bet it's a whole lot more than four hours a week. And it's probably more than ten . . . or even twenty . . . or even thirty hours a week. For some people, it might be fifty or sixty or seventy hours a week. At that pace, they might hit their 10,000 hours in . . . two or three years!
What would happen to me if I valued my spiritual health that much?
Again, I know that there's nothing magic about the 10,000 hour threshold, but it still makes me wonder.
I work out on my stationary bike about four or five hours a week. At that rate, I'll be an expert at stationary-bike-riding in about fifty years. I have logged exactly 338 hours on my lawn tractor in the past six years (cutting grass and blowing snow). At least, that's what the gauge says. At that rate, I'll be at the expert level with my lawn tractor in about 178 years. (Okay, so I'll never be expert with my lawn tractor. I don't think I realized that until this very moment.)
But what about my spiritual health? Again, using actual numbers is ridiculous. Still, I would be foolish not to see that there is a connection between what I'm willing to invest and what the possible outcome might be. And surely that holds true even in the spiritual realm.
It's kind of funny how we assume that spiritual maturity will happen automatically, with little effort on our part. That's probably not going to happen.
Malcolm Gladwell may be completely wrong about his 10,000 hours.
On the other hand, maybe he's onto something . . .
His claim is that this theory works for almost any skill - in almost any field.
And I'm wondering if the theory holds for spiritual maturity too.
Let's say that I devote ten hours a week to my walk with Jesus. I'd probably feel pretty good about that. I realize that my spiritual growth can't really be quantified that way. Still, at that pace, I would reach my 10,000 hours in about nineteen years. Of course, that wouldn't mean that I had reached some magic level of maturity - but surely something would have happened to me if I had prayed and studied and practiced the disciplines for ten hours a week for nineteen years.
And maybe ten hours a week is asking too much. At four hours a week, it would take forty-eight years to reach 10,000 hours.
But that seems a little wimpy to say that I'm willing to invest only four hours a week on my spiritual growth. I'm wondering how many hours a week a passionate pianist might practice - or how many hours a week an actor might devote to his or her craft. I bet it's a whole lot more than four hours a week. And it's probably more than ten . . . or even twenty . . . or even thirty hours a week. For some people, it might be fifty or sixty or seventy hours a week. At that pace, they might hit their 10,000 hours in . . . two or three years!
What would happen to me if I valued my spiritual health that much?
Again, I know that there's nothing magic about the 10,000 hour threshold, but it still makes me wonder.
I work out on my stationary bike about four or five hours a week. At that rate, I'll be an expert at stationary-bike-riding in about fifty years. I have logged exactly 338 hours on my lawn tractor in the past six years (cutting grass and blowing snow). At least, that's what the gauge says. At that rate, I'll be at the expert level with my lawn tractor in about 178 years. (Okay, so I'll never be expert with my lawn tractor. I don't think I realized that until this very moment.)
But what about my spiritual health? Again, using actual numbers is ridiculous. Still, I would be foolish not to see that there is a connection between what I'm willing to invest and what the possible outcome might be. And surely that holds true even in the spiritual realm.
It's kind of funny how we assume that spiritual maturity will happen automatically, with little effort on our part. That's probably not going to happen.
Malcolm Gladwell may be completely wrong about his 10,000 hours.
On the other hand, maybe he's onto something . . .