Repetition is the key to mastery. When you do
something every day, without fail, no matter how you're feeling, or what
excuses you give yourself, it becomes ingrained in your life. Malcom Gladwell
wrote a book called Outliers. In it, he writes about people who are
extraordinary in their field of choice, who he refers to as
"outliers", and then discusses how they reached that level of
mastery. Without fail, he talks about the 10,000-Hour Rule. This rule
states that in order to become great at something, you need to practice it for
10,000 hours over time (which is about 90 minutes a day for 20 years). On
average, the majority of Gladwell's "outliers" hit that number of
hours of practice.
I think
that this could apply to everyday life, but maybe on a less extreme. Say you would like to get into better shape.
If you just spend 30 minutes a day doing some sort of activity (running,
walking, dancing, etc.) you will begin to see changes to yourself in no time at
all. Keep doing it over a prolonged period of time, and it will become a
routine that is healthy for you. The key is the discipline of doing your chosen
action. Everything else in your life can be a mess of spontaneity and reckless
abandon, because that it is vital to not live in a world of strict routines.
But if you keep a few things constant, you will see their effect on your life.
I actually recently purchased a 25 minute workout, Focus T25, in hopes that it will be something structured I can begin to make habit in my busy schedule.
ReplyDeleteI wish to put forward a question and this question is this is it possible to make a habit of spontaneous actions for instance I see some people who I think practice doing crazy things and so they are practicing being spontaneous.
ReplyDeleteThe thing that scares me about this proposition is the 10,000 hour rule. My hopes in life are to be successful and it's frightening to know that my success is based of my mastering of a subject/thing. 10,000 hours of my life, 20 years of my life is a long time to sacrifice to something, more than a fifth of my life. It really puts a perspective on the timeline that we exist on.
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