Learning

Ten Thousand Hours

by TomLaPille on May 12, 2011

A few years ago, Malcom Gladwell’s book Outliers released. As often happens with such books, one tiny quote from it became a meme, to the exclusion of almost everything else in it. In this case, the meme was that it takes ten thousand hours of practice to get truly good at anything.

Ten thousand hours is an absurdly long time to perform one activity. It is 416 days, 59.5 weeks, or 1.14 years. The ten thousand hour claim became a meme exactly because of how audacious it is. Who has done anything for that long? Most people I’ve talked about this with have one activity that has hit at least a few thousand hours, but nowhere near ten.

That idea was enough to get me to read the book, in hopes of getting some kind of clarification or increased insight about it. I received none. Gladwell was content to observe the ten thousand hour trigger and move on with no further commentary, other than that many of the people who had hit ten thousand hours were lucky to have opportunities that allowed them to get there. Other than “be lucky”, Gladwell had no suggestions for the reader.

This didn’t stop people from trying to infer some. The most common one I heard was that we should choose a profitable field, then dump hours and hours of effort into improving our skills in that area.

While that’s a reasonable thought, it blithely ignores reality, giving far too much credit to the human brain. Human willpower is an extremely powerful force. Everyone I’ve ever met has been able to exert willpower to achieve extreme focus and rapid results, but only for short periods of time. Eventually, the turbo-engine runs out of fuel, and they go back to their defaults. That level of willpower-induced focus won’t last more than a good ten hours. After that, if you’re not genuinely interested, you’re not going to make it.

What skill have you spent the most time practicing? It’s probably something you like doing, and that’s not a coincidence. You naturally spend less time doing things you like less. You can race to ten hours in any skill, you will not complete the marathon that ends at the ten thousand hour mark unless you would have done it without the target to hit.

You’ll never get to ten thousand hours deliberately. You can only get there by accident. Your ten thousand hour skill has already chosen you. Your job is to figure out what you can do with it.

Facts and Skills

by TomLaPille on May 10, 2011

A year and a half ago, I became active in the Society for Creative Anachronism, a living history organization. Although the SCA focuses mainly on medieval Europe, any culture that interacted with Europeans before 1600 AD is fair game. I’m all about medieval Japan, and the Portuguese landed at Tanegashima in 1543. I knew from the beginning that I was going to be a samurai.

In order to learn about my chosen place and time, I read several books about fuedal Japanese life. I was particularly interested in the sections that talked about clothing, as it’s hard to do reenactment without plausibly looking the part. Unfortunately, each book’s discussion of Japanese clothing had gaping holes. Most contained only an overview of the garments. Few included any amount of detail about their construction. None felt it necessary or useful to explain how to put everything on.

This is not nearly granular enough for a serious reenactor, who wants to know in very fine detail how things were made and used. I can only assume that the Japanese literature on this topic is more enlightening, but the language barrier made that inaccessible for me.

The most vexing thing, though, was a claim I found repeated in book after book, each time without justification. No self-respecting samurai, each book said, would go out in public without an overgarment on. The repetition of this statement made me think it was probably true, but no one was willing- or perhaps, I began to suspect, able- to tell me why.

To get the information I needed to construct the clothes I wanted to have, I networked with other SCA members who have Japanese personas. They provided me with patterns and rudimentary knowledge of how to dress myself, and my closet began to fill with clothes fit for a samurai. However, the overgarment claim remained unsubstantiated.

One day, I was pondering this while I got dressed for an event. No one of high status would be attending, and no one else there has a Japanese persona. There was no particular reason to dress formally, I reckoned, if no one there would notice or care how casual I had dressed.

The kosode is the 16th century precursor to the modern kimono. I put on a white one as an undergarment and secured it with a belt, then put on a patterned silk one over that, secured with a second belt. Kosode are very large garments, so I gathered the extra material at the small of my back to make the material in front of my body smooth. Then, over that I put on a hakama, a baggy sort of trousers that any man of status wore when he was outside of his home.

Before leaving my apartment, I checked my work in the mirror. My collars overlapped nicely, and the front of my kosode was smooth. Then, I turned around and looked over my back. What I saw horrified me. The point at the small of my back where I had gathered the extra kosode material was a wrinkled mess. Everything else about my clothes appeared neat, but that one spot was so unruly that it demanded a viewier’s attention and overshadowed the order that was apparent everywhere else.

I didn’t want anyone to see that. I needed to cover it up with something.

Right then, everything clicked. Self-respecting samurai wore overgarments because they looked sloppy when viewed from behind if they didn’t, and now there was no way in hell I was ever leaving the house without one.

The authors of the books I read may be able to spout facts about sixteenth century Japanese clothing, but can they make it and then dress themselves competently in it? If they’ve never been in position to have the realization I had, I don’t know if I believe they can.

I can.

I’d rather be me.