There's no substitute for repetition

In his recent book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell puts forth the argument (also made by Richard Sennett and others) that being really good at something, truly expert, takes about 10,000 hours of serious practice.  That's five or six years at a full-time job, which is why so many trades apprenticeships are five to seven years long, and why the correctly-named "masters degree" takes about six years of full-time post-high-school learning.

The playwright David Mamet tells a great story about the champion ping-pong player, Marty Reisman.  There were a bunch of kind of seedy ping-pong clubs in New York back in the 40s and 50s, lots of gambling going on, but kids were often allowed in there as well.  One kid, twelve or thirteen years old, watches a match in which Reisman just completely dismantles another very good player.  After the match, the boy races down to the table, and says "Gosh, Mr. Reisman, that was amazing!  How can I get to be as good a ping-pong player as you are?"  And Reisman smiles down at the boy, and says "Well, kid, first you quit school..."

I'm a really good pool player.  Really good.  Better than you.  But... I started playing seriously in about 2003, and over the past eight years, I've probably averaged 5-10 hours per week of practice (considerably less in the past four months, probably more while Sacco's was still open until spring 2010).  So let's say 8 hours a week for 50 weeks a year for 8 years... I'm only at 3,200 hours, WAY less than full professional mastery.  Compare that against someone like Efren Reyes, generally considered to be the best pool player who's ever lived.  Efren is 57, Filipino, and grew up in his uncle's pool hall in Manila.  He worked as a rack boy starting when he was five years old, played while standing on Coke crates, and slept on the table at night.  In the past 52 years, he's probably averaged five or six hours of play per day, which means he's at about a hundred thousand hours. 

(In almost every interview with a truly outstanding pool player, there'll be a sentence beginning with the words "My dad had a pool room in this little town...") 

I'm reminded of all this because Nora and I were out getting some shoes today, and while she was in Manchester Footwear, I went next door to the furniture store and was just poking around, and came across some little trinkets.  And I said to myself, "Nora would like that," and $1.62 later, I had it.  And she did like it indeed.  I get the little airport junk when I travel, I write her e-mails and notes, I bring flowers.  And that repetition matters a lot, I think.  It reminds us both that we aren't taking each other for granted, it causes us both to put specific time in the day for each other.

And after a while, we'll be experts.