I had a golf club in my hands this past week, and I was as bad as I’ve ever been.
Unfortunately, I was as good as I’ve ever been. I think I’ve hit a plateau.
I’ve also spent a lot of time thinking about 10,000 hours of practice.
Now that you’re horribly confused, I’ll try to unpack everything.
A combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and a painful foot infection put a halt to most of my physical activity during the past two years. I’ve recently started back at the YMCA, trying to get to where I was in the late stages of 2019 and the very early stages of 2020. Then, I was doing 30 minutes on the elliptical machine on advanced interval stages. No longer. It’s been a difficult process. Even finding the appropriate amount of time (approximately an hour and a half, from changing into my gym clothes to completing my shower) has been a challenge. That’s not including the physical effort required to keep moving and pedal faster and whatever else the machine is telling me to do.
When I realized I was going to be able to participate in the Wells County Chamber of Commerce’s annual golf outing, I wanted to get out to the driving range and get on the road to start to begin to commence to remember what it was like to hit a golf ball well. That never happened.
When I approached our first tee Thursday, I hit the ball into one of Timber Ridge’s bodies of water. It was a great drive, it was just too far.
That’s when I began to think about 10,000 hours. Malcolm Gladwell in his 2008 book, “Outliers: The Story of Success,” wrote about the best and brightest among us. He cited research that said the path to greatness in a particular endeavor requires 10,000 hours of practice.
This has been criticized, belittled, and negatively reviewed by a whole bunch of people, but I’m inclined to think there’s something to it.
If you put in 10,000 hours of practice, whatever you’re doing will mean it’s something you love — not like, not get a kick out of, but love — to do. If you don’t love it, you’ll punt it to the side after about 250 hours, or 25, or 2.5. When I was in high school, my mom thought I should take piano lessons. The 15-year-old me thought otherwise. I was history after about 2.5 hours or so, maybe longer. The 69-year-old me regrets that decision, but there’s no do-overs at this point in my life.
Ten thousand hours means 1,250 days of eight-hour practices. That’s assuming seven days a week of love and dedication and hard work.
Much of the criticism of Gladwell’s thesis involves the quality of that practice. That’s valid. If you’re going to master the violin, I’d appreciate it if you’d play “Ashokan Farewell,” the recurring theme in Ken Burns’ “Civil War” documentary. If that’s the only thing you are able to play, however, you’ve wasted a lot of hours.
I’d love to be a good golfer. I’d love to hit a flop shot from the base of the green to within two feet of the hole. I’d like to stand over a 20-foot putt and read the green so correctly that the ball will drop into the middle of the hole. I would love to hit a drive that actually routinely stays in the fairway.
Do I have 10,000 hours left? I will let you know a year into retirement, maybe.
daves@news-banner.com
