10,000 hours to become an expert at anything...

I just had to log in a short post about this 10,000 hr-rule cos for some uncanny reason I was told this twice today by 2 persons under pretty diff circumstances... Yesterday I was just reflecting on how I have not become really good at anything so far - be it tennis, photography, Japanese, baking etc although I like and enjoy doing all these things. I tried to figure out what the reason might be... and concluded that I am just not a very determined person and get easily distracted by new things :(

So this morning, it was somewhat consoling when a guest pastor, as part of his msg about it being human to err, shared this interesting piece of trivia. Then when chatting with Y just now, she highlighted this to me too! So Y pointed out that this implied that someone who practices XX for 8 hrs everyday...wld take abt 4 years to be an expert. If you're more normal (and devote say 8 hrs a week to this activity) - you will become an expert in... 28 years! When things are put in that perspective, it really feels not that bad that I am not an expert at anything... heh.

p/s: did a google of the 10,000 hr thing and it's apparently a common theme in Malcolm Gladwell's book - Outliers. Maybe I shld go read that some day :)