10,000 hours of practice. 9,750 hours to go…

I am reading the book Outliers. One of the chapters is about “The 10,000-Hour Rule”. It says that for anyone to master any skill, they need to put in 10,000 hours of practice. There is an example about Bill Gate put in at least 10,000 hours of computer programming before he dropped out of Harvard. The Beatles intensively performed 270 nights in just over a year and a half at Hamburg before they hit it big, etc… You get the idea.

I started sewing last year when my daughter wanted a specific Pokemon trainer costume for Halloween, and I couldn’t find it anywhere. So, I made one for her and started sewing. Since then, I probably put in about 4 hours a week on sewing. That’s 208 hours a year. So it will take me 48 years to master the skill. Humm.

I can see improvements. Just sewn the first evening gown for my daughter and was pretty fond of it.

But I got to practice more, so I convinced my client to give me a sewing gig. I designed and sewn 15 beer garden uniforms. That’s 80 hours of practice right there. (Mostly at midnights while the kids were sleeping with no distractions. Special thanks to my mom for technical advice and troubleshooting.)

I am aiming to reach the level of Alexandar McQueen (I almost fell on my knees admiring the beautiful work in his exhibition at The Met). Say, I should be ready to launch my line (calculating…) at the year 2058.