10,000, Again

I’m now about half-way through Jeff Shaara’s The Last Full Measure, reading till almost midnight last night. In bed, beginning to doze off, I suddenly realized: all those dates, the hundred or so names, the two dozen most important battles, the four-year-plus timeline – it all started to come together. I could envision this whole Civil War thing from a macro point of view and could zoom in to any year, month, event.

Or I might just have been dreaming.

Anyway, I got to thinking about the Rule of 10,000, originally blogged about by me here (though of course this is not my idea or discovery). I think it is a very powerful idea or discovery. The dozen or so solid chunks of subject knowledge I have, I often wonder where on this 10,000 hour continuum I sit.

Not counting The Last Full Measure, I just quickly and conservatively calculated I’m 88 hours in the Civil War off and on over the past six months. That includes eleven books and a couple of shows on the History, Discovery, and Military channels. I watched three DVDs of Ken Burns massive documentary (leaving about a dozen unwatched).

Let’s see … 88 divided by 10,000 is … zero-point-eight-eight percent of the way towards mastery! Wow. All this time and effort, and I don’t even have a one-percent handle on the subject. A dozen hours shy. Last Full Measure should take me another six hours, and the book after that another six, and then I’ll be a one-percenter.

Frustrating and exciting at the same time. Since I’m a hopper, I will never master the subject. Musically, guitar-wise, I’m probably at forty or fifty percent. Science fiction literature-wise, ditto. Physics, maybe a very rusty twenty-five percent. It kills me not to be proficient in a single thing, but, hey, that’s the goal I work towards. Before I leave this earth-bound existence, dammit, I will master something!