An Interesting Use of 10,000 Hours

In high school, my buddy Pete and I played a lot of pool in my basement. One day, before the start of our sophomore year, I decided that I wanted to have a little contest: First one to 500 victories in 9-ball wins.

The only rule was that we had to finish by the time we graduated in June 2008. (We didn’t.)

We played. And played some more. And sometime over the next four years, we got really good at pool.

I lost to Pete 466-500. We played 966 games of pool, sometimes dozens at a time. I spent thousands of hours in that basement walking miles around that table, playing game after game. 

Today I started thinking about Malcolm Gladwell’s popularization of the 10,000 Hour Rule, how we become closer to experts, the longer we spend on something and the more intently we practice. Until recently, I never realized how much of my pool skill I owe to those games; I never considered pool to be something that I devoted such a chunk of my life to. 

Those were good days.

  1. zackshapiro posted this