Cost of Excellence

Ten thousand is the number of hours of deliberate practice that would take to obtain mastery of any activity. The keyword is “deliberate practice”. It is a dedicated, highly focused practice with the objective of improving the technique. It is, obviously, is an arbitrary number. But the point is that it would take a lot of focused effort to attain mastery. There is a tremendous amount of sweat and pain in the sub 10s performance of Usain Bolt in the Olympics, any other feat of accomplishment. It is said that the easier and smoother a performance look, the harder the effort that went behind it. The story about artist Picasso illustrates it nicely;

https://dilbert.com/

A lady once approached Picasso to draw a portrait of her. He agreed. He took a pencil and with a single stroke drew her portrait. The lady was amazed. Jumping with joy asked him how much did she owe him for the portrait. “Five thousand dollars” replied the artist. “What? That is an exorbitant price for one minute’s work” said the lady in disbelief. “Madame, it took my entire years of effort to finish it in one minute. The price is for that time” replied Picasso.

We are all lonely at the moment of torments before accomplishments. A chef has to cook thousands of dishes and do several years of apprenticeship before becoming independent. A writer has to read hundreds of books write several wasted pages and talk to dozens of publishers to publish the first significant work. A scientist has to toils thousands of hours in the lab or field or behind a microscope to make a discovery of any significance. The creative process is very rewarding but very painful. Many of it happens at the huge cost of personal sacrifices of many things that is close to us. Even with all these efforts, how many of us contribute anything that justifies the loss? What is the whole point of this life drama? Scriptures say, “ everything happens for a reason”. However, sometimes we may have to come up with reasons to justify many things that happen.