Mastering an activity - Putting in your 10,000 hours

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Blink states that it takes approximately
10,000 hours at an activity to master it. So if you commit one hour a
day to practicing an activity, it's going to take you 10,000 days to
find mastery, or about 27 years. Woah, that's a lot of years.
Fortunately we can probably shave a few off, if you're a regular class
attendee then you've probably got another 4 hours a week in there. If
you hit the occasional workshop or fencing event you'll probably get
another 8 hours or so in a month. There's also a ton of evidence that
shows that directed and well coached training is far more effective
counting for as much as 2-5 times the value of non-directed time in
gaining proficiency with an activity. So on a hobby schedule you
might be able to get that mastery level down to 20 years. If you can
put in a couple more days a week, add to your training time, be sure
to pickup a sword every day even for a few minutes, you can probably
shave a few more years off that as well.All that being said, this is still a long journey.

Looking down that long road, at one time in my youth I may have found
it truly daunting or overwhelming. I'd have been too focused on the
destination. But now with a bit more wisdom, I think -- great! I'm
glad that I've been on this road as long as I have and I still see the
rest of my journey disappearing over the horizon. It's like being in
the middle of a really great series of books. I don't know about you,
but sometimes I hate it when i get to those last few pages in a great
novel because I'll have to leave all my favorite characters behind.
Being in the middle is where I feel most content, I know the
characters, I see the challenges, and there's so much more cool stuff
ahead. So I'm glad that fencing/wma is like a honking huge series that
I really am enjoying. There's so much more ahead of me to savour. I
hope you're enjoying the journey too.