10,000 Hours

Recently, I was visiting with a girlfriend about the book Outliers which we both read this year. I appreciated some insight she shared with me.

A brief synopsis:
One of the things the book discusses is whether there is such a thing as innate talent or is success determined by work. One of the studies considered was conducted at Berlin's Academy of Music. Students were divided into three groups.
I - students with the potential to become world-class soloists
II - students that were good
III - students who were unlikely to ever play professionally and who intended to be teachers in the public school system

Students from all three groups began playing at about the same age - 5years old. In the first few years they practiced about the same amount - 2 to 3 hours per week. But differences began to appear around the age of 8. Students who would end up in the top group (I) began to practice more than the others - about 6 hours a week, by age 12 - 8 hours, by age 14 - 16 hours. By the age of 20 they were practicing 30 or more hours per week. In fact, by the age of 20 the top group had logged in over 10,000 hours of practicing, group II had 8,000 hours and group III had just 4,000 hours.

Outliers gives others examples of this 10,000 hours of work for other success stories from the Beatles to Bill Joy and Bill Gates.

Then my girlfriend reflected on a time when her daughter was in the symphony band and they had attended a workshop that involved playing for a series of judges and then one of the judges working with the band to improve their playing. The woman sat in on the workshop and the judge said to the students that they had played every note correctly and had played every rhythm correctly. He then asked the students what the difference was between them and a professional orchestra. He then said, "It's the quality of the tone." My girlfriend realizes now that it translated to the 10,000 hours. These high school students had not put in 10,000 and thus they did not have the "quality of tone" that professional musicians have.

Here's the idea that has stayed with me:
She then talked about our most recent Stake Conference where a visiting General Authority, Elder Pearson, spoke. She questioned, "What was it about his talk that touched us?" He did not teach us anything new. Every messgae he gave we had heard before and yet we were very touched by him. She concluded that is was the "quality of his tone." Or in other words he had spent 10,000 hours with the Spirit.

I have continued to ponder her thoughts since our discussion. It has made me think almost daily about what I am doing that either allows the Spirit to be in my life or keeps it away. I love the thought of Sister M. Catherine Thomas who describes how easily we will give up the opportunity to live in Zion by, "trying to impose one's will on others, or by criticism, anger, irritability, selfishness, failure to forgive, failure to revere another's agency, retaliation, moodiness, fear, worry, or simply forgetting to have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ." (Spiritual Lightening, pg 79) These are the things that allow me to either live with or without the Spirit. I've thought about what daily habits I want in both tangible things I do and the attitude I want to have. It requires that I let many of the things I "want" to do - go, because I don't have time to do everything. That's hard.

I've thought about Elder Eyring's talk in the most recent General Conference concerning doing our duty with all diligence. I cannot imagine how hard this man works, and two of his comments struck me - first he said, "When I find myself drawn away from my priesthood duties by other interests and when my body begs for rest, I give to myself this rallying cry: 'Remember Him'." His second comment was, " Whenever we remember Him, it becomes easier to resist temptation to want a rest from our priesthod labors." I wonder how at his age and with all he must do, how does he keep doing his labors? And, how can I change my heart to be like his? How do I "remember" correctly? It seems like remembering Christ is easy, but the work of doing our duty is what makes us tired. How do I reconcile those? I think that it must require the Spirit. I know that I've never worked as hard as an apostle, but I do know what it feels like to be both physically and emotionally exhausted and yet my heart has such a desire to continue to serve and do my duty. But there have also been times when I have felt almost rebellious. I've wanted to go on vacation to get away from duties and remain on vacation even when I physically return home.

I guess I hope that searching for the answers to my questions will help my heart change and make it soft and more receptive to the Spirt. I think I want 10,000 hours with the Spirit.