I’m currently reading Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers. Wanted to share a finding I’ve heard before. Basically, it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at anything! It doesn’t matter whether it’s athletics or academics. According to Gladwell, there are no “naturals.” You have to put in the time. Generally speaking, the only difference between an elite person in any field and everybody else is usually a few thousand hours of practice time.

I find this study so empowering. Anybody can become an expert in just about anything. Obviously, you need a baseline of talent if you’re talking about music or sports. But you can accumulate knowledge and become an expert.

This resonates with me on lots of levels. I’m not claiming expertise in any particular discipline, and I certainly see myself as a work in progress, but to become a great writer you have to be a great reader. Since I graduated from college I’ve read at least 2500 books. I think this is a conservative estimate, but if you allow at least 4 hours reading time per book you end up with about 10,000 hours.

So here’s the question: what do you want to become an expert in? Gladwell says, “Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness.”