Thursday, November 13, 2008

Time for Mastery

It's been estimated that mastery of a complex craft requires about 10,000 hours of instruction and practice. You can get going, even produce some useful work with fewer hours, but let's accept this estimate.

Let's translate 10,000 hours into years, based on the number of hours you practice each week:

2 hours/week ---> 96.2 years to achieve mastery
10 hours/week---> 19.2 years to achieve mastery
20 hours/week---> 9.6 years to achieve mastery
40 hours/week---> 4.8 years to achieve mastery

Being a husband and father is a complex craft. There are basic skills, some art, and a changing environment (you change, your wife changes, your kids change, the world changes).

How many hours a week are you really working at the husband and father role? I confess there are plenty of weeks when I haven't worked 10 hours at it. Maybe not even 2 hours some weeks.

Should it surprise me that I already have one child out of the house and still haven't mastered being a dad? That I've been married 21 wonderful years and still making foolish mistakes in what I say or do?

No. I'm grateful to be on a continuous learning curve. I strongly suspect that our gracious Lord will continue to draw me forward by keeping the changes coming, because He loves me too much to let me wallow in pride or any thoughts of having "arrived" at some level of mastery.

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