Some thoughts on excellence.
One of the conversations I had on the weekend was about excellence in the SCA. There were a few comments that Peers have this sort of god-like levels of skill and knowledge that most people could never achieve. I was making the point that our Peers are mostly good amateurs and not awe inspiring experts in their field. Naturally this got a few people wondering what sort of iconoclasm I was sprouting.
There is an argument that it takes about 10,000 hours of considered activity to reach a credible level of mastery in a particular field.
For referances see “Outliers - The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert
So let us look at some numbers. If I was to be very keen about my fighting then I could go to the three weekly training sessions on offer in Canberra. This would make up for about 5 hours (I am being generous here) of training. Lets also say I did ½ hour of pell work a day. Add in another hour and half of reviewing/thinking about fighting stuff. This is about 10 hours a week. How many of us would spend ten hours a week committed to training and practice (not just chewing the fat at a meeting)?
So ten hours a week, 52 weeks a year. That’s 150 hours. Lets add in another 30 hours of tournaments, wars etc. That’s 550 hours a year. At this level of activity it would take about 18 years to get to the 10,000 hours we need to put in…
So 18 years of very full-on commitment.
So you can see my point. New Peers normally have put in 4-7 years of involvement in the SCA. Peerage is only a quarter of the way to mastery.
Now, I am not going to say that Peers are crap far from it. Most have a very good level of knowledge and skill and we can learn a great deal from these folk. Just keep all of this in some level of perspective…
There is an argument that it takes about 10,000 hours of considered activity to reach a credible level of mastery in a particular field.
For referances see “Outliers - The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert
So let us look at some numbers. If I was to be very keen about my fighting then I could go to the three weekly training sessions on offer in Canberra. This would make up for about 5 hours (I am being generous here) of training. Lets also say I did ½ hour of pell work a day. Add in another hour and half of reviewing/thinking about fighting stuff. This is about 10 hours a week. How many of us would spend ten hours a week committed to training and practice (not just chewing the fat at a meeting)?
So ten hours a week, 52 weeks a year. That’s 150 hours. Lets add in another 30 hours of tournaments, wars etc. That’s 550 hours a year. At this level of activity it would take about 18 years to get to the 10,000 hours we need to put in…
So 18 years of very full-on commitment.
So you can see my point. New Peers normally have put in 4-7 years of involvement in the SCA. Peerage is only a quarter of the way to mastery.
Now, I am not going to say that Peers are crap far from it. Most have a very good level of knowledge and skill and we can learn a great deal from these folk. Just keep all of this in some level of perspective…