Hour by Hour

I approached my professional exams in a very structured way. I was told they took 100 hours, and that resonated with my experience as a ticked them off one by one. Hour by hour. Going from not understanding to sinking in. 

100 hours is fairly chunky. Two hours a week? Then it would take a year. Two hours seems reasonable for a valuable skill. 

The problem is the first 100 hours are often tough because you feel completely lost. We often think that people who are good in the first 100 hours, are going to be the ones who are chosen/good for the 10,000 hours. I don’t buy that. Quite often the generic learning skill set that is needed in the first 100 hours is very different. You need to get through the hard to find the joy. 

My first idea for a book/project was “First Hundred Hours”. To write about my experiences of constantly learning. Get used to, and good at, being bad in the first 100 hours. That was how I got into running. I asked some university friends for ideas. One said babysitting. Unfortunately, I didn’t get many takers – parents are often very territorial despite being overwhelmed. 

Another suggested a marathon. I had never run more than 10km. I wasn’t a runner. In other words, I had never seen if I was a runner. Another friend handed me the book, “Born to Run” which argues we are all runners. About 18 months later, I was standing on the starting line of the Comrade Marathon in Pietermaritzburg belting out a nervous pre-dawn Shosholoza and Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika.

Good at being bad - 300m from the finish when the gun went