With 10 hours: we will gain a wider notion of the main concepts.
c. With 100 hours: we reach an intermediate level.
d. With 1,000 hours: we become specialists.
e. With 10,000 hours: we become masters of the subject.
This last level represents excellence and, according to the neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, is the time the brain needs to master a field of human activity.
However, an alternative study carried out at Princeton warns that intensive practice may not lead to success if we do not develop opportunity-recognizing prowess, once we have achieved mastery.
If, instead of seeking fame and fortune, the Beatles had carried on rehearsing in a basement upon returning to their hometown, we would probably never have heard of them. Fortunately, they used their 10,000 hours well.
Plan your 10,000 hours
If you have a passion that you are greatly attached to—an ikigai you would like to devote your life to—you can consider attaining mastery through the 10,000 hour rule we discussed in this chapter, but this requires commitment and a plan.
Perseverance—ganbarimasu—is essential, but you must decide how many years you can or want to allow yourself to achieve your great objective.
The numbers don’t lie:
• 8 hours a day x 5 days a week = 5 years
• 4 hours a day x 5 days a week = 10 years
• 2 hours a day x 5 days a week = 20 years
• 1 hour a day x 5 days a week = 40 years
Attaining mastery in a relatively short time demands total dedication, that is to say, our passion must be our job. However, even if we work in something else, a passion—the practicing of a particular art, sport or object of study—can accompany us happily over a lifetime.
The question is, what passion or ikigai motivates me enough to devote my life to it?
If you still don’t have an answer to that, consider the words of the great psychiatrist and neurologist Victor Frankl: “If you don’t know what your mission in life is, you already have one—to find it.”
4th STATION
NEW HABITS
21 days to change your life
We are going to stop looking out of the window for a minute to turn the spotlight on our everyday life. Which habits govern your life? Which ones bring you closer to your goals and make you feel good? Which ones harm you and drain you of energy?
It is said that humans are “creatures of habit,” and it is true that habits are essential for our survival, since they are mechanisms that help us to automatize tasks without constantly having to make decisions. If we had to think about every single move we make during the day, we would end up exhausted.
The Happiness that Comes from Repeating
In his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera said, “happiness is the desire to repeat,” and that may apply to something as simple as our choice of what to wear each day.
Mark Zuckerberg, the young founder of Facebook, has not changed anything about his attire since he made his first public presentation. He still wears the same gray shirt, the same dark gray sweater and the same type of pants and shoes. As he says: “I want to simplify my life so that I have to make as few decisions as possible other than those which serve my community.”
This is a very “Zen” way of simplifying things, which may be inspired by the iconic Steve Jobs, who for years wore the same things in all his public appearances: black turtleneck sweater, jeans and white sneakers.
When his biographer Walter Isaacson asked him about this adherence to a single outfit, Jobs explained that he had become friends with the prestigious designer Issey Miyake, who had already designed the uniforms for the workers at Sony, among many other companies.
Although the Apple staff objected in no uncertain terms to Jobs’s idea of supplying them with a factory uniform designed by Miyake, he finally decided to get a uniform for himself. This would be very practical for his daily routine and would also become his “personal hallmark” in his presentations.
Without thinking twice, Steve Jobs asked the Japanese designer to make him a hundred black sweaters in his size. When a surprised Miyake asked him why he wanted so many, Apple´s CEO replied: “This is what I wear. This way, I’ll have enough for the rest of my life.”
Although in a less radical way, another American who joined the club of those who are happy to repeat was Barack Obama, who dresses almost exclusively in gray or blue suits. When asked about this “lack of imagination” he replied: “I don’t want to make decisions about what I eat or how I dress every day because I already have too many decisions to make.”
Everyday viruses
Repeating habits that help make life easier brings us serenity and happiness. However, there are also bad habits that make themselves at home inside us, as if they were viruses, and unless we consciously deprogram them, it can be almost impossible to get rid of them.
When bad habits take control of our everyday life, they can send it off the rails. On the other hand, if we replace them with good habits, the train heading for our dreams will pick up speed and we will also free up mental space, which will allow us to be more creative. If we have a mental plan of what we are going to do, progress is assured.
For example, the novelist Haruki Murakami wakes up every day at four in the morning and sits down to write for five or six hours. When he finishes, at around nine or ten, he goes out for a run or goes swimming. He devotes the rest of the day to walking, reading and listening to music, as the mood takes him.
The 21-day rule
Charles Duhigg, a New York Times journalist, became interested in habits when he realized that each day at three in the afternoon, he needed to eat a large chocolate cookie, despite the fact he had eaten a good lunch and had problems with obesity.
In theory, he wasn’t hungry. Where was that irresistible impulse coming from? In the author’s words, “Habits are the subconscious options and invisible decisions that surround us on a daily basis.”
In researching the question as to what was driving him and how to alter his behavior, he gathered many successful cases and verified that you need to keep at a new positive routine for twenty-one days in order to cement it. Any new habit begins as a choice, and at the end of this period of repetition, the new habit becomes an automatic pattern.
The first step towards being able to reprogram our mind is to identify the routine that makes you do the thing that is not in your best interests. In his own case, Duhigg observed how he was overcome by tiredness every day at three in the afternoon, which he redressed by going down to the cafeteria and buying the chocolate cookie.
The second step is to experiment with new rewards
