「 What If 10,000 Hours Isn’t for You? 」
There’s marathoners and then… there’s sprinters
By now, there should be a book coming out of me. At least that’s how it should be in an ideal world. Afterall, I have spent my entire decade trying to decode the way to “personal development” for a commitment-phobic person. You know, there has to be a book specialized to decode how to improve one’s life for those who only have short bursts of energy then falling out of it.
There’s a famous 10,000-Hour Rule by Malcolm Gladwell from the Outliers that basically talks about achieving mastery level in any field. Imagine if you spend about 2-3 years in a certain field and get pretty obsessed about it. You can be the master of whatever field that you want except that concept doesn’t work for someone like me.
After a decade trying to learn the way a normal person would, I found out that 3 months is the sweet spot. You’ll cover the basics of anything you want to master but also get into the challenging part of the subject you’re trying to learn. The easiest example is that in 3 months, with a little obsession, it’s easy to lose more than 25 pounds which is around 11kg. For a normal person, they can go a year doing that and eventually lose more but for a person like me, there will be moments where it’ll stop.
Let’s imagine losing 11kg in 3 months then plateaued. Then, after 3 months off, we picked it up again and started losing more with a bit of sprinkled guilt in between as we probably don't care about our weight anymore. So, restarting feels like a chore but because we’re determined to restart, it’ll get easier. You know, for a sprinter like me, willpower is our best strength.
Most personal development out there is geared towards the grind. It’s for those marathoners, They are always talking about endurance, a slow and steady process with habits that are built pretty slowly. They have that long-term discipline and love the long journey. Think about those people who watch youtube on a normal speed compared to those who watch it on 2x speed.
If you ask me, which one is better? I find out it’s neither. You just have to understand yourself.
And.. that’s what I found these past decade dabbling in this personal development sphere. My conclusion is that, there’s marathoners and sprinters.
I happen to be a sprinter, someone who enjoys intensity in a short term. I am not built for a long term marathon. If you’re a sprinter like myself, don’t fret if there’s no personal development that ever fixes your life. The thing is, you can thrive and achieve your goal. It’s just going to take a sprinkle of willpower.
So, how do you actually achieve your goal as a sprinter?
When the world tells you, all you need is endurance and patience, and you ain’t got none. Here’s what I found. Work in 90 days or 3 months. Give it your all, whatever you learn.
The super power of a sprinter that I found is that we work fast, we understand fast and we achieve results fast( or at least, this is what we want). But to actually sustain everything, we can’t deny there has to be some type of recurrence.
So, let’s say you want to lose weight. This 90 days, you will give your all, day and night to achieve that. I know you will because you’re a sprinter. By the end of 90 days you’ll probably lose 25 pounds or perhaps 40 pounds. Then you stop. It’s not that you’re quitting, you’re just focusing on something else.
If by chance you’re not satisfied with the result. Pick it up again after another 90 days interval. Perhaps you gained a bit of weight, maybe plateaued but if you continue doing the same, you can once again lose another pound, maybe 20 this time but in hindsight and in the bigger picture, you’ve lost 50 pounds.
Apply that to whatever goals you want in life and if you’re a sprinter, that could work for you. At least, that’s how it worked for me. It’s 90 days at a time.
Back in the day, I used to think something was wrong with me because no matter what I did, I couldn’t follow all the conventional habit building or personal development out there. In the end, the problem wasn’t me but the approach that wasn’t wired for the kind of energy I have.
I have noticed that whenever I set just exactly 90 days, it was easier for me to achieve any kind of dreams I set my mind to. Be it reading more books, exercising more, learning something new, 90 days was enough for me to know many things beyond the basics.
To the outside world, I might look scattered all over the place. But that’s just how I shared the progress of my goals and the journey of it all.
You might have a lot more questions as I do but if you’re a sprinter like myself, we’re definitely not bound to a job that requires a slow and steady path.
We have our own 9-5 and that might be in just 90 days at a time.
I am writing this as I was realizing some of the goals of mine that didn’t work because I followed conventional strategy that I used to learn. Lose weight in 6 months, Learn in 6 months, or insert any things in 6 months or a year or maybe read 12 books in a year. In my brain, it’s like, if I can read 12 books in a week, why should I even do that in a year?
At the same time, I most likely reach my goals in that time frame rather than following all the conventional goal systems that are out there. The same way with my blogs I suppose or anything that I’ve just come to realize the moment I am writing this. After all, I am a sprinter and I need to optimize my strength instead of working so hard to be against it.
Anyway, if by now you’re also identifying yourself as a sprinter, welcome to the other side and we’ll explore all this together as I am talking more about the concept of marathoner and sprinter in terms of personal development/self-improvement.