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Old 04-11-2013, 11:09 AM   #63
Dan Richards
Dojo: Latham Eclectic
Location: NY
Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 452
United_States
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Re: Ranking systems in different countries

Conrad, it's just something to play around with. Scientific "facts" change with the wind as science changes. We're just using this as a point of discussion. And I agree, don't take it too literally.

And as someone who cooks, plays music, records music, writes, trains aikido... I think it's about right. I've put in 10,000 hours into cooking and food shopping and wine tasting, and putting meals together. Finding just the right dishes, wooded spoons, wine glasses. In the initial stages I spent hours every day cooking, experimenting, shopping, etc. An average of 20 hours per week spent practicing on an activity would get us to 10,000 in about 10 years.

I started taking a hardcore interest in cooking in '91, and I think when I look back, sometime around '01 I could say I'd gotten enough of a good basis that I would have entered the mastery stages of cooking around then. Of course, I'm still in it, and it just grows more and more fascinating and deepens as I continue.

Something that was interesting about my learning to cook, is that after the initial months of really diving into it, what I learned from cooking - about balance, and the bottom, middle, and top in flavors, also changed my approach and increased my ability to work and mix music in a recording studio. It also changed my perception of aikido.

And the idea that Gladwell puts across is that mastery is earned - not rewarded. And it's also a continuous pursuit, not a goal. Just like many have commented on the idea that shodan should not be a goal to one's training. Merely a signpost along the way.

Last edited by Dan Richards : 04-11-2013 at 11:18 AM.
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