How to have patience with your progress

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Happy Sunday & thank you for taking the time to open this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter! This week I’m coming to you live and direct from Boston, MA - one of my absolute favourite cities in the US.

I love Boston/Cambridge because it feels like the perfect sized city. You have the subway (T) that gets you around, but it’s also walkable and has enough green spaces that it doesn’t feel too ‘concrete jungle’ like NYC does. I spent some time here in 2021 when I did a 5-week summer program at Berklee College of Music, and I’ve loved this city ever since.

Hopefully one day I can find a way to live here for a bit, because I may have my rose-coloured glasses on since I’ve never experienced a winter here.

In other news, my most recent challenge has been consistency with my Youtube channel, which I’m finding is a steep learning curve that I hadn’t expected. I’ve really been enjoying it, but wanted to re-visit that newsletter idea for this week, because it’s something that I’ve been experiencing a bit more prominently at this point in my life.

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What is a learning curve again?

When I talk about a learning curve, I’m talking about all the steps that it takes to acquire a new skill, understand something new or feel comfortable in a new or uncomfortable space.

I wrote about being on a learning curve last year August when I started doing CrossFit, and how uncomfortable it was to learn new lifting techniques like snatches and cleans.

In the past month, after leaving my corporate job in finance, I knew that I wanted to pursue things that seemed only possible in a dreamworld. Whether that means doing Youtube full-time, producing music, writing newsletters full-time, or scuba-diving full-time, the one thing that all these things that seem so amazing in theory have in common is that they put you on a learning curve.

I’ve had to learn how to scuba dive, figure out how to edit Youtube Videos in iMovie (Final Cut Pro X is such a challenge for a beginner) and really decide what it is that I want to spend my hours on each day.

While it’s easy to dabble in new activities—like trying a scuba diving lesson, hitting a few CrossFit classes, or producing a couple of songs—when you're at the stage of deciding what you truly want to pursue, it becomes clear that you can't commit 10,000 hours to everything.

The 10,000-Hour Rule by Malcolm Gladwell

In his book, “Outliers” (which admittedly I haven’t yet read), Malcolm Gladwell introduces this concept of expertise called “the 10,000-hour rule”, which essentially states that:

What this rule implies is the obvious: practice makes perfect. You don’t become an expert at something overnight.

But what does that mean for me?

It means that to get to where I want to be in any of the things that I could consider to be a potential career, I have to devote a heck of a lot of time to learning it. I have to get on the learning curve, stay on the learning curve and be patient.

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How the 10,000-Hour Rule affects me

When I initially thought about learning curves, and especially when I wrote about the topic last year, I particularly focused on the steep part of the curve that we experience at the outset of trying something new. That’s the part that deters us from trying new things in the first place.

Equally important to pushing through the discomfort of the first few months of trying something new is being consistent in practicing it as it becomes easier and more comfortable.

In this period of my life, as I try a bunch of new things and hop on a ton of different learning curves to get exposure to a wider variety of career prospects, I’ve recognised that it’s not just about doing something for the first time, but it’s about devoting time and effort to them to get to a point of true comfort with them.

I definitely feel like I’ve put in my 10,000 hours when it comes to playing steelpan, so I can feel what it’s like to develop mastery in something, and know what feeling to look for when on the journey to becoming comfortable with something new.

That flat section of the graph is where we want to be and it takes lots of time to get there.

Conclusion

Learning new things is tough. Figuring out what you want to devote 10,000+ hours to is even tougher.

There’s a ton of things out there to do, and what you’ll quickly come to realize is that there’s pretty much an expert on everything because in our lives, people have to choose what they want to give their 10,000+ hours to.

Clearly, you can give 10,000 hours to more that one thing in a lifetime, but 10,000 hours practicing one thing is no easy feat.

And so the lesson this week is patience. With 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week, 730 hours in a month and 8766 in a year, it’s clear that becoming great at anything takes time. It takes years.

So be patient with yourself. You’re on your way there.

Recognize when you’re not being patient with yourself, and remind yourself the incredible time commitment that true success and mastery takes. Knowing that you’re chipping away at such a huge goal - even if just one hour a day - is a great way to re-frame the journey that you’re on to becoming the person you want to become and developing the skill set that you want to have for your life.

Until next Sunday,
Justin