Well, I started yesterday. My first piano lesson, through an online app. 20 minutes. I keep this up everyday, then I will achieve 7,300 minutes in a year. That is roughly 122 hours per year. Most experts say that I will be a “competent” pianist after 5,000 hours of practice. So at this rate, when I am 90 years old I will be a competent piano player. So if my fingers can still move, I will be playing cool folk songs for my great grand kids on my great grandfather’s piano. Now that is an ambition! The statistics indicate that I will live to be 97. So there you go, 7 years of competent piano playing for a 40+ year investment!
However, I am not PASSIONATE about piano playing. Most of my life I have been passionate about technology and teaching technology. So passionate that there was a solid chunk of my past life where I spent a good 12 hours a day working, studying, learning, teaching technology. Effectively putting in almost 5,000 hours in a single year. I kept that up for at least a decade and as a consequence got to over 40,000 hours of experience. That is the mythical “expert” status. I have added many more hours than that, but nonetheless, that is what I am passionate about.
So that is what separates passion from interest. When you are passionate you spend about 5000 hours a year on the topic, when you are interested you spend 5000 hours in a lifetime.
Guy Reams
