A change of plans

Things don’t always go the way one plans. I had planned to spend the time between Christmas and New Year to reflect on the past year. I had hoped to start 2010 with some reasonable goals and a clean studio. It was not to be!

On Dec. 26th we were called to get to the Bay Area (California) quickly due to an illness in the family. On the drive home we listened to Malcolm Galdwell’s book, Outliers. The book was timely. It is about what it takes to be really good at what we do. Basically Gladwell says it takes hard work, exceptional timing and some very lucky breaks, even for Mozart and Bill Gates. He proposes that it requires around 10,000 hours of practice, with the focused intent of improving, before one can expect to become exceptional. He then provides examples of very successful people in a variety of areas.

We have our work cut out for us. Apparently unless we’ve done the time, we have no right to whine. Perhaps my lucky break is that circumstances provided me the opportunity to listen to the book in it’s entirety.

I know what I should be doing and it’s not cleaning the studio.

Lynn