There is a book called 'Outliers' by Malcom Gladwell where he suggests that it takes roughly 10000 hours to master any particular skill. Some arguments notwithstanding, it is somewhat widely accepted. Now 10000 hours makes approximately 417 days. If you spend one and a half hours to practice you have to practice at least for 18 years to master that given skill. That you have to do before you turn 25. If we take 7 is the age to enter elementary school, then we have to practice right up until we graduate to achieve mastering skill in one task.

There are some other factors as well like choosing a good mentor, how you spend your time; however there is no dispute that you have to spend some time on a particular task to be a master at it. Let me clarify any confusion there might be. If you spend 5000 hours for that job you be a coach for local school, you spend 10000 you become Cristiano Ronaldo. Yes, that is the difference! Shocking, isn't it?

There is a breeze in our society that glorify achieving something without even trying, and hard work does not do that. Now am I saying that genius does not happen without practice? No I am not. However, you minimize your chance of losing. Let me give an example. Sachin Tendulkar is arguably the best batsman in modern era; an amazing example of being regular at practice who scored 30 odd thousand international runs with magical 100 centuries. His boyhood friend cum partner in play Vinod Kambli did not achieve this great feature, in fact he did not achieve anything near Sachin's record. Now this gives an explanation. They are both famous for high school record of 664 run partnership where Vinod scored(349*) more than Sachin(326*). This proves both of them had the potential to be great. Why is Sachin the best, and Vinod is a name we hardly hear? Because Sachin spent hours to convert that huge potential into reality.

My model says Lalon Shah, a legend of Bangla folk song, spent 50000(5% error) hours before he turned 40 into music, and we know the results. There are so many singers we happen to see and listen. How many of them have surpassed Lalon? That is the beauty of numbers. You know where the demarcation line is. You know what to do, we just do not do it. Most of the time we think it is enough, when it nearly is not.

How we spend our time says a lot about us. Doing something regularly is the key? Maybe not, however, not doing it is surely not the way. The rest is your call.