32,000

I had an epiphany this morning.

During this most recent trip I read one of the books I procured for myself for Christmas, Mastery by Robert Greene.  I had enjoyed Mr. Greene's previous works - The 33 Strategies of War  and The 48 Laws of Power because he has the ability to take biographies and stories from all over the world an use them to demonstrate the points he was making.

As I worked through the book one of the points that kept coming up was time:  time spent on the skill or skills that the individuals profiled in the book were trying to master.  The number he used was 10,000 hours - very similar to the 10,000 hours concept introduced by Malcolm Gladwell in his books Outliers.  10,000 for the beginning of mastery, up to 20,000 for a true master of the subject.

After I finished the book something nagged at my mind last night, something that I could not turn away from in my head.  I tried by writing out whatever was in my head before I went to bed but nothing; I went to bed with the same nagging feeling.  I awoke and the thought appeared in my head:  time.

I did some rough calculations:  if one spends 2000 hours a year at work (40 hours a week for 50 weeks), then the average to gain "mastery" of the job one is doing should be about 5 years.  I did some quick calculations:  I have 32,000 hours in my industry, 25,333 of those in my current area, and 22,500 of those in a managerial role.

It hit me.  I feel like I have mastered nothing.

That is a great deal of time to spend doing anything.  To subconsciously - and now consciously - grasp that this actually amounts to nothing, that I am doing the same sort of tasks I did at 5,000 hours for essentially the same rate and in the same atmosphere tells me one of three things:
1)  I have not been doing the right things.
2)  I have not done them in the right industry.
3)  I have wasted my time.

This bears every sign of a wasted effort.

Now it makes sense.  My dissatisfaction goes far beyond the narrow bounds of who I report to or what I am working on at the moment.  It reaches to the very core of the thing we call accomplishment:  hours and hours - years and years- spent to remain in a holding pattern instead of moving forward.

What am I to do?  I am not clear on this yet.  Waste no more time is the obvious outcome - but if one is not to waste it, what does one need to spend it on?  And can the time I have already spent be redeemed in some fashion?

I am not sure of the implications but I am sure of one thing:  I cannot - and will not - waste what years I have left on pursuit of mastery in an area or subject that simply cannot be mastered -or in one where such mastery is not recognized and rewarded.