What I learned after spending 10,000 hours at your moms house - just kidding
Tip #4 : Know your experts
This post is part of a series I’m writing from mid-June to mid-November 2024, on things that helped me rebuild my confidence, sense of self, and increased my delight in my life after massive difficulty in multiple areas. For full details and post links to all 110 things, go to this post here.
Okay sorry, I couldn’t help myself.
She does make rad chili though so thanks for that.
I feel this generation isn’t utilizing the “your mom” jokes as much as they should be. Missed opportunities. SO I’m making up for it for them. Badly, but I’m ok with that.
THIS DAY’S TIP IS : KNOW YOUR EXPERTS!
It’s been said it takes 10,000 hours to master something. I think that’s pretty dependent on your ability to manage your time and the skill you’re trying to navigate or the craft you’re trying to master.
However, it does remind me that a consistent, long term, practice of intentional effort is really required to actually become super fucking good at something.
Since I’m not a vampire, and likely neither are you (if you are please get in my dm’s right away - I have questions and requests), we only have a few opportunities to shove things into our handfulls of 10,000 hours of life at a time.
This means two things in my mind.
Firstly - be intentional with your hours and what YOU want to develop in your own skillset and life breath. We’re working on that right now so good job.
Secondly - YOU CAN BORROW THE KNOWLEDGE LEARNED IN THE 10,000 HOURS OF ALL THESE OTHER RAD PEOPLE WHO HAVE LIVED AND LEARNED AND OBTAINED SOME SKILLS.
Hell yeah.
Thanks to the wonderful internet, these experts are literally everywhere, literally accessible just about anytime we want to find them out.
Want to know how to eat well as a professional athlete that’s also a type 1 diabetic? There’s hella people on instagram and tiktok that fall into those categories to learn from.
Want to know how to cultivate healing and good energy after difficult experiences? CAN DO. Podcasts on self improvement, audiobooks on healing from trauma and developing self acceptance in your pocket. Stories from psychologists and therapists on Instagram. Find someone who expresses content in a way you’re receptive to and receive it baby and learn.
Want to know how to change careers and be inspired? There’s hella podcasts and so many people sharing their stories through their youtube channels, feature profiles in articles, in their newsletters, and more.
Want to learn how to knit? How to be a better cook? Become an excel wizard? Know where to eat in Italy? Possible to figure out.
Wikipedia is great for finding source material.
Doesthedogdie.com tells you what to avoid or look out for if theres sensitivities in movies you want to be aware of.
Beyond knowing how to use the internet, which I’m sure y’all really do know how to do with literacy, intention and care, I’m intending to signal a reminder to you (and myself) that the internet is an incredible tool (both definitions apply) - and with any tool you can make incredible things of intense value, or absolutely nothing of use.
Depends how you use it.
Just don’t forget it’s abilities to be of actual value IF you choose to engage with intention and then follow through with actual action.
Aside from the internet, the whole rest of the tangible world exists as well.
Remember the list of people on your team from day 1? All of those people have learned things, have great skills, have passions and interests and things they are working to be excellent at, and things they are already excellent in practicing.
Check in with them if you’ve got a need that one of them can help with. They likely very much know experts that help them learn things too and can put you onto some other rad resources of use.
Let me put you onto another place for great resources and stuff - THE LIBRARY.
With the job and the name that I have, I have done a lot of “let me tell you what the library can do for you - it is so much more than just books - it is so still a relevant and needed and used institution” in the past few years (and while my identity is much more than just to library, it is something I have hella passion for that will always be important to me).
Librarians can help you find almost anything. We’re trained to.
Literally we take classes about how people formulate a question and try to find an answer, to know how to recommend you a book based on other stuff you like, we know how to use databases and do advanced searches to comb the internet for you and bring you the best stuff.
What else do libraries have besides librarians?
SO GLAD YOU ASKED! Let me tell you.
The library also has the following (this is just my county’s and a list off the top of my head - check yours out babe!!)
Databases
Free subscriptions to multiple newspapers in print and digit format
Troubleshooting help - you can bring your dad’s kindle in and we can set up Libby for him
Access to physical content like books, yearbooks, car manuals, magazines, microfilm, dvds, audiobooks, etc…
One library in our county has a seed library
Another has a lending collection of puzzles
We offer national park passes as the state makes them available, home connectivity kits, chromebooks you can borrow for use in the library
Printing, faxing, scanning, internet usage 3 hrs a day for free in each branch
There are bulletin boards with community events, curated reading lists for age levels and varied interests
Storytime events, summer reading programs (with sick prizes), literacy kits created for each age range of your child and their reading level
Study rooms, family activities (hell yeah lego family time that’s a fun one), gardening and instructional activities with special speakers
One of our branches offers ukuleles you can borrow
Passport renewal services
I’ve helped people find bus schedules, class records from the 1930s, car repair manuals from the 60’s, helped print and scan things to be uploaded for job applications (he got the job it made us all cry), one woman once didn’t know what the book was called and hadn’t read it in over a decade and I was able to figure out the name and find it on the shelf in 5 minutes
We have access to other libraries all over California through a cool program called Link + where you can request an interlibrary loan – in which if we don’t have it we can check with the other libraries participating in this cool thing and if they do they will send it to us for you. Teamwork.
AND if there’s something you want from us that we don’t have and nobody else has either we can use the Zip books program and if your desired title meets the requirements, you can fill out a form and we will order it for you, send it to your door, and then maybe add it to the collection when you’re done with it. Very cool stuff. We just do it. That’s just from the top of mind stuff from the field I work in.
We don’t know your password to your email. We will never know the password to your email. That one’s your full responsibility.
What I want you to consider (and this is a lesson, always all of this is a lesson for me too) is that when you don’t know something it’s important to be like “I don’t know, but I can figure out someone who does, and learn from them”.
You don’t have to figure out everything from scratch all the damn time.
Whether you need to see proof of the possibility of what can be done, or proof of a concept, or step by step instructions for something, the internet is at your disposal.
The knowledge of your team on that list we made are available as resources.
So are your local librarians. I so mean it.
We are not as alone as we think and we are not without resources. We have so many resources, and with resources we have leverage.
Learn from what is freely available around you. Go to your experts.
Someone else spent 10,000 hours on it so you don’t have to.
See ya tomorrow -
xoxo-Marian