10,000 hours

It has been said that 10,000 hours are required to become an expert.  In anything.  I calculated this out:  if you practice something 1 hour/day, it would take 27 years to reach 10,000 hours... assuming that's 1 hour/day every single day for 27 years.  Of course, if you practice 3 hours/day, that's only 9 years.  Still, that's pretty daunting considering that would be 3 hours daily for 365 days/year for 9 years. 
Why do I bring this up?  When I was growing up, I started playing the piano at age 6.  I took lessons until I was 18.  At that point, the growth in my piano skills stopped.  Most people consider me pretty proficient in piano.  And I can sight-read relatively well, which means I can fake my way through a lot of things.  But I'm nowhere near 10,000 hours, probably closer to 60-70% of that.

I've been told that I'm a pretty good cyclist.  In years past, I was better, but I no longer put the time in that I did previously.  Again, nowhere near 10,000 hours.  Same with running.  At one point in time in my distant past, I was a decent amateur runner.  Even at my peak, though, I was nowhere close to 10,000 hours.  Now, I'm closer to that number than when I was decent, and I'm a whole lot slower than I was back then.

And now the reason that I mention this:  swimming.  10,000 hours is a lot of time to put in to become an expert.  I've been swimming relatively consistently for, say 17 years, but the amount of time is not even close to 10,000 hours.  I keep reading about how you can get faster by swimming less, but of better quality, but the truth of the matter is, you need to put the time in.  I watch my son's age group club swimmers and they don't worry that much about their technique; they just swim.  And they all get faster.  For most of them, they've got a long ways to go to get to 10,000 hours, and they can't give describe to you how to swim faster, but they just do.  So, the idea that less can be more to me is, frankly, ridiculous.

There are sayings that basically describe this:  time in the water, time in the saddle, time on your feet.  10,000 hours is a lot of time.  But that's what it takes.