Questions of Mastery

There's a book that's garnered quite a bit of attention that I must admit I haven't yet read in its entirety.  I have read excepts and seen quite a few reviews of the book.  The book is titled Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and one of the concepts that really resonated with me is the 10,000 hour rule.  His supposition, which is borne out by research, is that in order to get really good at something we have to practice it for at least 10,000 hours.  We've all heard the old adage that "practice makes perfect."  I support my family by doing data and systems analysis.  If I estimate conservatively giving myself time for other activities and days off since college (5 hours per day times 5 days per week times 48 weeks per year times 18 years), I've spent about 21,600 hours doing this type of work.  I'm pretty good at it now and my Excel skills are rather advanced.

Since I'm essentially doing two full-time jobs now, the other part of my job is maintaining and configuring the Human Resources Information System (HRIS) at work.  I've been working with these systems since about the year 2000.  I initially started in a DOS-based system and then helped a former employer convert to a Windows-based system, and then to a different Windows-based system.  All of those systems were relational databases and I knew my way around them really well.  However, relational databases are beginning to go the way of the dinosaur and object-oriented databases (OODB) are becoming the standard; and the systems are now primarily being hosted by outside vendors using the software as a service (SaaS) model.

There is a reason that I'm bringing all of this up, and I promise it's not to bore you with the variety of initialisms used in my professional field.  The problem that I'm grappling with in this new world order is the inability to obtain mastery at the same level in the same way.  The HRIS I'm currently working with has major updates at least two times per year, and smaller updates nearly every week.  The process I used to load pay increases into the system last year isn't the same process I had to use this year.  So I've been worried that I won't reach the same level of mastery with this system as I have with past systems that I've used.  However, I did realize that in some ways I'm achieving a different kind of mastery.  I'm learning to be more flexible and how to better trouble-shoot issues.  I imagine that I'm learning how to think differently and creating new pathways in my brain.

But sometimes I miss how quickly I can analyze data in Excel using formulas I know and keyboard shortcuts.  I guess I just need to wrap my head around the fact that the world is changing.  The pace of new technology is only speeding up.  And unless I want to go the way of the dinosaur too, I'd better keep figuring out how to keep up.  Now I need to go read Outliers so I'm not just discussing what other people have said about it!

On a random side-note, we had a lovely dusting of snow this morning that sparkled beautifully in the morning sunlight, the picture doesn't quite do it justice.  Everything just looks so glorious and pure when covered in snow.