Putting in the Hours

It is an oft-quoted statistic from Malcolm Gladwell's book “Outliers” that becoming an expert in any given field requires a devotion of at least 10,000 hours to that task. This September marks nine years of doing improvisation for me, so I thought it would be a fun experiment to see how well I was doing on reaching this goal. (I have purposely only included times when I was actively engaged in doing improv – watching doesn't count, but teaching does.)

So the first couple of years are the easy part, as I was only doing improv with the Stage Monkeys Hattiesburg chapter – I estimated from a sample school calendar at USM that there would be 15 weeks of practices, once every Thursday, for two hours each go, and I was in the group for four semesters (Fall '03 – Spring '05), and we did four total shows in my first year and six total shows in my second year (at two hours per show), so my first two years are thus:

[(15 x 2) x 4] + (4 x 2) + (6 x 2) = 140 (So far, so good.)

I also played with the Humorrhoids on the MS Gulf Coast, maybe 3 practices/shows, at 2 hrs per, so I'll add 6 to my total, bringing me to 146. From May '05 – December '05, no improv. It sucks, but it's less math at least. I moved back to Hattiesburg in Jan. '06, and played under the normal school schedule until May '07, so:

[(15 x 2) x 3] = 90 (bringing me to 236; and all of a sudden I realize how slowly this number is rising).

There were no extra shows during that period, so that's my total. June 2007, moved to Chicago, started doing iO once a week, 8 weeks per session, six sessions, 3 hours per, so:

6 x (8 x 3) = 144 (And I'm up to 380.)

I did a cage match for what I think was 6 weeks, which I'll say we actually improvised an hour per match, bringing me to 386. And we got together to do extracurricular practice maybe 10 times, two hours per, bringing me to 406, combined with a few iO electives (5 x 2 hours) gives me 416.

Now comes the fun parts; I started teaching the SD Monkeys the first week of June 2009, which was 3 years and three months ago, for a total of 168 weeks (2.5 hours per week), which I'll say I've probably missed 10% of which due to work, being out of town, holidays, giving me:

[168 – (168 x 0.1)] x 2.5 = 377.5 (and a total of 793.5 hours)

I did four levels of NCT classes, 6 weeks per level, 2 hours per week, so:

4 x 6 x 2 = 48

And 2 years, 9 months of NCT SunCo, (to which I'll apply the 10% miss rule) and 2 hours per practice:

[(2 x 52) + (9 x 4) – ((2 x 52) + (9 x 4) x 0.1) ] x 2 = 252

And 9 months of ROAR, (10% Rule), two hours per practice:

[(9 x 4) – ((9 x 4) x 0.1)] x 2 = 64 (And bringing the total to 1157.5 (four digit numbers, yay!))

I'll say that I was in, conservatively, an average of 1.5 shows per month of SunCo's run and maybe 6 shows of ROAR, an hour per:

(28 x 1.5) + 6) = 48

I've done 55 As Ink episodes, for a total of 27.5 hours of improv, five Barrel of Monkeys, which were likely around 12 hours of improv per, bringing me to 1293 hours.

Throwing in a few random teaching gigs, improv camp, LA improv fest workshops, I'd bring that section to a total of 150 hours (this is the part of my record keeping that is unfortunately guessing) and my total comes to 1393 hours. Including Partial Credit, Mike & Chris, and Fourth Date practices and performances, I'd throw another 75 hours, giving me a total of 1518 hours. I've taught a four week workshop run, and two a month for the period of January to June 2012, and one a week since then (two hours each), giving me:

(4 x 2) + [(6 x 2) x 2)] + [(3 x 4) x 2] = 56 (Up to 1574)

I've done Dinner Detective for 15 months now, averaging around 2 shows per month, of which I'll be conservative and say I've maybe improvised for 1 hour a night (given the scripted beats, and that I've done seated roles here and there), and I'll be generous and give myself an extra 10 hours to account for any shorter gigs I may have forgotten. Combined with four Simply Symbiotic gigs, with two hours apiece, it brings my grand total, for 9 years of improv to:

1622 hours.

That's it. Nine years, and I'm not even 1/5 of the way to being a virtuoso/expert/adept. Now, by my estimates, it would take five years of someone working 40 hours/week to reach this mark, and over the last 9 years, I have worked on my craft an average of ~3.5 hours per week (which actually sounds about right). Oh, well, time to keep improvising.