Elder Quentin L. Cook mentioned in general conference what is called “the 10,000-hour rule.”  Research experts assert “that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything.”  (The Ensign, May 2017, 127).

I wondered if I could qualify as a world-class expert in any field.  The only possibility would be in my scripture studying and indexing of general conferences.  Here is how I stack up:

Book	Pages in book	Times read	Total pages
Old Testament	1,184	3	3,552
New Testament	406	12	4,872
Book of Mormon	531	68	36,108
Doctrine and Covenants	295	15	4,425
Pearl of Great Price	61	12	732
			49,689

I read a page of scripture in about 2.5 minutes.

50,000 pages times 2.5  =  125,000 minutes divided by 60  =  2,083 hours.

Next year I will have indexed 100 general conferences.

Each general conference has approximately 39 speakers.

It takes an average of perhaps 1 hour to index 1 conference talk.

100 conferences times 39 speakers times 1 hour  =  3,900 hours

Total  =  5,983 hours

In my whole life I’ve put in only about 6,000 hours of study time.  I’m still not a world-class expert in anything.  Ten thousand hours is a lot of time!