10,000+ Hours

Sir, with respect, you actually know very little about most things you’re speaking on. Many of us, by contrast, have spent years developing deep expertise in our fields, while you've simply become skilled in diminishing, dismissing, and deflecting.

His insistence on gaslighting isn't unique to him, but he does exemplify the deeper structural and systemic problems remarkably well.

Many of us have spent well beyond our 10,000+ hours learning, practicing, and applying what we've come to deeply know.

We see through 10,000+-hour eyes.

We serve our clients, constituents, and colleagues from that vantage point.

We own our expertise – and have earned it fair and square.

We chose not to be generalists, said gently. As a result, we became futurists, specialists, artists, craftspeople, and "outliers" to the so-called rules of how things "are supposed to work." We just weren't persuaded by convention.

We've been preparing since at least the 90s for this decade. For the era change. The breakdown. The last gasps of a world holding microphones, looking into monitors, dictating to us – with bloated agency and imaginary authority – "what we don't know," "should be," or "what we need to know." All while, those delivering these messages have become increasingly unqualified to speak with any authority on most things.

The world we’re entering is not just a swap out of the old, top-down, imperial structures.

No.

It's the new world we've been envisioning, leading from, and building since we first saw its flicker back in the 90’s. Here, it’s a world where we each lead from our skill, knowing, creativity, and the depth of our curated expertise. Our mastery that's been curated, honed, refined, and shaped like sea glass over years of weathering, sets us apart from corporate coggery and late-stage, normed bloviation.

Our knowing is born from a honed commitment to external principles and deeper truths, not mere conformity or performance.

We invested those 10,000+ hours to become non-obedient rather than obedient, unquiet rather than silenced, guided by the conviction to serve what we value, not measured against values constructed to let others declare, "you don't know anything" or "you need to become more, according to my projected vision for you." Being recipients of word salad, the bizarrely valued vanity metric, had little appeal. We chased fewer shiny pennies and said "no" to the tiny boxes.

Our 10,000+ hour commitments were explicit decisions to use our minds, not to be programmed, controlled, or trapped.

Our 10,000+ hours have now become 20,000+, 30,000+, and 40,000+.

Foresight meets hindsight.

Years spent operating outside, rather than inside, the systems have sharpened our swords to carve this next stone – an era-defining opportunity to reinvent what matters. Not just tweaking edges or patching broken designs, but elevating and expanding intelligence itself.

The Machine can now do "clever." Clever is both actual and cheeky. It too can bloviate. Still, its abilities can be useful. Let the masses now be freed to do the valuable, the meaningful, and the worthy. To evolve the future.

Some are panicking. Honing craft is hard. It's a commitment. Requires skin in the game. Effort. Learning. Not gaming.

This future needs true craftspeople. Weavers of passion, know-how, experience, expertise, sewing dreams, and threading knowledge into work, products, solutions, and innovations that are real and purposeful to advance, not limit, humanity.

This future won't have as much need for the packagers of promises, managers of people, or ad sellers. The Machine has that stuff covered now.

Every 10-15 years, we see a new technological wave. This time feels evolutionarily different. This one actually may eject us out of the mechanical. Free us from the rote, if we choose. Permit us to know without so much interference, overlording, and dictation.

We may finally break from the old, repetitive, masked system designs and find our agency, sovereignty, craft, and creativity – ourselves.

The systems of old sadly wanted you small.

They pushed you to question what you know by telling you that you needed to know what they were peddling as truth and knowledge. Without them, you weren't amounting to anything – they wanted you to believe that.

Now, everyone can (and may have to) stay true to their 10,000+ hours pursuits. Own their knowing. Find answers and build expertise without barriers.

The televised gaslighting, diminishing, and fear-mongering are the last gasp of those trying to maintain control, continue oppression, and perpetuate subjugation. Or, at the very least, trying to provoke you to stop accepting the bullshit.

Why, in fact, would anyone accept and agree to these signals?

Because gaslighting, whitewashing, and the preservation of ignorance maintain the status quo. Managed obedience is normalised. They are active interferences with evolutionary change, humanity's development, and our progress into higher states of understanding and knowing. We agree to them by accepting the snake charms – even rewarding them with the highest elected office in the free world.

So, instead of fearing the Machine, become an expert in how to use it wisely, for yourself. Invest your 10,000+ hours to build yourself a craft, a discipline, a practice, an art. Stop listening to anyone who attempts to tell you "you don't know," "be afraid," or "they're coming to take your job."

You know plenty.

Confront the bulls@$%.

Take matters into your own hands.

Hone your craft.

Ask the Machine. It can be a useful tool. An instrument. A resource. Just remember, it is not a savior, oracle, therapist, or human-to-human replacement.

We are tribal animals. The Machine, like the leader of the free world, can be a snake charmer when you offshore your power to it.

This future is where teams and communities are built around lots of us individuals, with 10,000+ hours of expertise, bringing dramatically dynamic thinking and inspired, heart-based action together into building new worlds.

The possibilities are as enormous as the places your imagination and 10,000+ hours can take you – and as fierce as your ferocity to refuse diminishment, whether it's your own self-talk or the systemic nonsense being peddled.