A lot of people have their random ‘ah-ha’ moments while they’re in the shower, or while they’re mulling things over, bleary-eyed and half awake, during breakfast. For me, I think I do my best musing and thinking while I’m busy daydreaming on the MUNI. Often times these momentary bouts of daydreaming (set to my own soundtrack, thanks to my ipod of course) lead to nothing, but once in awhile something manages to cling to a small dark crevice of my brain, only to fester and emerge as a form of a fully baked idea or musing.

For some reason, recently I had been replaying a conversation with few friends of mine about Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers. If you haven’t read the book, the ‘topic sentence’ if you will, is that those who are extremely good at what they do ultimately achieve this because of opportunity and innate talent…but really, opportunity which allows them a lot of time and practice.

To lift something from the book, basically 100,000 hours should be able to help you master a task. Piano maybe, or something random like the speed in which you pick up beans with chopsticks. 100,000 hours doesn’t really SEEM like that much. Even if you think about it in terms of dollars, 100,000 dollars is great but it would only last you a comfortable lifestyle for two, maybe three years if you stretch it out.

But that got me thinking: no matter the amount of talent we have, time is really the equal opportunity here. It’s the ultimate equalizer. Think about it, again, in terms of money. More innate talent (intellect, whatever) is like earning more money. But what you DO with that money, and how you spend/save/squander it ultimately matters in the end. Unless, of course, you just have gobs and gobs of money you can swim through and burn with hedonistic glee. Even then, if you have tons of money but never sock away anything into a 401(k) and use time on your side, you’ll be left with nothing…whereas the person that is frugal with their 30K earnings could be living the comfortable life on the porch.

Time, like with talent and money, seems to be a factor we tend to forget. Sure, the whole money thing might not be the perfect analogy, but it did make me think about the ways that I tend to allocate my time. I had a similar conversation with my cousin before about how ironic it was that when you’re young and in college you have all the time you need to travel, but you have no money. Later on, when you actually HAVE discretionary money to spend…you have no time.

In my case, lately my time has been eaten away by my morning and evening commute…not to mention the fact that I do enjoy wasting away my brain in front of the television.

The whole 100,000 hours thing made me think about what I would spend my time doing. Play piano? Snowboard? Write? In any case, I was basically squandering away the precious amount of time that I think that I have, when in actuality I only have a limited amount. It’s like being handed your entire retirement fund and being able to spend it…only, you may realize you don’t have much left a lot sooner than you expected.

So what’s my rambling point? I decided to cancel my Comcast and try to tackle a challenge. This challenge actually came to me while I was in the shower (coincidentally). I recently picked up some Terry Pratchett books in the library, and I also stopped by the bookstore to purchase a recommended read by a colleague: The Namesake. I finished the Terry Pratchett book and I’m almost halfway through my new book.

Suddenly, it seemed to click. Is it feasible for a person to read 100 books in a year? Would it be a possible endeavor? It’s already February, and I have less than 356 days left. If I started today, I have about 318 days left to read 98 books (if you count Breaking Dawn). Although it feels impossible, I’m pretty excited about trying it out. After all, if you divide it out that means I need to read a book every 3.2 days. Yikes.

This means less television, less time wasted online…and surely, after reading 100 books, I will have enriched my life one way or another. I plan on reading not just fiction, fantasy, or the like…but anything people highly recommend that I have no read before.

For the VERY scant few of you who manage to read this entry to the end, I’d love to hear your thoughts. But now, this is my declaration to myself and my blogosphere: I’m going to try 100 books in 2010. Whew.

Here we go…