If you want to master something, whether it is piano,
dance, sports, programming or music, you should be putting in 10,000 hours of
practice, which is roughly equal to three hours a day over the course of ten
years!
I came across this book, Outliers by Gladwell Malcom a few
days ago and thought it is worthy of sharing. The author is referred to by some
people as a person revolutionizing the way we think.
His book Outliers is a wonderful book focusing on successful
people and how they got to it. When we hear about successful people most of us think
that they are successful because they are more intelligent than the rest of us.
Most of the times, even though intelligence does have a major role to play in
determining success, its more correlated with the chances your given, your
environment, where you were born and when you are born and how hard you are
willing to work.
I am not going to go into details in the book, just pointing
out to the most impressive points he made.
Malcom stress the importance of hard work by using a theory known
as the 10,000 Hour rule. The 10,000 hour rule is that mastery at
anything, be it music, sports, programming is dependent upon 10,000 hours of
practice, which is roughly three hours a day over the course of ten years!
Malcom uses excellent examples to illustrate his theory. Those
are the stories of exceptional individuals who are able to log in these
critical practice hours and become successful beyond our wildest imagination.
First there was the Beatles, who before making it big, managed
to get 10,000 hours of practice while playing in Hamburg. Other similar bands
had only a fraction of that experience and never made it to the top.
For Bill Gates it was the lucky break of being born at the
right time and getting the gift of a computer terminal in junior high. He
acquired a computer terminal at his school which was quite rare in 1968 and he
program non-stop for the next few years. This was once in a life time
opportunity considering they don’t have personal computers at that time. Luck played a crucial role in his success by allowing him significant
programing practice time that only a few others had during a critical time in
computer history.
The other parts of the book focus on culture and success,
for instance how the Chinese got to be so good at mathematics – this is also
quite a good read.
Malcom goes on to stress that success follows a predictable
course, and that it is not the brightest that succeed. Nor it is simply the sum
of the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf. He says it is a gift.
Outliers are people who have been given opportunities – and who have had the
strength and the presence of mind to seize it. He does not disregard innate
ability of an individual, stress that hard work is a crucial thing for success and points
that timing, circumstance, and cultural heritage play an often overlooked yet
critical role in determining who becomes successful.
What I learned from this book is to do our part in giving
our loved ones and society a chance for success and to give them the necessary
motivation to work really hard. Having the right environment for learning,
going to the right schools, having access to the right facilities and resources
as well as providing them with the mental attitude to work hard would be key
factors in helping them to succeed.
And if you want to succeed do not forget to log in your
10,000 hours!
