I think I MIGHT have sent a similar article, but I can't find it SO. I like this observation about behavior, that innate talent doesn't mean you'll succeed. That practice does make perfect. It also explains why we're all at varying levels of expertise at any given time...we've all spent varying amounts of time learning in any given area.
In the book
Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell says
that it takes roughly ten thousand hours of practice to achieve mastery
in a field. How does Gladwell arrive at this conclusion? And, if the
conclusion is true, how can we leverage this idea to achieve greatness
in our professions?
Gladwell studied the lives of extremely successful people to find
out how they achieved success. This article will review a few examples
from Gladwell’s research, and conclude with some thoughts for moving
forward.
Violins in Berlin
In the early 1990s a team of psychologists in Berlin, Germany
studied violin students. Specifically, they studied their practice
habits in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. All of the subjects
were asked this question: “Over the course of your entire career, ever
since you first picked up the violin, how many hours have you
practiced?”
All of the violinists had begun playing at roughly five years of age
with similar practice times. However, at age eight, practice times
began to diverge. By age twenty, the elite performers averaged more than
10,000 hours of practice each, while the less able performers had only
4,000 hours of practice.
The elite had more than double the practice hours of the less capable performers.
Natural Talent: Not Important
One fascinating point of the study: No “naturally gifted” performers
emerged. If natural talent had played a role, we would expect some of
the “naturals” to float to the top of the elite level with fewer
practice hours than everyone else. But the data showed otherwise. The
psychologists found a direct statistical relationship between hours of
practice and achievement. No shortcuts. No naturals.
Sneaking Out to Write Code
You already know how Microsoft was founded. Bill Gates and Paul
Allen dropped out of college to form the company in 1975. It’s that
simple: Drop out of college, start a company, and become a billionaire,
right? Wrong.
Further study reveals that Gates and Allen had thousands of hours of
programming practice prior to founding Microsoft. First, the two
co-founders met at Lakeside, an elite private school in the Seattle
area. The school raised three thousand dollars to purchase a computer
terminal for the school’s computer club in 1968.
A computer terminal at a
university was rare in 1968. Gates had access to a terminal in
eighth grade. Gates and Allen quickly became addicted to programming.
The Gates family lived near the University of Washington. As a
teenager, Gates fed his programming addiction by sneaking out of his
parents’ home after bedtime to use the University’s computer. Gates
& Allen acquired their10,000 hours through this and other clever
teenage schemes. When the time came to launch Microsoft in 1975, the two
were ready.
Practice Makes Improvement
In 1960, while they were still an unknown high school rock band, the
Beatles went to Hamburg, Germany to play in the local clubs.
The group was underpaid. The acoustics were terrible. The audiences
were unappreciative. So what did the Beatles get out of the Hamburg
experience? Hours of playing time. Non-stop hours of playing time that
forced them to get better.
As the Beatles grew in skill, audiences demanded more performances –
more playing time. By 1962 they were playing eight hours per night,
seven nights per week. By 1964, the year they burst on the international
scene, the Beatles had played over 1,200 concerts together. By way of
comparison, most bands today don’t play 1,200 times in their
entire career.
Falling in Love With Practice
The elite don’t just work harder than everybody else. At some point
the elites fall in love with practice to the point where they want to do
little else.
The elite software developer is the programmer who spends all day
pounding code at work, and after leaving work she writes open source
software on her own time.
The elite football player is the guy who spends all day on the
practice field with his teammates, and after practice he goes home to
watch game films.
The elite physician listens to medical podcasts in the car during a long commute.
The elites are in love with what they do, and at some point it no longer feels like work.
What’s Next?
Now that we’ve reviewed the trends uncovered by Gladwell’s research,
what can we do about it? All of us want to be great at something. Now
that we know how other achievers have gotten there, what can we do to
join their ranks?
One approach: We could choose a field and practice for 10,000 hours.
If we are currently working in our target profession, forty hours per
week over five years would give us ten thousand hours.
Or… We can look at the question in reverse. Where have we already
logged 10,000 hours of practice? What is it that we do really well? What
tasks do we perform so well that people ask: How did you do that?
Sometimes when we fall in love with practice we don’t even recognize it!
If you’re running a company, what does your company do better than
anybody else? What is it that the individual members of your company do
better than anybody? How do you create an environment that gives
everyone on your team the opportunity to practice?
Conclusion
Business is tough, especially now. Yet even in the midst of a
challenging economy, there are individuals and companies that prosper
beyond all expectations. Practice plays a major role in success.
Suggested Reading
Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. Through interviews and
statistical analysis, Gladwell determines why some people and
organizations achieve success far beyond their peers.
About the Author
Raymond T. Hightower is president of WisdomGroup, creators of
outstanding web-based software. WisdomGroup leads the open source user
group ChicagoRuby and we created the annual WindyCityRails conference.
