The 10,000-Hour Rule

Because my nephew is getting married next month, my sister-in-law has little time to listen to books on tape. So she offered some of her audiobook points this month. I love her (and free stuff)! I just finished listening to Malcolm Gladwell read his book, Outliers. It’s a non-fiction book in which Gladwell analyzes factors that contribute to people’s success. The topic interested me particularly because I sometimes have to persuade my skeptical writing students that the folks who work hardest tend to emerge as the best writers. I don’t know why, but often with the arts people seem to assume success depends only on in-born talent. But if we need such talent to succeed as writers or visual artists or musicians, the non-talented among us may as well give up and go learn to sell shoes or something. In what I found to be the most compelling chapter, Gladwell examines why most Canadian ice hockey players are born in the first few months of the calendar year. If the cut-off date is December 31, the kid born January 1 may miss out the first year (“Wah, I missed the deadline”), but when he does get to start playing, he has a twelve-month advantage over the kid born December 28. Yes, he works hard, but he still has a big advantage. That advantage tends to follow him all his life. Once he gets chosen as having potential, he gets the good trainers, the good camps, the advantages. So the initial leg-up has a cumulative effect.Though Gladwell doesn’t say it, I felt he made a good argument for being thankful for our blessings and being humble, because we didn’t get where we are without some opportunities other folks didn’t have. I have long believed I did well in school because the September cut-off date meant I was almost seven when I started first grade. One of Gladwell’s favorite phrases seems to be the "10,000-Hour Rule." He claims another big key to success is logging about 10,000 hours of practice. Want to write? Spend ten years in obscurity. Want to be a rock star? Spend 10,000 hours playing your guitar and learning from your voice teacher. From Bill Gates to the Beatles to Mozart, he looks at an array of famous “success stories” and demonstrates how their secret is not so much talent but “logging the hours” of practice. Gladwell goes on what one reviewer described as a “meandering intellectual journey” to arrive at conclusions that are “so obviously self-evident as to be banal.” Well, maybe they are self-evident to some, but if my students are any indication, we need to hear them repeatedly. And it doesn't hurt that Gladwell makes the journey interesting. What do you want to do with your life? Do you want it enough to spend 10,000 hours practicing before anybody notices?