Yesterday Erik sent me this excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers. In it, Gladwell examines outstanding achievement in several fields — music and software programming in particular — and finds that what we normally think of as the natural result of innate brilliance isn’t just that. Instead, he finds that the essential component to all these genius stories is hard work: 10,000 hours of it, to be exact. This comes out to 5 years’ worth of 8-hour workweeks or about 10 years of 3-hour daily sessions. It’s apparently a nonnegotiable fact: if you want to be really good at something, you need to put in 10,000 hours of practice. You can be decently good before the 10,000 mark, but if you want to be world-class, you need the full amount. To demonstrate this point, Gladwell brings up a number of fascinating examples, including the Beatles and Mozart. Read the excerpt; it’s great.
So, basically, Gladwell is saying that if you want to be really good at something, you have to work really hard for it. I expect this isn’t news to other people, but to me it’s quite nearly epiphanic. I know I’ve said this before, but I have to say it again: I don’t work very hard, and I never have. All my life I’ve had the “luck” of being pretty good at a lot of different things, of learning things quickly and, importantly, of picking things up much more quickly than my peers. I was doing sixth-grade math by the time I was in second grade, reading books like The Joy Luck Club by the time I was 10. What my early schooling taught me, more than anything, was that I could just do what was easy for me, and I’d get praise and recognition. In many ways this pattern hasn’t changed since then; college and even to some extent grad school have not forced me to work much harder. My level of accomplishment has declined over time — there’s never again been anything like the sixth-grade-math-in-second-grade — but I’ve remained more than able to get by. This has allowed me to coast through much of my academic/work life, but I now see it as a handicap more than a gift.
My upbringing at home has also enabled my non-hardworkingness. My parents imparted to me two formative (and ultimately limiting) paradigms: first, that I am so smart I can do anything, and second, that certain fields (like art, or hard sciences) are only appropriate for certain kinds of people. It’s strange because you’d think the first paradigm would cancel out the second, but somehow they’ve melded in my mind. Throughout my life I’ve interpreted these “rules” to mean that if I’m not immediately brilliant at something — at least more brilliant than other people — then that means I’m not the right kind of person to make a career of it. It’s crazy and amazing for me to realize this now, but no one ever taught me that the key to success isn’t inborn brilliance. Whenever I hit the limitations of my natural talents, it didn’t occur to me that these limits could and should be surpassed by practice; instead, I interpreted these non- successes as signals that I should stop pursuing these fields. When I started failing math tests in middle school, I lost interest in math. When I didn’t win the drawing contests I entered at Chinese school, I figured I didn’t have what it took to be an artist. Because my natural talents are broad, and because they peaked at different times in my life, there was always some new field to take the place of whatever I’d just decided I was “bad” at. The moment of reckoning — when I’d fail so spectacularly at everything that I’d finally be driven to hard work — never came, and I believe it never will. But that doesn’t have to doom me to a lifetime of coasting.
The 10,000 hours pronouncement stuns me so totally, because by now (as you know from reading this blog) I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about what I want to do, and how to get there. Gladwell’s article provides permission, even an imperative or an obligation, to try for what I want. Yes, it says, you owe this to your gifts, to develop them. And if you give them these 10,000 hours, you’ll be rewarded. Somehow the article brings this home to me as nothing has before. The 10,000 hours analysis validates the process, not product philosophy I wrote about a while ago. It’s not about the books I may or may not write, it’s not about the paintings I do or don’t produce, it’s about the time I spend trying. I figure I’ve probably already spent about 3,000 hours each on drawing and writing over the course of my life, so I know what remains. If I want to write and make art, I need to really work at these things. I need to have a daily practice that includes more than just my morning pages, more than just my comics-class homework, more than just a drawing here and there. If I want this to be my career, I need to make it my job by putting in the hours.
As the Gladwell excerpt indicates, I can get work published before I hit 10,000 hours; I just need to realize that this won’t be my best work. I can live with that (especially after reading Madeleine L’Engle’s incredible first novel last night). The 10,000 hours realization gives me the perspective I need. I’ve always hoped I had greatness in me, but the gap between where I am now and where I want to be has, over and over, driven me to despair and taken away my motivation. The 10,000 hours tells me how to bridge that gap, though it’s sad I’ve never realized it before now. It’s the old joke: How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice.
Yeah, okay, fine. I get it now. I’ll do it.
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I think Gladwell omits something crucial in this excerpt: where does the “simple willingness to work hard” come from? If it was that easy to come by, then I can’t imagine who wouldn’t eventually become a genius at something. This is where there is likely to be something innate, some kind of natural inclination. I don’t think the desire to become an expert at X is enough; you have to actually like X.
Some people know what they enjoy doing very early on. For example, it was always a little mysterious to me how some kids knew exactly what they wanted to be when they grew up. But some of them really did know (and have proven it since). For others, it takes much longer.
By the way, I also recently read an article by Gladwell (the first of his writing I’ve read): “How caffeine created the modern world” http://www.gladwell.com/2001/2001_07_30_a_java.htm
Another perspective on achievement: it helps to enjoy caffeinated beverages. =)
Yeah, the 10,000 hours thing definitely doesn’t account for all the other factors that go into becoming good at something. And while the music study he cites claims there aren’t any naturals or any grinders, for skills that are affected by age (like being a musician, an athlete, or a dancer), it’s obvious that when one starts is an important variable, much as era-of-birth seems to have been important for software gurus.
The “when I grow up” certainty has always been a mystery to me too. 🙂
I’ve read Gladwell’s book, Blink, and like this excerpt, it was highly readable and very interesting.