So I read a review of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book Outliers, which is about people who are really really good at what they do, who are at the top of their fields. How do they get there, what make them exceptional. Gladwell writes that “It’s not enough to ask what successful people are like, it is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn’t.” Their culture, family, environment, friendships etc. He also suggests that it is not talent that propels such people to success, but practice. Specifically, 10,000 hours of practice at least. 20 hours of practice a week for 10 years. He calls it the 10,000 Hour Rule.
And if you think practice alone is enough it’s not. No one can make it alone. Take Christopher Langan,
“a man who despite an IQ of 195 (Einstein’s was 150) wound up working on a horse farm in rural Missouri. Why isn’t he a nuclear rocket surgeon? Because of the environment he grew up in: there was no one in Langan’s life and nothing in his background that could help him capitalize on his exceptional gifts. “He had to make his way alone,” Gladwell writes, “and no one — not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses — ever makes it alone.”
