by Ayn
Let's go back to when we were gradeschoolers and we hear a lot of adults' "practice makes perfect" thingamajig. And we hated it, because we'd rather spend our youthful time living life in our own terms, hanging out and refuting this with the line, "there's no such thing as perfect." But little did we know that what really separates great people from everybody else is the fact that they spent 10,000 hours doing their craft, regardless if it's quite a success or not. Ten thousand hours?! Yeah, I know that sounds holy freaking way too much.
Dr. K. Anders Ericsson, a Swedish psychologist who's one of the leading theoretical and experimental researchers on 'expertise,' proved in a study that being an expert requires us to have done AT LEAST 10,000 hours of practice. This theory has been echoed by Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Outliers", which explained in detail the stories of the world's most successful people apart from what we are generally knowledgeable of.
Before the Beatles made it big, they had to perform live every night from 1960 to 1964 for 1,200 times, stockpiling some 10,000 hours of playing time on stage. By the time they returned to England, they were believed to have sounded like no one else. When Bill Gates gained access to a high school computer in 1968 at age 13, he started programming the machine. By the time he dropped out of Harvard in his first year, he already had an incalculable advantage over other developers of his time. Tiger Woods is a good example too.
Geoff Colvin also arrived with this conclusion in his book "Talent is Overrated", which claims that what we achieve isn't about natural gifts, and that great performance is more available than we ever thought.
But regardless if it really was 10,000 or what, people, it all boils down to one word: hardwork. Successful people did not just hit one brilliant idea and made money overnight, as some people makes it appear to be. They tried, and needless to say failed several times too. When we do one thing we love over and over, we develop a certain maturity and strength of character, because we refuse to back down and get discouraged during the first few tries. We learn to see things in a different perspective and accumulate wisdom from those experiences. Consequently, we become innovative thinkers when we find better avenues in doing these things.
Practice does not make perfect. It makes an expert and perhaps subsequently a game-changer. So to be one that's 20 hours of work a week for 10 years for you. Haven't started yet? Better do. #
photo credit: http://heart2heartlove.wordpress.com/page/2/
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