Malcolm Gladwell, 45, is the author of the best selling, classic self- help books, The Tipping Point and Blink. His more recent book is titled The Outlier.
The Outlier examines the lives and histories of the high achievers. This book breaks down how ordinary people have developed into geniuses in various fields including billionaire businessmen, all-star hockey players, computer programmers, and other individuals.
If you are looking to become a legendary or an iconic figure this book can truly improve your chances of doing just that, so it’s definitely worth a good perusal.
The book is unique in that Gladwell studies more about the environmental aspects of great individuals than the individual themselves.
The highlight of the book is the 10,000-Hour Rule, which is completely fascinating. Gladwell suggests that the key to success in any field has little to do with talent; his studies suggest that the hours you put in are more important.
The success formula: Practise for a total of 10,000 hours, which is the equivalent of practicing 20 hours a week for 10 years.
In the book he gives examples of high achievers who followed the 10,000-Hour Rule, from Bill Gates to Mozart.
This is an excerpt taken from The Outlier, on how the Beatles used the 10,000 hours principle.
“In Liverpool, we'd only ever done one-hour sessions, and we just used to do our best numbers, the same ones, at every one. In Hamburg, we had to play for eight hours so we really had to find a new way of playing.” - John Lennon
“The Beatles ended up travelling to Hamburg five times between 1960 and the end of 1962. On the first trip, they played 106 nights, of five or more hours a night. Their second trip they played 92 times. Their third trip they played 48 times, for a total of 172 hours on stage. The last two Hamburg stints, in November and December 1962, involved another 90 hours of performing. All told, they performed for 270 nights in just over a year and a half. By the time they had their first burst of success in 1964, they had performed live an estimated 1,200 times, which is extraordinary. Most bands today don't perform 1,200 times in their entire careers. The Hamburg crucible is what set the Beatles apart.
“They were no good on stage when they went there and they were very good when they came back," Norman [Beatles Engineer] says. “They learned not only stamina, they had to learn an enormous amount of numbers - cover versions of everything you can think of, not just rock'n'roll, a bit of jazz, too. They weren't disciplined on stage at all before that. But when they came back they sounded like no one else. It was the making of them.”
So think about Gladwell's success formula, which was famously coined by the inventor of the incandescant light bulb, Thomas Edison, way back in the late 19th century:
“Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”
(how many hours a day, do you work on your dreams?- Do leave a comment)
