Thursday, November 20, 2008

The 10,000-hour rule

I am reading the book "Outliers" of Malcolm Gladwell. It explains why a few people are successful- they are the outliers in a bell shape curve of normal distribution.

Based on many statistics, there is a only small portion of people excel in each area, from violin to programming. He discovered there is the 10,000-hour rule - if a person dedicates to certain thing up to 10,000 hours, he/ she can master on that aspect and out perform the majority exceptionally.

Bill Gates are Beatles are the two of the best examples. The former obsessed in programming since high school, while Beatles spent time on stage more than bands all over the world, since they performed in pubs in Germany red light district.

In your life, do you spend 10,000 hours on any single thing? 10,000-hour can be converted to 416 days, or 1.14 years.

What I believe is, it is not only time, but the interest of certain things 'haunt' people and drive them to be focused. People who have obsession are lucky, sometimes.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

wah, baby, you are fast!!! I think it just published for a few days!!! I read the interview that TIME did with Malcom Gladwell. I was thinking to buy it, you act ever faster ^^

S