Arise, Awake, Stop not till 10,000 is reached!,

Malcolm Gadwell has popularized social science in a series of big hit books such as Tipping Point and Blink. With due apologies for being rather uncharitable, I do tend to think of these as the bubble gum version of non fiction books (i.e. read the title and the contents page and pretty much know what is being said!).

Nevertheless the writer has a real knack for simplifying and popularizing concepts. This latest book, Outliers has hit the shelves and is a hit with readers.


His thesis is that exceptional performance in life, in any endeavor, is not a matter of inborn genius, but rather the circumstances and conditioning that led to it.

You might go, 'ah...genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration' as Edison once famously said - and you would be right! That about sums it up.

However, he uses the latest tools and contemporary examples to make this point. One intriguing concept in this book is the number 10,000. He says that social science research shows that anyone (anyone) who puts 10,000 hours of practice in any endeavor is going to become an elite performer in that field.




Lets put a caveat here. If you practice golf for 10,000 hours, that does not mean you become Tiger Woods. But here is the kicker. If you put in 10,000 hours of practice in golf, you can compete with Tiger Woods! The above insight was genuinely intriguing that I decided to ruminate on this a bit.

What does 10,000 hours of practice mean?

Lets say I come back from work everyday and spend 1.5 hours practicing my favorite activity. Piano. Golf Swing, Singing. Essay writing. Whatever. Lets say I do this, to be reasonable 5 days a week. And 45 weeks a year (accounting for holidays, emergencies etc). That is 337.5 hours per year. 10 years is still only 3,375 hours....!

Another example. Lets take a normal activity like eating (could just as easily be wine tasting). 3 meals a day. Again 1.5 hours? This time it needs to be every day. So 1.5 hrs times 7 days a week time 52 weeks a year. That is still only 546 hours per year.

I think with my experience in consulting and management I am good at presentations and communication. Lets take 'powerpoint' skills, and lets see if I can compete with the tiger woods of powerpoint. I have been in this business for 15+ years. Lets say I have done 3 major assignments a year. Each assignment required 3 big presentations (one at the beginning, one at the middle and one final presentation). Lets say it took me 10 hours to write each presentation (not counting all the other team members who contributed to it). That is a grand total of 1,530 hours! N-o-w-h-e-r-e close to the 10,000 mark!


What does this mean then? A couple of insights from the above example.

1. 10,000 hours is difficult to get to and will take several decades.

2. If it is an activity like sport, then the window is going to be very early and narrow (say 18 - 30 years). Which means one has to start when one is a child. Which explains why parents go batty over their talented children.

3. Even if you count your own profession (like i did with powerpoint presentation as an example) and a particular skill it is going to be hard to come up with 10,000 hours.

3. If you commit to 10,000 hours of anything be warned that you are giving up a 'balanced' life.


Implications: Assuming you buy into the 10,000 hour theory (for which there is an equally strong argument not to...which is ripe for discussion, but not the thrust here), there are a few implications for ourselves as well as what decisions we make for our children in terms of where they focus their attention and talents.

A. If 10,000 gets you elite status. What does 5,000 get you? This is my own addition here. Let us assume 5,000 gets you 'professionally competent' status. You could set a floor and a ceiling for any endeavor, should you be serious about it.

For fun, here is a curve (my own thoughts - unscientific):

1,000 - Appreciator (!)

2,000 - Dabbler

3,000 - Know just enough to cause harm

5,000 - Professionally competent

7,500 - Elite

10,000 - One in a million, super elite.

B. If you are motivated to excel in some field, you better be 'inwardly' passionate about it, otherwise life will become one gigantic slog!

C. When it comes to children, just because somebody else observes they are good at something, dont force them into it unless they take to it by themselves. I have seen way too many example of kids who hate what they have been forced into.

D. Take care to pick what you are going to focus on. Or on the other hand you can sprinkle your interests among a variety of things so you can maintain a 'portfolio of interests'.

In summary, even though we may not strictly buy into this 10,000 concept, it is a useful yardstick to ask ourselves how we are spending our time, and what value that is adding to the quality of our lives.

Also the decisions we make on time for ourselves and our children have serious consequences either in terms of opportunity lost or forcing someone to do something they did not like.

In my own personal life, I had, before I read this book, and continue to operate on the principle of 'general proficiency' rather than 'star specialist' to sample life in all its richness.