Outliers: the story of success! [Point 1: 10.000 hours rule]

On Saturday whilst discussing the characteristics of Blackswans here, William Buist suggested the importance of this book (Outliers) as a response to one of my comments and wanted to see my analysis of this book. William's suggestion of the book, my second reading of it recently, and the importance of Blackswans have inspired me to create this blog series to reflect and learn from important points in this insightful book titled Outliers by Malcom Gladwell.

After reading the book twice with fascination (because it provided considerable insights to my cognitive hypotheses with interesting findings), I believe there are important arguments to be considered in this book and to be followed up with further discussions. Since the scope of the book is comprehensive it will not fit into one blog; hence I will focus on one key point in each post.

One of the most important lessons learnt from this book is repeatedly mentioned as the "10,000-Hour Rule". Gladwell claims that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours, 10 years or a decade! He provides well proven examples. I believe him because they are very well known and documented cases.

I fully agree with this 10 thousand hour rule as a person observing how thoughts and concepts are processed and make progress in very complex environments. It took me approximately 10 years to certify globally in my discipline in IBM. It took me over 10 years after my master's degree to start authoring advanced research papers in peer reviewed and refereed scientific journals. It took me 20 years to start my first invention to be patented! It took me over 20 years to learn English which I am still feeling shaky!! I can see that it took 11 years Thomas and Penny to bring Ecademy to this level. Based on this first hand experienced based knowledge confirmed by Malcolm's observations, I have difficulty in understanding anyone who declares expertise on a topic less than 10 years. For some reasons, I kept thinking a lot about Edison and Tesla whilst digesting this rule!!

Let's watch the following 2 clips interviewing Malcolm on this book. These clips may help understand the coverage and importance of the book for those who haven't read it yet. I believe you will laugh at what the male interviewer is good at in the second video; and pay attention to what Bill Gates used to do secretly and why Mozart's early works were crap!:-)

Let's be mindful that this is an eye opening, realistic [an anti-self help] book therefore...! I'd love to obtain your views on this 10 thousand hour rule!





Regards,
Mehmet

Dr. Mehmet YILDIZ || IBM || IT Philosophy || Future|| Leadership || Twitter || Linkedin || Yasni || Naymz|| Superfan