The 10,000-Hour rule

What does success mean to you? Is it measured in the amount of money someone make? How famous someone is? In my opinion, success is defined by the 10,000 Hour rule, which states that the amount of time you spend on a particular activity shows how successful you are.

According to Malcolm Gladwell in 'Outliers' the story of success is more complex and a lot more interesting. It tells us what Bill Gates and The Beatles have in common and how having opportunities is the key to developed skills.

Before The Beatles were successful they were invited to preform in a non stop show in Germany. They ended up traveling 5 times during 1 and a half year between the years 1960-1962. In total they speeded 270 nights on stage within 5-6 hours. That represents extraordinary 1200 hours of performance and practice in total before they in 1964 had their first burst of success on the international scene. The Beatles had played over 1,200 concerts together. By way of comparison, most bands today don’t play 1,200 times in their entire career.. The same story is told about Bill Gates. Due to his circumstances he had a bunch of practice of programming in his younger age which ended up being 8 hours a day. By 16 years old Bill had in total programmed in about 1557 hours which was a perfect amount time that was taken into account while he was getting older. This investigation could be done on anything. If we take a look at pianists for example, we will see the same pattern. Lets say they start playing at the same age of 5, 3 hours a week. Once they get older they add a couple of hours a week until they are fully grown and choose their different paths of spending time in front of the piano. I guarantee you that the ones spending more hours is better and hopefully more successful. But ofcourse there other factors that leads to success. One of them is opportunity.

Bill Gates father was a wealth lawyer, opening opportunities to send Gates to a private school where he started a computer club with his friends. At that time 1968 most collages didn't have computer clubs which made it to an extraordinary opportunity for Gates to develop his programming skills. Furthermore, contacts helped investing money in the club affording more advanced computers. 1975, Bill Gates was not too old or too young. In his age of 20 the revolution of technology took place and Gates had nothing else to do rather than taking action. 4th of April 1975 Microsoft was created.

Do you think its a coincidence that he was born 1955, well yeah. But is it a coincidence that his age gave him opportunities for success within technology?

Well take a look at the other following successful people in technology and decide yourself:

Steve Jobs 1955

Eric Schmidt 1955

Scott McNealy 1954

Vinod Kholska 1955

Andy Bechtolsheim 1955

Paul Allan 1953

Steve Ballmer 1956

So what does this tell us? Practice and beting up your ass gives results. All the successful people may be awarded in public, but the secret is the hours they speeded in private. Practice gives result and it is of course easier and better to love what you're doing, because if you truly do, you will come long in life. The opportunities do MATTER, but its all up to you whether you not only see them but take them. If you're not born in a particular year, if you're not born in a wealthy family, and you're blaming it on that. Well then you understand this very wrong. The circumstances can help you develop skills, but we all do have our own journeys and opportunities. Embrace yours. Let your confidence guid you to your destiny.

If you're more interested in ambitious and intelligent stories, I recommend you to read Outliers.

My personal experience reading Outliers:

Have you ever heard the saying that the most obvious things is the hardest ones to see? Well that is the easiest way I can explain my experience reading outliers. It all makes perfect sense and the things I have always questioned are now being answered. The book showed me a deeper analysis of researches and biographies of successful people that is essential to know. It made me understand that the patterns behind success are all the same, and its written down in this book. If you're interested I would be pleased to hear your experience reading it.