Monday, February 9, 2009

Outliers, 10,000 hours

I just finished reading OUTLIERS by Malcolm Gladwell and enjoyed it as much as his other book titled BLINK. Malcolm has a great factual style of writing that is easy to follow. Each of his books that I have read really make me think about the topics and make me want to share them with my friends. You know it's a good book if you can't stop talking to your friends about it. OUTLIERS dealt with people who were very successful. Malcolm breaks each person's story down to how they were able to achieve the level of success they achieved. And what you find out is that these people were at the right place at the right time. Given certain circumstances it was hard for them not to succeed. These people are special in there determination and perseverance, but without certain occurrences and the right timing they could have been completely different people. Not to say that isn't true for most people, but Malcolm goes into detail to point it out for the stories he chose to describe.
One part in the book talks about becoming an expert in something requires 10,000 hrs of practice. Once musicians have reached that expert level they have had nearly 10,000 hours of practice. He found that to be true among musicians and programmers. I want to apply that to my training. I want to start logging my training in a way that I can add the total number of hours I train in freerunning and parkour. My goal is to reach the 10,000 hour mark in my lifetime. I'm sure I have a few hundred hours under my belt already. 3hrs of gymnastics practice 4 to 5 days a week for 4 years definitely adds up. All in all it will help me log my training and become more proficient in my all my techniques.

1 comment:

  1. Definitely enjoyed discussing that book with you and will have to pick it up when I finish my current one. It made me think about the writing I want to accomplish and I've already busted out a few pages since...so thanks for the chat!

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