Worldwide Success

The very successful writer Malcolm Gladwell has written two best-sellers:  The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference , and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking .  What is Gladwell’s success secret?  According to him a lot of it has to do with the fact that he put in 10,000 hours as a reporter for the Washington Post.  He explains it in detail in his newest book:  Outliers: The Story of Success.

What is an outlier, you ask?  “An outlier is the person who doesn’t fit into our normal understanding of achievement,” says Glaswell.   He lists Bill Gates and The Beatles as case studies and explains how the 10,000-hour rule is an important factor that helped develop the Beatles into the most well-known rock group of all times and Bill Gates as one of the richest men in the world.

The 10,000-hour Rule

What exactly is the 10,000-hour rule?  According to Gladwell, “greatness requires enormous time.”  In the case of the Beatles, from 1960 to 1964 they played live 1,200 times and accumulated more than 10,000 hours playing.  In addition to their musical gift, all of that playing time helped shape their talent and after putting in all those hours they were very unique.  “They sounded like no one else.  It was the making of them”, he says.

As a 13-year-old, Bill Gates acquired access to a high school computer and logged 10,000 hours of programming.  Gates, who was interviewed by Gladwell, credits his success to his luck in having that unique access.  According to Gladwell, without that opportunity Gates might have been an intelligent, driven and successful professional, but perhaps not worth 50 billion dollars.

Here is how Gladwell summarizes his view on achieving success:

“The biggest misconception about success is that we do it solely on our smarts, ambition, hustle and hard work.  There’s an awful more that goes into in than we admit.”

Gladwell’s views are consistent with many successful people’s beliefs that success does not happen overnight.  It takes a considerable amount of time for a person to become great at any endeavor.  That is why if you don’t love what you do, it is unlikely that you will be great at it.  This is simply due to the fact that if you don’t like what you are doing you will not be willing to put in the time required to achieve success.

In our society, where immediate gratification has become so pervasive, a lot of people have a real hard time accepting the fact that success takes time.  On the Worldwide Success site we receive numerous requests for a quick formula that will yield success.  Take a quick look at the numerous comments in the article Corporate Career Success – How to Become CEO.  One young reader expressed his frustration as follows:

“… knowing that you have the skill set and the education required and still being made to follow the beaten path is very frustrating! Why does age/experience matter when all that is required is the ability and skill required for the job?”

It is particularly frustrating for young people to accept the fact that success takes time.  If you want to better understand why that is the case, and want to learn more about what it takes to achieve success, you should consider reading Gladwell’s newest book.

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