Saturday, January 17, 2009

Outliers

I just finished reading the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.

In the book, Gladwell takes various anecdotes of success and analyzes them from a statistical viewpoint. He looks at the computer gazillionaires (Jobs, Gates, Joy, et al.) as well as The Beattles and NHL hockey players.

His treatise is that few people are truly self made. More often, there are many other factors in determining success.

However, there is one items that's within one's control in determining success. Gladwell calls it the 10,000 hour rule. Mainly, in order to be successful, one needs 10,000 hours in their discipline to master the field.

As I've read the accounts of the US Scareway airliner that went down this week it had me wonder. Do you think Sully had 10,000 hours of flight time in?

It was his experience that ultimately saved that plane.

What is your 10,000 hour discipline? Unfortunately, for too many Americans the answer is guitar hero.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've mastered drinking beer.

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