The Great Game of Success by Miles Mobley

There seems to be a notion in today’s competitive society that some people are the best at what they do because they are born to do it and are authentic prodigies. I am not going to deny these people exist or are real, but Outiliers, by Malcom Gladwell, shows that there are legitimate reasons for the existence of such talented peoples. Gladwell mentions an experiment on a group of child violinist at Berlin’s Academy of Music in which a set of rising child violinists were split into three groups according to their skill level and expectation to become professional. Upon examination, the real difference between the groups expected to become successful soloists and those to become school music teachers was the amount of practice they put in to their craft. A grand total of ten thousand practice hours was determined to be a reasonable amount for someone to be successful. This might sound absurd at first but Gladwell is anything but short on examples. Bill Joy, Bill Gates, The Beatles, and Mozart even all have the similarity of success through immense amounts of hard work and determination. How much? If you guessed about ten thousand hours you are correct.

Now it is true that we are not all are on the same playing field when it comes to the game of success. We might all possess the determination to make it but some definitely can have greater opportunities than others. The examples mentioned by Gladwell and in the above paragraph all had the perfect opportunity to give their determination and skill time to grow. Ten thousand hours is said to usually take about ten years. That is getting close to twenty hours a week. The normal person, however determined, will find it near impossible to put this kind of time into practice, with today’s demands. Others have the perfect opportunity to get the ten thousand under the belt. Bill Joy lived next to the computing center at the University of Michigan and was able to exploit a loophole to give him unlimited access to the computers so he could practice. The Beatles went to Hamberg, Germany three times and played incredibly long sets consistently every night at the red light district to rack up their ten thousand hours. So after you get smashed at say, a tennis match, by an opponent way above your skill level, do not feel cheated that they are naturally better than you for you have the ability to be even better if you put forth the effort. However, you can feel jealous that they have the opportunity to put in the hard work if you cannot.