One of my "half books" that I counted toward my 100 total in 2008, was the book, Outliers . . . the Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell. I'd purchased this book for "what's her name" as one of her Christmas gifts, but ended up finishing it before her. I have read Gladwell's two other books and enjoyed them, but I thought Outliers was only "half" good. In particular, I thought the first half of the book was very strong, but the second half just lost me.
One fantastic insight that Gladwell has disovered is that highly-successful people achieve that success by devoting 10,000 hours to their pursuit of perfection. He sites Bill Gates, The Beatles, and others as evidence of this fact. What does 10,000 represent? 10 years!
And as Gladwell points out, few people devote 10,000 hours to anything, much less the singularly-devoted pursuit of perfection that 10,000 hours represents.
I guess that's why I'm just an average yokel. I've not had 10 years of singular-devotion to anything (except maybe washing underwear). I guess most of us enjoy life too much to lock ourselves into an office cubicle or a stage for the better part of a decade.
No comments:
Post a Comment