What Does It Take?

Hard Work and More Hard

In an interesting book by Malcolm Gladwell called Outliers, he makes the point over and over again that the people or groups of people who really make it put in at least 10,000 hours of work before they are remotely near becoming successful.

As an example Gladwell talks about the Beatles. The Beatles were a fairly mediocre band from Liverpool who played in quite small venues. They ended up going across to Hamburg to play there because they found more girls were interested in them and they could get drunk every night; important requirement for young men.

But what they had to do in Hamburg was play endless gigs. Hour after hour of performances later and they came back to the UK a much more polished band. Besides the practice they also had to cover other songs because their own repertoire was not extensive enough to fill the hours of time they had to play.

This meant their own music improved as they took on board some of the good music they were playing in their performances. Their own compositions were enriched by this experience as well as the standard of their musicianship. The many hours of practice and playing paid off once they came back to the UK.

It is often said by highly talented people that the only difference between talented people is that the successful ones work much harder. There are many people with similar talents but only very few manage to get ahead and make their mark.

This is equally true for musicians, artists, film makers, business people, explorers, sports people and any other field of specialization you can think of. It even applies to remote areas of interest such as tiddlywinks or spinning a top. The kid that is ahead of the pack and able to beat his opponent has practiced more.

This principle of putting in the practice is important to remember when somebody is trying to sell you a service or product that will save you all the practice time. View with suspicion. This applies to offers that promise you to be able to speak a new language in five weeks or make a ton of money in twenty four hours, or run a marathon with one month’s training.

None of these will work. But what attracts people to these false promises is the belief that all things come easily. People do believe that achievements can be overnight. Weight loss is just around the corner just drink berry juice. Or you can play the piano straight away by just following the notes being played by your electric keyboard.

How do you approach your goals? Do you believe that they will just come along without any hard work or have you looked at them realistically and realized that the only way you will reach them is through hard work and perseverance?

Is this the reason why there are so few highly successful people and so many people who are prepared to live an ok kind of life? It all boils down to putting in the effort, working hard at it and doing this as long as it takes to achieve your goal.