You assert that you need 10,000 hours, or about 10 years of practice, to be a world-class expert in virtually anything. Anything that is cognitively complex seems like it requires at least 10,000 hours. ... It's deliberate practice, so it's focused, determined, in environments where there's feedback, where there's a chance to really learn from mistakes. What's fascinating about this notion that expertise arises only after 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is that it seems to apply incredibly broadly to an astonishing array of different professions - from playing chess to writing classical music to being a brain surgeon to playing hockey.Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, jokingly refers to himself as a "no-date nerd" who cared only about computers growing up. So, being an obsessive loner can actually help you become successful?Absolutely. Getting 10,000 hours is so hard that the only way to do it is to be obsessive in a certain way. It might be a bad thing to be obsessive-compulsive in normal life, but if you're a research scientist, it actually could be a really good thing.But you found that simply having a really high IQ or mastery in a certain field means little if you don't have practical intelligence.A critical part of high achievement is not a function of your IQ, your analytical ability, the size of your hard drive in your brain, but rather, a function of your ability to navigate the world and get what you want from the world. ... We radically underestimate how much high achievers rely on that practical side.You interviewed Chris Langan, who is a genius. Yet he hasn't won a Nobel Prize and most people have never heard of him.He has an IQ closing in on 200 and he has not been a success by any conventional measure. I'm trying to explain why has he failed. And the answer is that he doesn't have any of that other kind of intelligence - practical intelligence - and it's crippling, even though he has a brain that works better than almost anyone's brain in North America.Are some people doomed to failure simply because of the lot they've been handed in life? We vary greatly in the degree of natural advantages that we've been given by the world: That's why governments step in and provide opportunities to try and level the playing field. That's why social interventions to provide opportunities are so important. Because the world's not fair.Do the rules and principles of success that you lay out in Outliers apply to your own success?I spent exactly 10 years at the Washington Post. When I entered, I was not a good writer and I was not a good reporter. And when I ended, I was. So I very much, very, very much, associate my success with the 10,000-hour rule. ... But that's the point of the book: You should be able to see reflections of your own life in the lessons.So do you think you've figured out the equation for success?No, because so much of it is outside of our control. I will only say that there are common elements. The common elements are: some kind of opportunity to work harder than your peers - that would be a critical element; some kind of opportunity to see things that others can't see - that's the generational thing; and a fit, a good fit, between your cultural legacy and what you choose to explore.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
achieving in this world
Part of an interview with Malcolm Gladwell author of his latest book “Outliers”
You assert that you need 10,000 hours, or about 10 years of practice, to be a world-class expert in virtually anything. Anything that is cognitively complex seems like it requires at least 10,000 hours. ... It's deliberate practice, so it's focused, determined, in environments where there's feedback, where there's a chance to really learn from mistakes. What's fascinating about this notion that expertise arises only after 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is that it seems to apply incredibly broadly to an astonishing array of different professions - from playing chess to writing classical music to being a brain surgeon to playing hockey.Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, jokingly refers to himself as a "no-date nerd" who cared only about computers growing up. So, being an obsessive loner can actually help you become successful?Absolutely. Getting 10,000 hours is so hard that the only way to do it is to be obsessive in a certain way. It might be a bad thing to be obsessive-compulsive in normal life, but if you're a research scientist, it actually could be a really good thing.But you found that simply having a really high IQ or mastery in a certain field means little if you don't have practical intelligence.A critical part of high achievement is not a function of your IQ, your analytical ability, the size of your hard drive in your brain, but rather, a function of your ability to navigate the world and get what you want from the world. ... We radically underestimate how much high achievers rely on that practical side.You interviewed Chris Langan, who is a genius. Yet he hasn't won a Nobel Prize and most people have never heard of him.He has an IQ closing in on 200 and he has not been a success by any conventional measure. I'm trying to explain why has he failed. And the answer is that he doesn't have any of that other kind of intelligence - practical intelligence - and it's crippling, even though he has a brain that works better than almost anyone's brain in North America.Are some people doomed to failure simply because of the lot they've been handed in life? We vary greatly in the degree of natural advantages that we've been given by the world: That's why governments step in and provide opportunities to try and level the playing field. That's why social interventions to provide opportunities are so important. Because the world's not fair.Do the rules and principles of success that you lay out in Outliers apply to your own success?I spent exactly 10 years at the Washington Post. When I entered, I was not a good writer and I was not a good reporter. And when I ended, I was. So I very much, very, very much, associate my success with the 10,000-hour rule. ... But that's the point of the book: You should be able to see reflections of your own life in the lessons.So do you think you've figured out the equation for success?No, because so much of it is outside of our control. I will only say that there are common elements. The common elements are: some kind of opportunity to work harder than your peers - that would be a critical element; some kind of opportunity to see things that others can't see - that's the generational thing; and a fit, a good fit, between your cultural legacy and what you choose to explore.
You assert that you need 10,000 hours, or about 10 years of practice, to be a world-class expert in virtually anything. Anything that is cognitively complex seems like it requires at least 10,000 hours. ... It's deliberate practice, so it's focused, determined, in environments where there's feedback, where there's a chance to really learn from mistakes. What's fascinating about this notion that expertise arises only after 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is that it seems to apply incredibly broadly to an astonishing array of different professions - from playing chess to writing classical music to being a brain surgeon to playing hockey.Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, jokingly refers to himself as a "no-date nerd" who cared only about computers growing up. So, being an obsessive loner can actually help you become successful?Absolutely. Getting 10,000 hours is so hard that the only way to do it is to be obsessive in a certain way. It might be a bad thing to be obsessive-compulsive in normal life, but if you're a research scientist, it actually could be a really good thing.But you found that simply having a really high IQ or mastery in a certain field means little if you don't have practical intelligence.A critical part of high achievement is not a function of your IQ, your analytical ability, the size of your hard drive in your brain, but rather, a function of your ability to navigate the world and get what you want from the world. ... We radically underestimate how much high achievers rely on that practical side.You interviewed Chris Langan, who is a genius. Yet he hasn't won a Nobel Prize and most people have never heard of him.He has an IQ closing in on 200 and he has not been a success by any conventional measure. I'm trying to explain why has he failed. And the answer is that he doesn't have any of that other kind of intelligence - practical intelligence - and it's crippling, even though he has a brain that works better than almost anyone's brain in North America.Are some people doomed to failure simply because of the lot they've been handed in life? We vary greatly in the degree of natural advantages that we've been given by the world: That's why governments step in and provide opportunities to try and level the playing field. That's why social interventions to provide opportunities are so important. Because the world's not fair.Do the rules and principles of success that you lay out in Outliers apply to your own success?I spent exactly 10 years at the Washington Post. When I entered, I was not a good writer and I was not a good reporter. And when I ended, I was. So I very much, very, very much, associate my success with the 10,000-hour rule. ... But that's the point of the book: You should be able to see reflections of your own life in the lessons.So do you think you've figured out the equation for success?No, because so much of it is outside of our control. I will only say that there are common elements. The common elements are: some kind of opportunity to work harder than your peers - that would be a critical element; some kind of opportunity to see things that others can't see - that's the generational thing; and a fit, a good fit, between your cultural legacy and what you choose to explore.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment