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The Road to Talent
It’s not something you’re born with — it’s something you work towards
Have you ever sat on the bleachers at a baseball game, with great anticipation rising up in your chest as you watch a player slide into home base? Or sat at a basketball game and watch with awe as a player dunks the ball into the hoop? Or be mesmerized when you’re listening to a violin player at an orchestra? Or be completely blown away when you’re watching a gymnast fly through the air faster than you can say “cheese”?
These all appear to be great feats done by superhumans who possess a certain skill or talent. But the truth is — the moment you just witnessed is a long time coming.
You may have heard about the 10,000 hour rule. Malcolm Gladwell talked about it in his book, Outliers: The Story of Success, and in this article penned by Gladwell himself. In simple terms, the 10,000 hour rule states that in order to reach your optimum level of performance — hence, become an expert in something — you must have put in 10,000 hours over an X number of years. It’s an idea deeply rooted in practice.
The reality is — while it has certain elements of truth, the 10,000 hour is missing other ingredients. First, it gives an arbitrary number to the process of developing skill. Secondly, some people (we may call them “geniuses”) might…
