Outliers - 10,000 Hours for Success
Malcolm Gladwell, author of “The Tipping Point” and “Blink”, has a new book out titled “Outliers: The Story of Success”. “Outliers” are the high achievers, the best, the brightest, and the most successful people. Gladwell has some interesting theories on what it takes to become an outlier.
In “Outliers” Gladwell explains that in the early 1990’s psychologist K. Anders Ericsson and two colleagues conducted an experiment at Berlin’s “Academy of Music”. Basically, the school’s violinists were divided into three groups: the stars, the “good” performers, and those who were unlikely to ever play professionally and would probably become music teachers. They were all asked the same question: “Over the course of the years, ever since you picked up a violin, how many hours have you practiced?” (Source).
All of the violinists had started playing at around age five, and they all played about two or three hours a week during the first few years. However, around the age of eight, an important difference began to emerge in the amount of hours they each practiced. By age 20, the stars in the group had all totaled 10,000 hours of practice over the course of their lives; the “good” students had totaled 8,000 hours; and the future music teachers just over 4,000 hours.
What the research suggested was that once you have enough talent to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. In addition, other studies have also shown that excellence at a complex task requires a minimum level of practice, and experts have settled on 10,000 hours as the magic number for true expertise. This is true even of people we think of as prodigies, such as Mozart.
Gladwell quotes neurologist Daniel Levitin as follows:
“In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice-skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or 20 hours a week, of practice over 10 years… No one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.“
Bill Gates
Bill Gates is certainly brilliant, Malcolm adds in “Outliers”, but most people don’t know that he spent most of his early years in his school’s computer lab. He had extensive access to a state-of-the-art computer lab, the likes of which very few in his generation would know until years later. By the time he dropped out of Harvard after his sophomore year to try his hand at his own software company, Gates had already been programming nonstop for seven consecutive years. He was way past 10,000 hours.
The Beatles
The Beatles, Gladwell continues, were invited to play in Hamburg, Germany in 1960 when they were still a struggling band. What was unusual about Hamburg is that they had to play all night, eight hours straight, seven days a week, for weeks on end. John Lennon, in an interview after the Beatles disbanded, talking about the band’s performances at Hamburg, said: “We got better and got more confidence. We couldn’t help it with all the experience playing all night long. . . In Liverpool, we’d only ever done one-hour sessions, and we just used to do our best numbers, the same ones, at every one. In Hamburg we had to play for eight hours, so we really had to find a new way of playing.”
Just Do It: Quantity Leads to Quality
I found the following anecdote from Bill Buxton’s book “Sketching User Experiences” on Mike Arauz’s blog:
“A ceramics professor comes in on the first day of class and divides the students into two sections. He tells one half of the class that their final grade will be based exclusively on the volume of their production; the more they make, the better their grade. The professor tells the other half of the class that they will be graded more traditionally, based solely on the quality of their best piece.
At the end of the semester, the professor discovered that the students who were focused on making as many pots as possible also ended up creating the best pots, much better than the pots made by the students who spent all semester trying to create that one perfect pot.”
The quote demonstrates that by producing as much as you can, the quality of what you produce increases. With each pot created the students in the “quantity” group learned something new and perfected their skill. In addition, their creativity was not restrained by the thought of creating “the one perfect pot”. By being told that they were going to be graded on quantity they had more leeway to experiment and try new things. Here are three projects that reflect that same idea of focusing on quantity:
Rachel Hinman started her 90 Mobiles in 90 Days experiment on June 20, 2008 in which for 90 days she thought about, sketched, drew, and prototyped ideas for one mobile design per day. She documented her experiences during the 90 days on her blog.
Abbey Ryan has painted a small oil painting every day since September 23, 2007. There are other painters who have also taken on the challenge of creating a painting a day, and others have set the challenge of drawing in their sketchbooks every single day for a period of one year.
NaNoWriMo is going on right now during the month of November. It’s an approach to novel writing in which participants began writing November 1st and their goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight on the 30th of November.
To Have a Great Idea, Have Lots of Them
I’ve written in the past on this blog about Thomas Edison’s idea quota: basically, he had a set number of ideas he had to come up with each week. Even though lots of the ideas he came up with were pretty lousy, he also came up with a lot of very successful ideas. You can follow Edison’s model by setting an idea quota for yourself.
“Idea a Day” is a website founded in London in August 2000 by music executive David Owen and others, in which one idea is published a day. As well as perusing the ideas, you are encouraged to submit your own and share them. If you subscribe to their feed you’ll have one idea delivered to you every day. You can then use that idea as a jumping-off point for your own daily idea. Here are two ideas I found on the “Idea a Day” site which I thought were clever:
“Add a tax to all unhealthy foods so that they cost more than healthy alternatives. A healthy diet would be relatively cheaper than an unhealthy diet. Then use the tax revenues to pay for more and better health education and sporting facilities.” - Day 3013 by Bounce
“Create a carbon offset tax. People would be taxed a certain percentage a month based on their carbon footprint. By doing things to lower their carbon footprint, the percentage would be lowered. For example driving a car that gets more than a 30 mpg, buying locally grown organic produce, or not spraying the lawn would cut back the tax. The revenue raised could in turn be used to develop green technologies, plant trees and protect rain forests.” - Day 2092 by Max
Conclusion
In conclusion, the more you practice your craftCwhatever it may beC, the more you create, and the more ideas you come up with, the more likely you are to be successful. As we’ve been told over and over again, it’s a numbers game.
出类拔萃的人-取得成功的10,000个小时
迈尔肯.威尔, 《引爆流行》和《决断两秒间》的作者,近期出版了一本新书,名叫《出类拔萃的人: 成功的故事》。“出类拔萃的人”是指非常成功，非常优秀，非常聪明，也是绝大多数的成功人士。威尔对于这些人如何成功有一个非常有趣的理论。
在《出类拔萃的人》中，威尔解释了在90年代早期，心理学家 K.安德斯.爱瑞森 及其两名同事在柏林的“音乐学院”进行的一次试验。大致是将学校的小提琴手分为3组：明星组，“上等”组，以及那些不太可能进行专业演奏表演和可能成为音乐教师的小组。他们都被问了同样的问题：在多年后，从你拿起开始练习小提琴算起，你总共训练了多久?(摘录)
所有的小提琴手都是在五岁时开始学习，并且在最初几年他们每周都练习2-3个小时。然而，在八岁左右，他们在练习时间的总量上产生了一个重要的区别。当到了20岁的时候，明星组的累计练习时间为10,000个小时;上等组的学生累计8,000个小时;未来教师组只有4,000个小时左右。
此研究说明，在你因为天赋而进入了顶尖音乐学校后，最终将你和他人区分开的是你的努力程度。除此之外，其他的研究同样表明要想出色的完成复杂的任务需要一定时间的锻炼，专家将此锻炼的时间定为神奇的10,000小时。这个是事实，即使那些我们认为是神童的人也同样如此，比如莫扎特。
威尔引用了神经学家 丹尼尔 莱维丁的话：
“在不断的学习中，作曲家，篮球运动员，小说作家，滑冰运动员，钢琴家，国际象棋棋手，司法学硕士等，这些人的钻研时间在不断的增加。一万个小时相当于一天约3小时或一个星期20小时的练习10年以上... ...目前没有发现少于这个时间而能成为真正世界级专家的情况。这表明大脑需要相当长的时间去消化所有必要的知识，才能达到真正意义上的精通。”
比尔 盖茨
比尔 盖茨 公认的成功人士，迈尔肯列入的“出类拔萃的人”，但是许多人并不知道，他早年的大部分时间都是在学校里的电脑实验室中度过。这使他有了许多使用先进电脑试验室的机会，这些东西即使是与他同代的人，也只有很少一部分在几年后才有所了解。在他大二退学哈弗后，他尝试建立自己的软件公司，盖茨当时就有了一个连续七年的规划。同样，他也经历了10,000个小时。
披头士乐队
威尔提到披头士乐队曾在1960年被邀请到德国汉堡进行演出，那时候他们还是个正处在奋斗中的乐队。但汉堡这次的演唱会有所不同，乐队需要整晚，连续八个小时，持续七天，一连好几周的不停演奏。约翰 列侬在披头士乐队解散后的一个采访中谈到了汉堡的演出，他说：“我们有了好转并且变得更有自信，但如果没有之前整晚练习的经历我们不可能完成...在利物浦，我们仅做了一个一小时的会议,在以前我们通常都是用最好的曲子，同样的内容在每个地方演唱，因此我们的确需要寻找一个新的方法来演奏。”
如此去做：量变造成质变
我在麦克 阿若斯的博客中发现比尔 巴克斯顿“草图使用者体验”一书中有如下一则轶事：
“一个制陶教授第一天来上课把他的学生分为了两部份。他告诉其中一部分说，他们的最终成绩仅仅取决于他们作品的数量，做的越多，分数越高。教授告诉另外一部分，他们将按照惯例被评分，仅取决于他们的最好一部分作品的质量。
在学期末，教授发现，专注于制作尽可能多制作瓷壶的学生同样也创造出了最好的瓷壶，并且比那些一学期只专注于制作一个瓷壶学生的作品好很多。
这个故事说明通过大量的制作，产品的质量也有了提高。在“数量”组的学生通过每个瓷壶的制作也学到了新的东西并且熟练了技能。加之，他们的创造力不受“一个完美瓷壶”思想的约束。在通知他们将以数量决定成绩以后，他们有更多的自由去表达和尝试新的创意。这里有3个事例反映了对数量作用同样的观点。
瑞切尔 赫曼在2008年6月20日开始了她的90天内90部手机的试验，在90天内他每天构思，草绘，描画，对每部电话设计原型创意。她把90天的经历都记录在了她的博客上。
阿比 赖安 从2007年9月23日开始每天都坚持画小幅油画。也有其他的画家挑战每天画一幅画，其他的则将这种绘画挑战运用在他们每日的写生本中并坚持一年。
NaNoWriMo 已经在十一月进行。它类似于一种小说创作，参与者在十一月一日开始写作，他们的目标是在十一月三十日午夜之前写出一部175页(50,000-字)的小说。
多做才能产生创意
我过去曾在我的博客上写过关于托马斯 爱迪生的构想配额：基本上，他每周都会列出许多想出来的创意。即使他的许多想法都是非常的差劲，但他仍有许多相当成功的创意。你可以按照爱迪生的模型为你自己设定创意配额。
“创意一天”是在2000年八月由音乐总监大卫 欧文和及其同伴在伦敦创立一个网站，网站上每天都公布一个创意。如果你订阅，他们会每天递送给你一个创意。你可以将这个创意作为你每天创意的起点。我在“创意一天”上找到了两个非常聪明的构思。
“对所有不健康的食物增加税收，这样他们将会比健康食物花费的更多。一份健康的饮食将会比不健康的饮食便宜更多。然后利用税收投入到更多更好的健康教育和运动设施中”-第3013天 Bounce提供
“新增一个能源消耗税。根据个人的能源消耗每月征收一定比例的税。通过这么做来减少他们的能源消耗，相应的税收百分比也会有所减少。比如，驾车省30加仑油，购买本地生长的有机食品，或者对草坪不使用杀虫剂都将减少征税。这笔财政收入能够反过来用于开发绿色科技，植树和保护雨林。”-第2092天 Max 提供。
结论
最后，无论是什么手艺你练的越多，你能创造的就越多，新的创意越多，你成功的可能性就越大。正如我们不断说的那样，这只是个数字游戏。
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