Expert answer:10,000 Hours of Practice – Public Speaking (Speech
Answer & Explanation:Public Speaking (Speech) – Discussion10,000 Hours
of Practice
Read the article below. In two to three paragraphs, explain if you agree or
disagree with this rule of practice.
Note: State why you agree or disagree.
10,000 Hours of Practice
In the book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell says that it takes roughly ten
thousand hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field. How does Gladwell
arrive at this conclusion? And, if the conclusion is true, how can we leverage
this idea to achieve greatness in our professions?
Gladwell studied the lives of extremely successful people to find out how they
achieved success. This article will review a few examples from Gladwell’s
research, and conclude with some thoughts for moving forward.
Violins in Berlin
In the early 1990s, a team of psychologists in Berlin, Germany studied violin
students. Specifically, they studied their practice habits in childhood,
adolescence, and adulthood. All of the subjects were asked this question: “Over
the course of your entire career, ever since you first picked up the violin,
how many hours have you practiced?”
All of the violinists had begun playing at roughly five years of age with
similar practice times. However, at age eight, practice times began to diverge.
By age twenty, the elite performers averaged more than 10,000 hours of practice
each, while the less able performers had only 4,000 hours of practice.
The elite had more than double the practice hours of the less capable
performers.
Natural Talent: Not Important
One fascinating point of the study: No “naturally gifted” performers emerged.
If natural talent had played a role, we would expect some of the “naturals” to
float to the top of the elite level with fewer practice hours than everyone
else. But the data showed otherwise. The psychologists found a direct
statistical relationship between hours of practice and achievement. No
shortcuts. No naturals.
Sneaking Out to Write Code
You already know how Microsoft was founded. Bill Gates and Paul Allen dropped
out of college to form the company in 1975. It’s that simple: Drop out of
college, start a company, and become a billionaire, right? Wrong.
Further study reveals that Gates and Allen had thousands of hours of
programming practice prior to founding Microsoft. First, the two co-founders
met at Lakeside, an elite private school in the Seattle area. The school raised
three thousand dollars to purchase a computer terminal for the school’s
computer club in 1968.
A computer terminal at a university was rare in 1968. Gates had access to a
terminal in eighth grade. Gates and Allen quickly became addicted to
programming.
The Gates family lived near the University of Washington. As a teenager, Gates
fed his programming addiction by sneaking out of his parents’ home after
bedtime to use the University’s computer. Gates and Allen acquired their 10,000
hours through this and other clever teenage schemes. When the time came to
launch Microsoft in 1975, the two were ready.
Practice Makes Improvement
In 1960, while they were still an unknown high school rock band, the Beatles
went to Hamburg, Germany to play in the local clubs.
The group was underpaid. The acoustics were terrible. The audiences were
unappreciative. So what did the Beatles get out of the Hamburg experience? Hours
of playing time. Non-stop hours of playing time that forced them to get better.
As the Beatles grew in skill, audiences demanded more performances – more
playing time. By 1962 they were playing eight hours per night, seven nights per
week. By 1964, the year they burst on the international scene, the Beatles had
played over 1,200 concerts together. By way of comparison, most bands today
don’t play 1,200 times in their entire career.
Falling in Love With Practice
The elite don’t just work harder than everybody else. At some point the elites
fall in love with practice to the point where they want to do little else.
The elite software developer is the programmer who spends all day pounding code
at work, and after leaving work she writes open source software on her own
time.
The elite football player is the guy who spends all day on the practice field
with his teammates, and after practice he goes home to watch game films.
The elite physician listens to medical podcasts in the car during a long
commute.
The elites are in love with what they do, and at some point it no longer feels
like work.
What’s next?
Now that we’ve reviewed the trends uncovered by Gladwell’s research, what can
we do about it? All of us want to be great at something. Now that we know how
other achievers have gotten there, what can we do to join their ranks?
One approach: We could choose a field and practice for 10,000 hours. If we are
currently working in our target profession, forty hours per week over five
years would give us ten thousand hours.
Or… We can look at the question in reverse. Where have we already logged 10,000
hours of practice? What is it that we do really well? What tasks do we perform
so well that people ask: How did you do that? Sometimes when we fall in love with
practice we don’t even recognize it!
If you’re running a company, what does your company do better than anybody
else? What is it that the individual members of your company do better than
anybody? How do you create an environment that gives everyone on your team the
opportunity to practice?
Conclusion
Business is tough, especially now. Yet even in the midst of a challenging
economy, there are individuals and companies that prosper beyond all
expectations. Practice plays a major role in success.
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