They haven’t spent that time vaguely skating around in circles or tinkling on the piano, but doing ‘deliberate practice’- really focused work that hurts. Gladwell took subjects from the Beatles to Canadian ice hockey players and shows that by the time they start to perform at a really high level they have put in the required 10,000 hours of practice. Hard work is a massive part of that (which may explain my poor performance on the piano). It merges psychology and statistics to look at what actually makes people achieve greatness – what makes the ‘outliers’. ‘Outliers’ by Malcolm Gladwell is fantastic book on this subject. Even when we accept that it isn’t true on a global level (tricky not to) we struggle to see individually that we have been exceptionally lucky rather than determined. The concept that our lives are based on a mixture of genetics and hard work fits in with our our sense of fairness. The idea of a meritocracy is very appealing.
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