The General Rule of Success

According to the book, Outliers, what we consider an expert in a field tend to be a person who has had 10,000 hours of experience or the equivalent of 3 hours a day for ten years. These are the people who are full of vision and talent the people we think of as natural born genius in their field, but really according to Malcom these people have just received more opportunities for practice and that practice has made them extraordinary. This tale and it’s many examples of excess seems to scream one final ‘moral to the story’ and that is that if you want to be the greatest, you must simply spend the most time perfecting your trade. There is no short cut, tip or trick to becoming better then your kinsmen- just practice. I repeat PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE.

This book, Outliers really explains this theory with famous examples of people who were born in the perfect years to be given the most opportunities. These examples really make me think about what opportunities I was given and have the best chance of being considered an Outlier. I was given many speaking, sports and educational opportunities but when it gets down to it I spent the mass amount of my time growing up on a computer, taking every opportunity to play with programs and design tools. I was so fascinated by every bit of these terminals that I even got to play with Coral Draw, Autocad, and a drawing tablet before I was six. I received these opportunities because my dad is an electrical engineer, who always filled the house with multiple computers and dozens of parts. By the age of ten my family had lived in 6 or 7 different places at least and in three different states. I guess given these fact I should have just always figured I was destined to become a designer and computer programmer who loves to travel. So many of us fight our destinies but I’m not a genius and have yet to fulfill my destiny- knowing that I know that I don’t just have to be a designer, but I definitely recommend you read this book.

Interested in reading Outliers? It’s on sale at Amazon. I really enjoyed the audio version, but it’s up to you.