10,000 Hours.

I was going through a book today, and came across this idea propagated by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers that 10.000 hours of practice are sufficient for any individual to attain achieve mastery in any field. I have been stuck with this thought ever since, and I am still not convinced that this thumb rule can be rubbed in every nose. I think I have few valid reasons why I don't agree with the New York Times' best selling author and some research carried out by MIT to support this hypothesis.

Mastery in turn would genuinely mean success, and practically is there a standardized method to measure success? I am not talking about apples and oranges here, i.e., not drawing comparisons between Roger Federer and Lionel Messi. But even if you go for a head to head between any two professionals from same field, mastery or success is still very ambiguous. I am 23, and that amounts for roughly 2,00,000 hours right. So if I have put in 10,000 hours playing cricket, does that make me a tenth as good as Sachin Tendulkar? Or if from now on an average joe like me somehow manage to finish that quota of 10,000 hours, will I be ever as good Sachin? Of thousands of research scholars who are breaking their backs over a laboratory screen, will any of them ever come close to Einstein?

Hence my hypothesis that defining good, better and best in any field is as difficult as finding two identical straws in a haystack. Any success is relative in an absolute sense, and this applies to everything. Comparing two individuals or in-animates comes to us as naturally as breathing; but even if you actually start implementing the "walk in other's shoes" philosophy, even then it makes little or no sense. Why? Because you will always have a certain style of walking which may never be replicated by someone else. Hence a general thumb rule is not universally applicable. 10.000 hours of practice will take you closer to that best but there will always be a missing piece in that jigsaw, talent.

No matter how many hours I put in, 10,000 or 20.000 I will never get close to a Tendulkar or a Messi. or Paul McCartney or Gladwell himself. The reason being that its not just a number that you can crunch and get on with life. There will be a certain natural ability that you will inherit in your genes that will not last beyond a limit. That talent, that precocious instinct is rare and sometimes is once in a generation phenomenon. Hence success cannot be build up using specific ingredients in predefined quantities. And even if it was possible, you'll always need the tadka of talent to spice things up.

Again a parallel thought would be that is success all about talent? Talent will be the driver, yes, but it still needs a vehicle and that is where your practice and hard work will come in. Talent will be there to maybe give you a head start, but for sustained endurance you will always need practice. Without that, your talent, as precocious and as unique it might be, will burn brightly in the start but will eventually wither out. If your talent is your engine, then your practice, 10,000 hours or not, will fuel it. Your natural ability will always have certain limits, but your practice will stretch it to its absolute end. As Edison had once said, success is 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration, neither alone will suffice the complete set. Hence you need both: natural talent which gives you that instinct and hard work to drive that talent. Wrapping up someone's ability under the header talent does little justice to the hard labor put in by the the individual; so does the label of a hardworking fellow to someone's natural abilities.

No this does not make anything any simpler from now on. Only some food for thought.