Key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours.

By Yael Tamar

In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell builds an impressive case of why very talented people succeeded. He uses examples of famous composers, musicians and scientists to show that it was not by talent alone that they got to being incredibly good at something. 

He calculated that one needs to work on something for about 20 hours of work a week for 10 years in order to convert your “talent” to greatness. In other words, talent is simply “practice makes it perfect.”

Some examples that Gladwell gives are the Beatles, who before becoming the most popular band in the world logged more than 10,000 hours of playing on stage in a German bar (over four years, sometimes 10 hours a day), an experience to which other bands could not come near.

Another example is Bill Gates, who by sheer luck had logged in more than 10,000 hours of programming by the time he dropped out of Harvard.

Of course these historical examples have to do a great deal with opportunities. The Beatles got invited to perform at the German club and Bill Gates lucked out to be one of the 50 guys in the world (allegedly) who had an unlimited access to a computer at the time he grew up in.

However, opportunities present themselves all the time. We just have to have an eye for them and work hard logging in hours at something we want to be great at.

And this is good news for most of us!

Start planning your achievement today, sign up for http://taptank.com