Response to "The 10,000- Hour Rule" from Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Question: "If you could spend ten years to become an 'expert' in anything, what would it be? Why?"

The whole idea of that chapter, “The 10,000- Hour Rule,” is that in order to become an expert in a certain field, a person must have put at 10,000 hours towards the development of that field. The words of Malcolm Gladwell explain this best: “The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a critical minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.” In the chapter, Gladwell further explains this concept by quoting the neurologist, Daniel Levitin. Levitin said “No one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.” That amount of time, 10,000 hours, is equivalent to spending 416.666 straight days practicing that task. That is over one year of your life, without stopping, working towards achieving mastery in that task. The bottom line is that people such as Mozart, Bill Gates, and The Beatles achieved the fame and expertise that they did in their fields by putting in 10,000 hours, or about ten years, worth of work towards that task.

And so the question is posed: “If I could spend ten years to become an 'expert' in anything, what would it be?” For me, the ideal answer to this question to me would seem to be practicing medicine. That time spent practicing medicine might help in the development of new realizations that would help in discovering cures for the world's deadly diseases. Like I said, that would the “ideal” answer. But to be perfectly honest, that is not the type of person that I am.

If I had my choice, I would study music. I would listen to it, read it, and study the history behind it. I would learn many artists, composers, and genres. I would find out what elements in music history led to the development of the music that we have today. I would learn to understand how the music works, and why it is so aesthetically pleasing. I would study not just the kinds of music in the world, but the elements working behind to create that music. I find any and every aspect dealing with music to incredibly fascinating. It is amazing that a mixture of a multitude of sounds can create so many wonderful and different things to hear. I would like to study why this is so and how the elements that create these sounds work together to form something so completely unique.

I realize that this may not be a traditional field to master, as it is more of a concept than a task. But I feel that I could gain as much expertise about this subject as a hockey player could develop skill in the game of hockey for instance. The reason that I would choose to spend ten years of my life to become an expert in music is because music is one of the greatest aspects of my life. I truly enjoy it and I would love to have a deeper understanding of it. Music is such a valuable part of my life that I wish that I had the opportunity to appreciate it in all it's entirety a little bit more. Music is my passion and would love to become an expert on everything about it.

Response to "The Matthew Effect" from Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Question: "In what ways does Gladwell's examination of hockey challenge traditional notions of success as merely the result of hard work and talent?"

Gladwell's examination of hockey challenges traditional notions of success because Gladwell is suggesting that the success of young hockey players is because of a cut off date. Gladwell explains to the audience that because Canada sets the age-based deadline for players qualifying for the team for that year at January 1, a difference is established simply based on the month of the player's birth. There is a difference in attention and practice the players that are closest after that cut off date receive versus players born later in the previous year.

This notion is best explained in the words of Gladwell; “A boy who turns ten on January 2, then, could be playing alongside someone who doesn't turn ten until the end of the year—and at that age, in preadolescence, a twelvemonth gap in age represents an enormous difference in physical maturity.” This gives that player who was born on January 2 more attention from the coaches because he is more developed than the players on his team that were born sometime in November or December. This “twelvemonth gap in age” also allows that player with the January 2 birth date more time to practice and develop his skills than a player with the November or December birth date that may have barely made the age cut off for the team for the previous year. While in essence, these two players may have only been born a few months apart and may be developing in “physical maturity” at a similar rate, the January 2 player, who barely missed the age cut off date, has almost a whole extra year to improve his skills before he plays on the team. This gives the player an “enormous difference” over that other player. That other player with the November or December birth date has been lost in the shuffle of other players who were born many months before him in that same year and are many months more developed than him.

Gladwell challenges the traditional notions of success as merely being the result of hard work and talent because he believes that this age-based deadline is truly a significant factor in deciding the success of a player. He is saying that a player doesn't necessarily have to be a hard working and talented player, that player just has to have an advantage over the other players. Gladwell explains this best when he says, “Success is the result of what sociologists like to call "accumulative advantage." The professional hockey player starts out a little bit better than his peers. And that little difference leads to an opportunity that makes that difference a bit bigger, and that edge in turn leads to another opportunity, which makes the initially small difference bigger still—and on and on until the hockey player is a genuine outlier. But he didn't start out an outlier. He started out just a little bit better.”

The author also uses this “accumulative advantage” explanation to show that his same thing is happening in the education system. If the school has an August 1 birth date deadline for the class for the next year, a child born on August 2 will barely miss out on making that year's class. But the extra time that that child gets to develop his skills over other students born just a few months before the August 1 cut off date gives the child the advantage of being “a little bit better than his peers.” Every subsequent year, the “advantage” that the August 2 child has gets a little more better than it already was. This makes “the initially small difference bigger still.”

But after all of that, what do we get from what Gladwell is telling us? In the case of the age difference when it comes to schooling, “The small initial advantage that the child born in the early part of the year has over the child born at the end of the year persists. It locks children into patterns of achievement and underachievement, encouragement and discouragement, that stretch on and on for years.” To put it simply, “Opportunity plays a critical role in their success.” It's not so much talent that gets a child to exceed over his or her peers, Gladwell says it is opportunity. Our world may be much different today if we didn't have this conceptualization that we should be grouped by some made up cut off date. If we really think about it, certain people in history may or may not have succeeded simply due to this realization.