Malcolm Gladwell Takes 10, 000 Hours Of Practice

Practice, Practice, Practice! In the book Outliers: The Story of Success, are stories about Bill Joy, Bill Gates, Mozart, and other successful individuals who put in countless hours of dedication, passion, and hard work to be successful. Author, Malcolm Gladwell, states that putting in 10,000 hours is the tipping point to success to be at an elite level of certain expertise or skills. Does it really take that many hours to be successful or get to a professional level? Is 10,000 hours the magic number to be great? The individuals that Gladwell mentioned in the story definitely put in those hours to get to where they are based on the information given from the group presentations we had in class. But according to my research, it depends …show more content…
“But before he could become an expert, someone had to give him the opportunity to learn how to become an expert” (Gladwell46). Training with a teacher or mentor who is of high level of skills, can help you improve on one thing at a time to help you reach a higher level of performance. According to Ericsson in “Beyond 10,000 hours of Practice: What Experts Do Differently”, Mozart’s early work was not outstanding and was written down by his father and improved overtime as he got older. Many people believe that Mozart was born gifted. Professor Ericsson finds that his father was a music teacher who teaches young children to play music and learn about perfect pitches at a young age, which typically only very good musicians have but not all of them do. There is research that shows if kids train between the ages three and five, it seems that any kid can acquire that perfect pitch. That’s around the age that Mozart started playing the piano and started learning tones and keys, which explain how he picked up his talent early on. In Outliers, “The striking thing about Ericsson’s study is that he couldn’t find any “naturals”, musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did. Nor could they find any “grinds,” people who work harder than everyone else, yet just didn’t have what it takes to break the top ranks. Their research …show more content…
It is the process of reflecting your strengths and weaknesses to figure out ways to improving your skills or expertise. To be the best of the best; planning everyday, focus, and concentration is key. When people practice, they focus on the things they already know which makes practice fun. Deliberate practice is a little different. It is more focused on the on the things you cannot do well. For example in basketball, a player is only used to dribbling the ball with their right hand only and does not know how to dribble with their left hand. During a basketball game, a defender realizes that the player only knows how to dribble with their right hand. Throughout the game, the defender forces the player to dribble to the left side only and easily going for a steals causing the player to lose possession of the ball every single time. The player’s lack of skill trying to dribble the ball with their left hand resulted in many turnovers, which is a terrible stat in basketball, and most likely resulting the coach to bench the player for the rest of the game. To prevent that from happening again, the player would practice and focus on dribbling the ball with their left hand by doing some dribbling drills with the coach or practice at home. Once the player gets used to dribbling with the left hand then he can learn how to alternate dribbling the ball with both hands. Practicing dribbling the ball with both hand and learning to do tricks with the ball will