Friday, September 18, 2009

Outlying Snack


Everyone is possessed with an innate and natural talent for something. For some it's very specifically one thing, for others it may be quite a few. I finished The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell earlier this summer, and in it he expounds upon the magic 10,000 Hours-- the number of hours it takes of practice, experience, pure and sheer work on the thing at which you will excel. The Beatles logged about 10,000 Hours in Hamburg playing cover songs 6 nights a week in skeazy nightclubs, testing and setting new limits in their ability to experiment with several musical genres, all before "Love Me Do" in 1962. Bill Gates worked as a programmer for some computer test center while he was still in high school, and he logged 10,000 Hours doing that before Microsoft was even a twinkle in his nerdy bespectacled eye. Da Geniuses of Da World, it seems, do what they love and love what they do so much and so passionately, that it is no problem for them to reach that number, and subsequently reach greatness.

For all of the kids my age, the ones who went to my school and majored in Theatre: I calculated that, assuming that you did drama club or theater company or whatnot for all four years of high school, and assuming that you did studio all four years of college and maintained a heavy evening presence throughout rehearsing on the 2nd floor of Tisch, and assuming that you have worked rather steadily (not insanely either, like, a bundle of hours of rehearsal/theatrical endeavour a week) since you've graduated, that we have all surpassed the 10,000 Hour Mark sometime this summer, or we will be doing so this fall.

So, Congratulations. You are on the fast track to becoming a Bona Fide Creative Genius, and according to the aforementioned existing models, we have all the right to change the world . Keep doing what you love and Loving what you do. As my brother said when he visited this summer, "Watching you guys find time to do what you love just because you love it, it's like watching the future of stuff."

The only thing I've logged as much time or more on as this is probably investing myself in fictional love stories, which may or may not hold as promising or lucrative a future.

1 comment:

Alex said...

That's a fantastic book.