Tom Evans – 11th December 2011
There’s Ten Thousand Hours Between us and Success!
We had a master-class earlier in the week on “what makes a successful tv ad.” where the ten thousand hour rule was referred to and funnily enough ties in with the book I am reading at the moment: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. We were told that actually once we are inside agencies it will be five or six years before we have clocked up enough hours to really know what we are doing enough to crack every brief with a bulls-eye solution. This didn’t come as so much of a shock as an art director at Strawberry Frog who was sitting behind me during my time there would regularly refer to ten thousand hours and in fact in my case, I have probably clocked up 4-5 thousand already. But what is this theory?
I was casually handed a copy of Outliers by a pal of mine during my time in Spain as he headed back to Florida and needed to offload some excess baggage. “If you want to read something good, read this..” he explained. “I want you to read something good.” I didn’t get round to it though and it sat on my shelf until I read The Tipping Point (on our reading list) which was engaging enough for me to want to pick Outliers up.
The book begins by pointing out that we commonly attribute exceptional success to acute natural talent whilst overlooking more practical yet covert factors, which may set one more or less equally talented individual apart from another. Using the example of junior pro ice Hockey players in Canada, Gladwell points out by looking at statistics that those kids born from January to March are much more likely to make the elite competition than those born later in the year simply because they will have had months more to grow and learn at that early stage in relation to the cut off point each year, when months can set them apart. A small difference like this at the beginning can perpetuate a self fulfilling prophecy because those who’ve really made the grade, then go on to an intensive programme of guiding and pushing their talent to really hone their skills in an elitist context whilst those who fall foul of the chop don’t get that input. A small difference in the beginning goes on to become huge. Over the course of a lifetime this difference can become gigantic, as their respective trajectories continue ontologically to different places.
Gladwell then looks at other factors such as generation, more commonly known as ‘being in the right place at the right time,’ but it’s uncanny as he examines the statistics that yes if you’re born in a particular window of time such as the 1830’s for pioneering American industrialists or about 1951 for software engineers such as Bill Gates, then you’re potentially going to be the optimum age to take advantage of dramatic sociological shift. He also looks at class, taking the example of Charles Langham a man with the IQ of a genius and Robert Oppenhiemer the inventor of the nuclear bomb (and a good chap I’ve no doubt). Both men roughly equal in terms of IQ one from a wealthy upper middle class background and one from a poor working class background, and low and behold Oppenhiemer was successful whilst Langham wasn’t particularly. Why? Because apparently educated middle class parents bring kids up with what this author refers to as ‘concerted cultivation’(teaching kids to speak up for themselves with authority figures and feel entitled to have an opinion in the adult world; social skills.) as opposed to working class parents who let their kids evolve on their own in a culture of “accomplishment of natural growth” on Gladwell’s terms. Having grown up in a household with one of each parental types, I guess I know what he’s taking about here in terms of what is embedded in each socioeconomic culture.
I must admit I haven’t finished the book yet, but Gladwell goes on to explore other factors such as the culture’s we grow up in that can determine our behaviour. It is fascinating really to think that by being a Jewish law graduate in New York in the fifties the very fact that you couldn’t get into a good law firm actually played to your ultimate advantage. But I digress and back to ten thousand hours and how it effects us. Early on in the book it explores how Bill Gates and The Beatles were both set apart by luck in that the fortuitousness of their circumstances allowed them to cut their teeth by gaining ten thousand hours of experience prior to simultaneously also being in the right place at the right time. In summary, Gates went to a school where he was able to access a computer that hardly anyone else could and put the programming hours in to turn up in silicon valley with ten thousand hours behind him at the optimum moment. Likewise in the case of the Beatles; they went to Hamburg as young hopefuls, (and I remember this from the Film Backbeat about Stuart Sutcliffe) where they put their 10 K’s worth of time in on stage in strip clubs before they got anywhere near being famous.
In both cases there is acute ability, dedication and drive but also opportunity.
To quote Outliers (page 42) “ …Ten thousand hours is an enormous amount of time. It’s almost impossible to reach that number all by yourself by the time you’re a young adult. You have to have parents who encourage and support you. You can’t be poor because if you have to hold down a part time job on the side to help make ends meet there won’t be time left in the day to practice enough. In fact, most people can reach that number only if they get into some kind of special programme or if they get some kind of extraordinary opportunity that gives them a chance to put those hours in.”
I know the former points Gladwell makes are only too true though my own lived experience.
But, what about us now?
I am not saying we are geniuses. As a group we aren’t the Beatles, I admit that. But I don’t think there is anyone in the room that wouldn’t like to do great creative work in due course. What’s more we are all on a special programme, indeed an extraordinary opportunity to begin putting those hours in if we haven’t already. Being some one who knows exactly what it is like to not get that opportunity through my own experiences, I just hope we all realise how lucky we are and seize the day. I wonder which of you surrounding me will become Outliers, as I think it’s possible one or two might!
