Outside Reading Blog #3

For my outside reading book I am still reading, Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. For this post I read pages 90 to 120 in the novel. In this part of the novel Mr.Gladwell starts taking personal stories and explaining them with his theories. Every page he adds on to his idea of success and he shows it in an example. He was talking about Bill Gates in the section I read and the reasons why he became such a successful computer programmer. The idea being conveyed Gladwell this time was still the 10,000 hours idea. This was the idea that to master something you have to have done it for at least 10,000 hours. I wanted to find someone who seemed successful and a master of an art and see if they did it for 10,000 hours. My neighbor, a piano instructor, talked to me and told me he plays the piano for 5 hours a day and been doing that for 15 years. He had played before that for many years but this was just for instucting. So, I did the math 365 times 15 equals 5475. then I times 5 hours times that and I get 27375. This is way past the 10000 hour mark and so obviously my neighbor must be a master at the piano. He is a very good player and I don't think I have ever seen him make a mistake but I don't believe he hasn't ever taken a vacation or a break for a day. Even then I still believe he has achieved his 10,000 hours and so he is good to go. I wanted to know how long it would take me to become a master at skateboarding and be skilled enough to be succesful. I skateboard atleast 5 hours a week and have been doing it for 5 years. I haven't had as much time as other years so 5 hours is very small compared to how much I skated a week in middle school. Still I took 365 times 5 then divided that by seven then times it by five. That brings me to about 1303 hours, meaning I have still a very long way to go before I become a master at skateboarding according to the 10,0000 hour theory. This discourages me alittle and makes me feel like I have barely made a dent in my 10,000 hours. I want to tell Gladwell that his book is to tell you how success happens and what you should try to do. Take opportunities and seize them. But he discourages you in many ways, like I am one of the younger kids in my grade like I said in my first post and that you need 10,000 hours to master something. That makes me feel like I am destined to be unsuccessful, and maybe I will get lucky. Maybe Gladwell is just trying to turn success into a very interesting thing and make you think outside the box.

-Jason