How Do You Get To Carnegie Hall? Practice, Practice...

Malcolm Gladwell, author of Tipping Point and Blink, is back with a new book, Outliers. One of its principle claims will be contentious to many NLPers, which is exactly why it's worth talking about. Here's an extract from today's interview with Gladwell in The Observer to set the scene:

"...there is a remorseless debunking of the idea of solitary genius.
"Bill Gates, it is shown, did not only have an aptitude for creating software, he also had just about unique access as a schoolboy to a mainframe computer that the parents' association of his local school invested in, in 1968. He got to it in eighth grade before just about anyone else in the world. Similarly the Beatles' genius for melody did not come ready made. They developed it while playing in Hamburg in the early Sixties, at all-night strip clubs, eight days a week. In those years they devoted more time to pop music than any of their peers. The same could be said for Mozart, or Tiger Woods. They had ability, of course, but they also had exceptional familial circumstances that allowed them a competitive advantage at a very early age. They put the hours in first.
"This being Gladwell, he puts an exact round figure on the number of hours such effortless competence requires. To truly master any skill, he suggests, leaning on various pieces of research, requires about 10,000 concentrated hours."

And it's not just Gladwell thinking along these lines. Fortune magazine had a recent article coming to some similar conclusions.

So, how does this good old fashioned advice to practice and keep practicing stack up against some of the claims made about NLP modelling? What's Gladwell missing (note: I haven't yet read his book, just some articles about it)? Is some new paradigm necessary, given that Gabriel Guerrero too is sceptical of one man's plan to use NLP to get him accepted into a football league team? Or are Gabe and Gladwell both wusses, and just haven't got with whatever programme you'd like to recommend?

I'm always surprised when people completely buy into the "if one person can do it, anyone can do it" idea. It's so obviously not true. Ronnie Corbett can walk under a lower bridge than me and he can stand upright the whole way through without cutting off any of his body parts... however much I model him, I won't ever be able to do that. We all have genetic advantages and disadvantages that help and hinder us in different ways.

And beyond genetics, what about circumstances? Can I model how Richard Branson makes money? Well, maybe - but first you have to know that he started out with some money - his family had money, they lent him money and they under-wrote his first bank loans. He wasn't handed success on a silver plate - but he did have an advantage that most of us don't have. So we can do what he did, but we won't necessarily get the same results he got because our circumstances are different.

Would Mozart have been such a great musician if he'd never been given an instrument to practice with? Without your own instrument, it's harder to practice - and without regular practice, it's harder to improve - and without improvements, it's harder to be motivated. I guess it's more useful to give a young kid a trumpet than to give them a model of a great trumpet player - and giving them both is great. The model alone isn't enough. You almost always need something from outside the model to give the model life.

Similarly, someone once taught me an artist's strategy for painting and I learnt how he sees something in front of him and turns it into paint on the page. It works wonderfully and lots of people have learnt that model and learnt how to paint beautifully... but that strategy wouldn't work if you were in a dark, empty room without windows. The model is predicated on there being something in front of you to paint. If your circumstances are too different to the person you modelled, the model won't work for you.

I like Gladwell's work and this new book sounds interesting. Thanks for the heads up Adrian.

Do you not think that the beatles did not model their favourite artists at the time when they were practicing? If you take musicians, who by nature are creative people, I would probably guess they had people they were watching and then taking bit from people when they were practicing, which would have sped up the progression (they probably saw it as playing rather than modelling though).

While Gladwell does say research has shown that it can take up to 10,000 hours to master a skill and I believe Brian Tracy has said the same, there will ultimately be people that get really good at something much sooner, through a mix of a in grained self confidence and possessing skills from another activity and then transecending them onto their new attempt at a skill. For example if you are great in business with problem solving skills, a hard work ethic and the ability to think on your feet, it is probably likely you'd get skilled in martial arts pretty fast given the right instruction.

So yes NLP modelling can help a person to progress faster, however good ol fashion practice will not become obsolete as a result and think the '10,000 hours' mindset can create a harder work ethic than creating a mindset that mastery can come much much faster, then become disillusioned when you suffer a set back on the 1st, 2nd or 3rd attempt.

When I think of people like Jimi Hendrix who would play his guitar nonstop or Bruce Lee who would practice even when he was driving a car or Richard Branson who would keep a notebook just in case he got some inspiration or JayZ who would even when he was hustling would write lyrics constantly, I dont think they are thinking about how many hours they have put in so far or counting down to the 10,000 hours mark, Id like to think they are just having fun doing something they love.