In his book “Outliers”, Malcolm Gladwell states that “it takes about 10,000 hours of work to achieve mastery in almost any endeavour”. That’s lot of time. Eight hours a day, seven days a week is close to 3½ years. About the length of a traditional apprenticeship in fact.
How many people sign up on the exchanges expecting to be instant winners? How many people try to short-circuit the apprenticeship period and buy a winning system? Forget it. There are no winning systems, just winning approaches.
Also from the aforementioned book – did you know that 70% of professional Canadian (ice) hockey players are born in the first half of the year?
In other news, Leeds United lost, which rather spoilt my 100% record in the play-offs so far, but value doesn’t equal guaranteed winner. If Milton Keynes Dons can finish off Shrewsbury Town (correction, thanks Tiger - Scunthorpe) tomorrow, it will still be a very successful play-off round.
Thursday 14 May 2009
10k Hours
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4 comments:
i think you mean Scunthorpe mate!!!
Read the book a while back, tough it was brilliant! Very interesting to see what huge effect luck played in the lives of some of world's most successful people, most notably Bill Gates.
Think I'm a second year apprentice then. This allows me to occasionally snigger at the cock-ups made by the new intake, whilst dreaming whistfully of the future time when I'll be a skilled tradesman.
Sounds like a most interesting book; must try to get it from the library.
Cass, you're spot on about newcomers and those of us looking for the holy grail: a winning system. I think Andrew *Bert* Black created one and I wonder how much good luck he had along the way?
In the end though, we all come to the end of our luck - some, like my younger brother - sooner rather than later.
My favourite motto:
"On the turf and under it, all men are equal".
Phil H.
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