In his best-selling book, OUTLIERS, Malcolm Gladwell laid out what he called this “10,000 Hour Rule”
According to Gladwell, success in any field is a function of spending 10,000 hours practicing to get it right.
Gladwell makes a pretty good case for this, and I am sure he is correct.
Wrote Time Magazine of this:
“The most obvious candidate for memification in Outliers is a little gem Gladwell calls the 10,000-Hour Rule. Studies suggest that the key to success in any field has nothing to do with talent. It’s simply practice, 10,000 hours of it — 20 hours a week for 10 years.”
Now, here’s an interesting bit of information for you:
The average American spends five hours a day, every day, watching TV.
TV watching is now our number one activity.
If you are like most Americans (and Europeans) then in the past 20 years, you have devoted 36,500 hours to watching TV.
Or should we call it ‘studying TV’.
You are, according to Gladwell, three times over a world-class professional.
This, in fact, turns out to be correct.
You already know what a video is ‘supposed’ to look like and to sound like.
You already know how to pace it and how to shoot it and how to write it.
What you don’t know, is that you already know this. (so to speak).
The trick here is not to learn a new skill (aside from which button to push – which doesn’t take so long), the trick to tap into that which you already know.
The hardest thing we have to do with ‘professionals’ in this field is to unwind what they have been ‘taught’. Â It’s generally complicated and wrong.
We always have our greatest success with people who start from no knowledge and are able to tap into their inner instincts.
The more you follow your instincts, the better your work will be.
After all, you are already a world-class expert.
