10,000 Hours...

Thanks to all the endless waiting at the airport lounge and few cups of crappy coffee – I have managed to knock back Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers.

I wasn’t too excited about the book until Bani read it and finally I saw this young chap’s interview on CNN. With his mop top hair and the spunk in his attitude, he resembled a rock star more than an author...My initial lackluster response could be because his earlier books failed to impress me. Tipping Point and Blink made it to the never ending list of hip business jargons...yet like all jargons they only sound nice and mean nothing...

Outliers is different...It’s a concept that’s interesting and backed up with a lot of research where the data has been sliced in a rather intuitive and interesting manner.

Besides, various concepts – the one that caught my fancy is the 10,000 hour hypothesis. This bloke proves that to excel in any field (sports to music) one has to put in 10,000 hours of practice. He has done a fine job in convincing his readers with examples ranging from Beatles to Bill Gates.

In fear of emerging as an ordinary rookie – I tried to analyze what have I done for 10,000 hours? The first activity that crossed my mind was “sleeping”...firstly the number far exceeds 10,000 and my back of the envelope calculation reveals a whopping 90,000 hours. More importantly, it counts for nothing...Similarly Bull Shitting doesn’t count either!

Finally I arrived on something that’s a little more respectable...I have watched television for 10,000 hours. Everything on television…sports, music, movies...the works. Here is the calculation – I got cable TV at home when I was 10...thus the last 20 years into about 90 minutes of television a day adds upto a little over 10,000...

Infact as a kid I used to watch television much to the chagrin of my parents. The only time my dad grudgingly approved was when I won a quiz with the clincher being a question on Doogie Howser MD! Ofcourse I could never figure out if his respect for the idiot box went up or his respect for intellectual quizzing plummeted!

However warped this analysis...I’m left with a nice feeling...Guess one day the world will see some sense in why I gave up more lucrative offers from TCS and Philips to join a television network during b-school placements!