What you probably didn't know about success

It isn’t merely about birth dates more than it is about timing. Bill Gates, one of the richest people in the world and the founder of Microsoft was born on 1955. Steve Balmer, one of the most respected executives in the world of software was born 1956, Steve Jobs the CEO of Apple was born 1955, Eric Schmidt of Google on 1955, and Bill Joy, the brains behind Java, 1954. They were roughly twenty to twenty-one in 1975—the perfect age for them to take advantage of the Computer Revolution. According to Gladwell, they were old enough to be a part of that coming revolution but not too old to miss it or to be already tied up with a wife and kids. The timing was perfect.

 The Beatles, one of the biggest musical sensations to have captured the world proved another important point in the entire success equation—the big part was that preparation played alongside arbitrary advantage.

In the 1990s, psychologist K. Anders Ericsson and two of his colleagues found out that in the elite Academy of Music, the students who were identified to have the potential of being virtuosos and world class violinists in the future clocked in no less than 10,000 hours of practice in their entire musical lifetime. Yes, all the students who made it to this elite music school had the innate ability but what set these virtuosos apart from their peers was how hard they worked their butts off to emerge at the top. And they don’t stop there. The best of the batch ‘don’t just work harder than everyone else. They work much, much, much harder.’

The Beatles, perhaps the biggest musical sensation to have taken the world by storm had their 10,000 hours in Hamburg when they chanced upon an owner of a bar who made them play non-stop for 8-hours straight. John Lennon attributed much of their diversified style and their incomparable confidence to this training. Bill Gates, who, as a boy had the opportunity to tinker with the computer nearly non-stop because of a chance encounter with a man who needed a young programmer, hence making it possible for him to program from day to night, had his 10,000 hours here, giving him an unlikely edge from the rest of those in his generation—a mile-long head start, if you must.

 Daniel Levitin, a neurologist who immersed himself in a similar study was quoted saying that the 10,000-hour rule was common to all the world class composers, writers, athletes, musicians, and artists. “It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery,”

But how exactly do you clock in your 10,000 hours if you want to be nothing short of world class? This is where timing and opportunities, and the perfect environment and people come into play.

For Bill Gates, it happened that his school was rich enough, had the right connections, and was the only school that had the time-sharing computer at that time—1967—when the rest of the world hasn’t even seen a computer yet. For Bill Gates, it happened that he had a school that didn’t mind if he missed a few classes to immerse himself in programming. All these worked together to make him a success.

You see, it really isn’t just about IQ or innate talent. In fact, in a room full of people with the highest IQs or the best that inborn talent has to offer, the value of these things pale in comparison to preparation and being given the right amounts of opportunities to shine.

In schools, your Most Outstanding Student is not necessarily the person with the highest IQ. That person could just be the most hard working and in effect became the university’s top of mind for opportunities to further expand his/her horizons and repertoire of experiences perfect to bag those awards. But your Most Outstanding Student couldn’t have done it without supportive parents who don’t mind that the student comes home late because of schoolwork. And he/she certainly would not be able to do it without supportive teachers who are willing to give extra projects or alternative projects hence, not discouraging the student from missing regular classes for say, a conference abroad.

At the end of the day, the most successful people in the world aren’t so because of their inborn talents or abilities. But because of the environment they live in and the people who surround them making their 10,000 hours of practice possible. Achievement and success aren’t a one-man thing. It’s a team effort because if you look at each of them closely, the world’s billionaires, star athletes, best actors, prima ballerinas, Pulitzer Prize Winners, and Nobel laureates could have never, ever done it alone.