And I would say you are overcomplicating things. First off, who in their right mind would spend 10,000 hours, or even two hundred hours, in pursuit of something they didn't enjoy on some deep and fundamental level? As the original piece said (emphasis mine), The original author is saying you must have persistence to move forward -- but you need passion (love, desire and fascination) too. Your hypothetical picture of someone who wakes up to discover he has spent 10,000 hours trying to master something "meaningless" (to him) thus strikes me as a straw man. Who takes that long to discover what they like and don't like? Do you need to drink a thousand beers before deciding if you like the brand? Mastery is not a journey with zero feedback points in which the moment you set foot on the road, you cannot self-assess until you have crossed some vast desert. Instead it is a journey with a nearly constant array of feedback points -- one in which you can gauge your passion (or lack thereof) on a very regular basis. Take trading, poker, and writing for example -- three things I happen to know a small something about. All three of these are very, very hard roads. But the people who love these crafts, and set out for mastery because they love them, do not mind that the road is hard. When they get ground down or beaten to a pulp -- as happens at times -- the fire is like an unquenchable pilot light. It always stays on, and always stokes back into a strong rich flame. As for your counter suggestion to "spend the effort at the beginning, working out the true purpose of your intended goals"... meh. To a certain degree this advice is obvious. One does not set off to be a beekeeper in Borneo or some such thing without making a few sensible calculations first. Few individuals say "Yes, I will spend 10,000 hours on this without thinking about the pursuit critically at all! Huzzah!" And then actually do so. In other words, the type of person likely to spend 10,000 hours on a "complete mistake" is also the type of person to be so scatterbrained they would be hard-pressed to marshal their focus for that length of time on anything -- hence the straw man. And to the degree your advice is not obvious, I would counter it is potentially dangerous -- cautious to a fault. There is a balance between looking and leaping. To "work everything out beforehand" is to overly engage in a fear-driven sense of risk control, which carries dangers all its own. Just think of the kids who grew up to be doctors or laywers or surgeons or what have you because they were set on such and such a path from an extremely young age, never stopping to examine whether the passion was there, before they had a chance to test and experiment and DISCOVER if it was there, a process that is sometimes made possible only by doing. Sometimes, one must test. One must sample. One must try. As Andre Gide has said, "One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." That means that any great journey requires certain risks, and to a certain degree an attitude of adventuresome risk taking in the first place. (Mastery of a worthy craft would certainly count as an adventure -- one that all too few have taken.) But at the same time, there is no pressing need to be an ass about a questionable pursuit, if the initial feedback points are not confirming. Spending 10,000 hours on a fruitless / passionless endeavor would be equivalent to sailing halfway around the world, having discovered you had no taste for sailing way back on the ninth or tenth day. There is such a thing, in other words, as incremental commitment scaling with a passion awareness overlay -- do I like this? do I love this? is it worth the pain to keep going? -- and in fact this is what's applied on almost all roads to greatness. The "should I carry on" question comes up again and again, repeatedly and in many forms, and the indubitable full-throated answer comes back "YES." Again I find the original piece wise because, in its own way, it pointed out this very thing (by closing with a highlight of the vital need for a discipline / passion combo, as the two are like individual halves of a pair of scissors). p.s. And because it spurred this back and forth...
This is not true. Some people are born with riches while others are born dirt poor. The biggest edge one can have in this life is to be lucky enough to be born weathly. The world is at your fingertips and doors of opportunities are open. I was born in a tool shed with a dirt floor in a junk yard. I was always the poorest kid in school. I missed many opportunities in life others takes for granted. Opportunities that can never be regained even if I live to be 150 and become a billionaire. Over the years I have heard people say, "I was poor but I did not know it. Everybody was the poor". This is pure BS. If you are poor, really poor, you will know it and so will everyone else. I look at what the income level is now according to the government for a family to be considered living in poverty. What a crock of bull. We never had as much as $100 per month income for a family of seven. If we had only 5% of the income considered to be poor now, we would have thought we had died and went to heaven. How times have changed.
Not the biggest edge. Not by a long, long, long shot. Unless, of course, you are talking about being born in a relatively free first world country versus, say, a third world failed state. By that standard, everyone born in the United States is extremely lucky. And many rich kids aren't nearly as blessed as you think. Often as not their wealth leaves them feeling coddled, entitled, scared to take risks, and overreliant on connections to get what they want in life. The graduating classes of Ivy League schools are packed to the gills with conventional thinkers who just want to make their $300K a year in the safest, most conventionally accepted, risk-free way possible, with grueling hours and soul-sucking jobs a standard part of the deal. (My little brother is a junior i-banker who went to a top school. He describes the culture in exactly this way.) p.s. Lest you think I speak from privilege, I know what it's like to grow up poor. Food stamps, second hand clothes, the whole nine yards -- even time in a foster home. Not a dirt floor in a junk yard, but there you go. Life is what you make it. If you want to make it an excuse, that's a choice too.
Think and Grow Rich is a great book that talks about some of the same elements. I love the story about Barnes who worked with Edison. He was persistent and unrelenting.
Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. ~ Calvin Coolidge You become a champion by fighting one more round. When things are tough, you fight one more round. ~ 'Gentleman Jim' Corbett Now you're messin' with a son of a bitch. ~ Nazareth
Sucess = Delay of Gratification. This is empirical fact. 99% will fail to Persist on the Long/Hard Path of Sucess because at some point they will fall for the Seduction of Instant Gratifications and Shortcuts. Once u fall for the loser's bait of instant gratifications shortcuts u learn how to more easily fall for them the next time and so on. After years on this slippery slope u become a veteran expert at failure.
And in that spirit, I encourage you to invest that extra bit of effort in spelling out the word "you" rather than using a text message bastardization. Fully translatable grown-up prose is a small but sweet gratification for some.
I agree with your post, but might I suggest a smarter brand of scotch? Perhaps Johnny Green, rather than red? Baby steps.
Excellent thread Darkhorse. Very interesting and informative. I am adding this on my notes to ponder on. Thanks