Live Work Coaching

The 10,000 Hour Rule

20 August 10

Stanford Smith of Fluency Media recently blogged about the concept in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers that it requires 10,000 hours to become the best of the best at anything.

As he points out, 10,000 hours is A LOT of time, and can be a rather discouraging benchmark. Fortunately, he offers a way to “cheat” the rule as well. First, discover your passion. You’ll be much more likely to dedicate your time, resources and energy to something you are truly passionate about. And then, he offers some tips to jumpstart your way to living your way into being an expert:

1. Get a Coach
Coaches help you zero in on the areas that you need to improve and find gaps in your thinking. This is invaluable since it let’s you skip months (even years) of trial and error.

2. Join or Create a Mastermind
Something incredible happens when you regularly meet and share experiences with like-minded individuals. Studies show that a person’s level of income, skill and happiness is roughly the average of their 5 closest friends. Makes sense. Surround yourself with winners and watch your expertise skyrocket.

3. Hardwire in Accountability
Unfortunately, people are great at dreaming and horrible at achieving. We all need a push to keep moving ahead. Find someone you trust and respect. Tell them your plan and give them the power to kick your butt if you cheat yourself. This works better if you set aggressive goals.

4. Build Expert Habits
Identify your goal and set-up a daily ritual that will form into a habit. For bloggers this may be writing a 300 word blog postevery day for 5 days. These habits are the secret sauce for quickly gaining expertise.

5. Force Yourself to Teach (writing)
Nothing turns theory into cold-hard experience than teaching it to someone else. Your blog is a great way to regularly teach your craft to your audience. Better yet, write and promote your posts to get other peoples feedback.

6. Deliberately Practice to Strengthen Weaknesses
Find exactly what you are great at and get better. Focus all of your attention to performing at your highest level at all times. As a publisher of content, you should focus on your core expertise and writing skills. You can deliberately practice title writing, lead paragraphs, and creative thinking.

7. Don’t Waste Time on The Small Stuff
One caveat, some weaknesses aren’t worth your attention. If you are really bad at writing a specific type of post, don’t practice for weeks trying to perfect it. It’s not worth it – there are many other options for you to pursue. The key here is to get great at the useful stuff first, everything else can wait.

The entire blog post is readable here.

— Margaret Hartwell

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