Thursday, January 1, 2015
Hour 1 of 10000
Some years ago, I had written a book about my two years at B-School. My classmates who had had a sneak preview told me it they really liked it. Nay, they loved it, they said. Publishers thought otherwise.
When I asked for feedback (actually I asked why I was dinged) I was told that my prose was weak. Smarting from that insult, and after seriously considering publishing it myself, I put the book away and forgot about it.
Some years later, I read OUTLIERS by Malcolm Gladwell and was struck by his hypothesis that it takes 10,000 hours of effort to become really good at something. Time to get down to it then, if I am to re-write that book and get it published someday.
The plan is to write one entry to this blog every day starting today. If each article takes about an hour to write, I should be done with 10,000 hours of writing practice... well eventually.
The challenge, methinks, will be coming up with a topic to write about every day. Once past that hurdle, a good MBA should be able to make up some stuff. A good MBA that I am, I have a plan to get over this bump too. It is Mr Excel to the rescue. I have started adding topics to a spreadsheet - one for each day of the week ahead. Have got my seven topics lined up for January 01-07.
See you tomorrow.
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8 comments:
Great start sir :) All the best. Will look forward to read more..
I am following.
Hello Prof, You may already know this. You could try https://www.smashwords.com
and have the book sold as an ebook. Smashword has Flipkart as a channel. You can also use kdp.amazon.com to sell the book instantly on amazon as ebook. books sold via amazon India gets less commission though.
Really excited to see you back Sir , I remember I was sitting the auditorium when you came and gave a guest lecture at SIMS (pune) back in 2010. :) Looks like I will have a daily dose of it now..through your blog....cheers :)
Really excited to see you back Sir , I remember I was sitting the auditorium when you came and gave a guest lecture at SIMS (pune) back in 2010. :) Looks like I will have a daily dose of it now..through your blog....cheers :)
Totally believe in the 10,000 hour principle, as well.
(Gladwell rant coming up)
With due respect to the others, and with the caveat that this is just my limited opinion, I feel that the 10,000 hour rule is a fancy label that Maclolm Gladwell has used to make a half-true conclusion sound like a life-hack. Case in point - there are rare World Junior Number 1 Lawn Tennis players who are aces at the senior level as well. Bear in mind that most of them make the leap around the time that they're 17-18, by which time these champion juniors have already crossed the 10,000 hour practice mark. Andy Roddick was one such example - a world junior number one who wasn't even a top-5 player for most of his professional existence. How did he get beat? He probably practiced that same fiery serve over and over again, and lost it.
The 10,000 hour rule is the equivalent of a brute force approach being applied to a data problem with a large data set. I feel that the process to mastery is more complex, with a lot more questioning, second guessing and openness to new learning.
(End of anti-Gladwell rant)
Second, if you would, I'd love to see what the publishers pointed to and tagged as "weak prose".
Last, please do not take my Gladwell rant too seriously and do stick to the godforsaken 10,000 hour rule! I'd love to come home every evening to a serious new read :-)
http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/22/daniel-goleman-focus-10000-hours-myth/
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