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Malcolm Gladwell is the author of the best-seller Outliers: The Story of Success. The book attempts to identify both internal and external factors that seem to appear consistently in the lives of successful people. Rather than simply attributing personal success to ambition and hard work, Gladwell identifies other diverse variables, including the month of one’s birth, the era in which you were born, the occupational background of your parents and grandparents, and how many hours a year people work in your culture. In examining all these items, Gladwell concludes that success is as much about what is around people as what is in them (in the way of natural gifts and abilities).
These external factors don’t deny the value of ambition and hard work. In fact, one of the most significant factors mentioned in Gladwell’s book is what scientists call the “10,000-hour rule.” In an interview that appeared in the March 15, 2009 issue of Bottom Line Personal, Gladwell explains the 10,000-hour Rule:
“When we look at any kind of cognitively complex field — for example, playing chess, writing fiction or being a neurosurgeon — we find that you are unlikely to master it unless you have practiced for 10,000 hours. That’s 20 hours a week for 10 years. The brain takes that long to assimilate all it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”
At first glance, this simply reinforces the old adage that “practice makes perfect.” However, Gladwell takes it a step further: Even people with great natural abilities cannot sidestep, shorten or go easy on the 10,000 hour requirement. The repetitions are absolutely necessary to fully release one’s talent.
The assembly and management of a profitable financial plan probably falls under the definition of a “cognitively complex task”– there are a lot of pieces, some of which may be rather complex in design, and the complexity increases when you attempt to integrate these items to create a functioning whole. Perhaps it’s not as demanding as neurosurgery or as thrilling as performing a concerto before a large audience, but managing your finances isn’t something that fits in the category of “easy.” So it stands to reason that in order to maximize your financial potential, “mastery” of your financial programs would require something similar to 10,000 hours of practice.
- Is it realistic to expect you’ll devote 20 hours a week to becoming the master of your financial universe?
- Is it realistic to devote even five hours a week to the task?
- Or is it better to find someone else who has already crossed the 10,000 limit?
Whether the 10,000-hour rule applies to your work, or the efforts of those who help you, experience and ability are an unbeatable combination. If you aren’t going to put 10,000 hours into your financial programs, why not make sure you work with someone who has?
