i tend to just not post something when i can't embed or display it graphically. countless times i've forgone sharing a photographer or some visual achievement because the material isn't formatted accomodatingly. but this is too good.
malcolm gladwell, who may not have the reputation he deserves for being an excellent public speaker, appeared at the AIGA business and design conference in late october of this year. he talked, at great and fascinating length, about one of my favorite subjects: fleetwood mac. and then he went on to talk about the beatles and touch upon a myriad of great topics all as a part of exploring how "genius" takes practice. ten thousand hours worth to be exact.
the video is here. i wish i could embed it. please take the time to go to the site and watch it. it's smart, absolutely hilarious, and really interesting. enjoy.
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2 comments:
As soon as I have a free thirty-eight minutes fifty-three seconds I will watch that video. In the meantime, slightly related is Jonathan Franzen's endorsement of the ten thousand hour theory:
"The best schedule I ever had was during the first five years I was married, right after college, in Somerville, Massachusetts. I basically had two friends, one of them my then-wife and the other a low-maintenance Swede, and I was able to earn a bare living by working two ten-hour days every weekend in a science lab. That left Monday through Friday for writing and reading. I could write for eight hours and still have five hours to read every night. My wife and I just inhaled world literature for five years, huge amounts of it, and I was able to accumulate the ten thousand hours of experience which brain scientists tell us are required to become proficient at a craft. So those five years were a great time. It’s been pretty much a mess ever since. One abiding rule is that if I don’t start writing first thing in the morning, I won’t get any writing done at all. It’s also usually a good sign if I’m waking up at four or five in the morning to worry about story problems. Levels of depression and anxiety that non-writers might experience as clinical are apparently a necessary part of the process."
I'll save you the calculation:
8 hours x 5 days per week x 52 weeks x 5 years = 10,400 hours.
Postscript:
I still haven't watched the video, mostly because I'm intimidated by how at 38 minutes 53 seconds, I will have to watch it just over 15,430 times in order to master doing so.
Post-postscript:
The above math is almost assuredly wrong. If so, please don't tell me. The last thing I need to do right now is spend an additional 9,999.8 hours of my life figuring out how many times I have to watch the Malcolm Gladwell video.
Post-post-postscript:
He lives only a few blocks away from me!
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