10,000 hours to be truly good

I bought this book called Outliers, The Story of Success, for Tony as a Christmas present. It was a cheeky thing to do but I learnt this trick from him who excels at buying me things he wanted.

Outliers is written by Malcom Gladwell, the guy with the buffy hair who also wrote Tipping Point. Gladwell’s theory is that geniuses do not become what they are until they have put in the hard yards. Mozart may have wrote his first symphony at 10 but it wasn’t a masterpiece.

He also postulates that cultural environment shapes a lot of what we are or become. My favourite story in the book is about Jewish lawyers, how their forefathers started off in clusters, in parts of the US, often as tailors. But by the second or third generation, their kids quickly become lawyers or doctors. There is a certain level of charm in the story for me, as the grand daughter of a Chinese immigrant to Malaysia. My grandfather owned a laundry shop, so did countless clansmen from his village. My dad was an accounts clerk, I became the first in my family to have a University degree, followed by 4 of my first cousins, and my brother is an accountant. We moved on from the laundry shop because success was imprinted into our minds from the time we were born by our parents who did not want to revert to poverty in China.

It may seem like a cliché to see the Jews dominating the tailoring trade in parts of New York. But this reality appears in most cultures. The Jews who went to America who subsequently became tailors already came with a lot of knowledge about their trade from their country of origin. They used it. My grandfather and his clansmen got together capital and provided the expertise they learnt or acquired, to become the Cantonese “laundromats” of their era. Many Teochews (a dialect group), from Southern China, were provision shop owners, based on what the clansmen shared with each other – their knowledge of acquiring rice, flour, sugar, cooking oil and a 1,000little things you can buy in their shop. And if you want to learn the diamond trade, a good place to start is amongst the close-knit Palanpuris in India, who control the diamond cutting and polishing trade in the world.

I like Gladwell’s story because this is lesson I have been trying to impart to Princess. Hard work is everything; and if you do something long enough, you will get good at what you do. You can’t help where you are born, or to which family you have been born into. These are “given”. But you can be a master of your trade by doing the 20 hours per week for 10 years to be truly good at what you do, be in piano, ballet, tennis, or golf, a writer, a hairdresser or an accountant. The other key is to start early, or to have a head-start. The girls at Princess' tennis club have mostly been playing since 4.5 to 5 yrs old...that's how young we started. There is a girl in Princess' class who does 3 hours of tennis a day...she is no doubt, an elite sportswoman already, at 11. So, it is all about the hours.

Gladwell told CNN in an interview we are often impatient to see success. Success, like good cheese or wine, comes with sufficient time. What we need to do, he says, is to create opportunities or institutions allowing people to acquire the mastery they need to be successful.

Where I depart, I think, from the author, is the difference between "having it" and not having it -- talent or in-born knack, the code in your DNA which gives you just that edge in differentiating yourself between good and outstanding.

Now, I realise why I can’t make good bread -- I need to truly do 10,000 hours of baking before achieving any form of mastery in getting the perfect dough!

Outliers

Books -- source of our kids' intellect

If we encountered a man or rare intellect, we should ask him what books he read.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

This week was Book Week at Princess’ school. It culminated in a Book Character Parade today at 9.15am at the school. Oh what fun it was. Principal came as Cruela de Vil – what good sport. Principal’s assistant was the Wicked Witch with a basket full of poison toadstools. Princess and her friend went as Cat in the Hat.

There was Yoda, my favourite. Indiana Jones, another favourite. There were Edwards and Bellas (from the recent Twilight series). One class formed a huge Hungry Caterpillar. We spotted Wally and Caesar, and Robin Hood. Sponge Bob, Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank Engine were all on parade.

It was fun for the kids. An entire school, including the school caretaker, got to dress up as a character (from a book, oh well, film that made it to bookdom as well).

How many nights have I spent reading and reading Mrs Gaddy the Ghost? How many times since Princess was 3 months did I read and reread Brown bear, brown bear what do you see….and how many times did we read Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things are? Or We are going on a bear hunt, we’re going to catch a big one…???

I loved every memory of our bedtime reading. Princess has moved beyond bear hunts and Mrs Gaddy. She is onto bigger books. Her current reading list is an eclectic mix of Lang Lang's Journey of a Thousand Miles (world famous pianist’s biography), Anne Frank’s Diary; and a couple of other popular books for teenagers. She told me today none of her classmates knew the quiz question on The Secret Garden. I am glad I introduced her early to Frances Hodgson Burnett. Between then and now, we have built quite a library. Last year, we parted finally, with Geronimo Stilton, our beloved reporter mouse with a small heart. We also sold our entire Roald Dahl collection on Trade Me. The sale was sad but necessary. Space at home is finite. Our love for books is infinite. We are clutching onto an entire collection of Lemony Snickett, and a whole series of Colin Thompson's How to Live Forever and others.

I have no regrets spending all the money I spent on books. I am sure I will buy more as the years go by but we are at this space where I can share books with Princess. I would still like her to read teenage books though she has read bits of April Fool’s Day and found it too depressing to move on. She has also read parts of my Orson Scott-Card’s Ender’s Game and yet to catch on to the story-telling brilliance ala Scott-Card.

Books are a treasure. We don’t put dog ears on our books. We don’t deface books by scribbling on them. We don’t stress their spines by folding a whole lot of pages together. Books are almost objects of worship at home. They give us a space to retreat, to reminisce, to laugh, to wonder, to inspire, and renew ourselves daily. Ah, the beauty we call books!