10, 000 Hours In The Outliers By Malcolm Gladwell

Think of becoming the most elite person in any type of skill desired. In the novel The Outliers the author, Malcolm Gladwell, explains how this level of excellence can be achieved in a lifetime. He shows that putting in 10,000 hours of practice in a lifetime is the key to becoming this successful. Yes, 10,000 hours sounds like a very long time, but with dedication and diligent work it can be achieved by anyone in the world. Success doesn’t just come to someone, but opportunities show up every single day that can help anybody achieve it. Within those opportunities, though, one key element is still needed, 10,000 hours. “By the time Gates dropped out of Harvard after his sophomore year to try his hand at his own software company, he’d been programing practically nonstop for seven consecutive years.” (Gladwell 54-55) 7 years is way more than 10,000 hours and Bill Gates had accomplished this all before his mid twenties.

Gladwell soon began to question “Is the ten-thousand-hour rule a general rule of success?”(Gladwell 47). He at first did not think that this was necessarily something that everyone did. He started doing some research into very successful people, along with interviewing a select few too. He discovered there was not any anyone he could find that did not put in their ten thousand hours, they all put in at least ten thousand hours before they got to where they are