Malcolm Gladwell, who is by far one of my favourite authors, uses the most powerful and persuasive technique for writing - and speaking: storytelling. But what does he mean by above quote?
What it means is that in human endeavours or activities that involve mental or intellectual effort or application of a high-level skill, there is nobody who is naturally born for it. This means, that it takes preparation and hard-work to achieve excellence.
The argument relates to what's called the "10,000 Hours Rule".
Research and studies have found and proved that geniuses and those who achieve greatness put in at least 10,000 hours of preparation before they hit that level of performance that we all celebrate. From chess players, to surgeons, basketball players, footballers, musicians, Nobel laureates, etc, from Michael Jackson, to Michael Jordan, Lionel Messi to Floyd Mayweather, the Williams sisters, Dr. Ben Carson, Bill Gates, Wole Soyinka, etc.
And 10,000 Hours translates to roughly 3 hours every day, for 10 years! But you can shorten that equation. Doing 6 hours every day will make you an expert in just five years! 10 hours every day, in 3 years!
As told in the book, Accidental Billionaires, Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg and his team of developers used to start their day working from mid-day, and won’t got to bed until 5am the following day (that is 18 straight hours every day!).
Many of those early employees are billionaires today.
So, if this is the simple formula for success, why are many people not successful? Or to pose the question slightly differently, why do we still have so much poverty in the world? There is something called poverty trap. People are poor because they are poor.
To prove this, brilliant American economist, Jeffery Sachs teamed up with glamorous American actress Angelina Jolie to produce a video for MTV. They visited Sauri in Kenya where they met Kennedy, a young farmer.
Kennedy was given free fertilizer and as result, the harvest from his farm was twenty times what it had been the previous year. With the savings from that harvest, the video concluded, Kennedy would be able to support himself forever. See? Simple! The gift of free fertilizer freed him. It was the only way he could escape poverty.
But then other more skeptical economists started to ask that if fertilizer was really so profitable, why couldn’t Kennedy not have started by buying and applying little quantities of fertilizer and gradually grow from there? In the same Kenya, one of the most prosperous farmers was a man named Otieno. How did he manage to rise above others?
In the Kenyan village, most farmers can’t afford fertilizers. Why? Because during the harvest season, when they are liquid they do not invest in fertilizers. There are other uses for the cash. By the planting season when fertilizers are plentiful, they are cash-strapped.
So what did Otieno do? He buys fertilizers during the harvest season when he has cash. So, how does he meet his other needs for cash?
According to the book, Poor Economics by A. Banerje and E. Duflo: “He works a bit harder as a bicycle taxi driver (a job he did on the side when he was not too busy with farming)”.
<>-----------------------------------------<>
Martin Udogie, Publisher, Trainer and Programme Host for the Radio Nigeria Network, wrote in from Lagos.
<>-----------------------------------------<>
Articles for publication must have full contact details, including name, address and telephone number of sender and sent by email to: onlinewoolwich@yahoo.co.uk.
No comments:
Post a Comment