Achieving mastery

I read Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink. I watched and heard him speak in New York and had the privilege to interview him. The thing that caught my attention is that he was not sporting an Afro hairdo and he looked just as normal as anybody. And then I read his book “The Outlier’s” and I learned so much from him.

I read Daniel Pink’s “The Whole Mind.” And then I read his book “Drive.” And this is why I was excited to watch him and hear him speak in another conference and I am convinced that he is fascinating. And then from their books, I draw a conclusion. Daniel Pink says there are three major motivations for artists: One is autonomy. And he is so right. You wouldn’t want to breathe down the neck of an artist. He will lose his sense of artistry. In fact his general premise is that an artist who is paid to do what he is good at actually loses his joy in the process. Money has a way to rob them of their happiness.

And then Pink says another motivation for artist is mastery – which I will go back in a moment.

The third motivation is a sense of purpose. Aha! How true it is. I have often times considered myself more of an artist than a left-grained numbers focused businessman. I do a lot of writing. I imagine a lot. And I have ADHD. I guess that qualifies me as an artist.

And then to connect this with Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers. In his book, he says that should you want to reach the level of mastery. Like Yoyo Ma for cello and an Itzhak Perlman for the violin. All you need is to reach 10,000 hours of practice. Yes, the magic number is 10,000 hours. Other social scientist are trying to refute this. We’ll leave them to their own arguments.

I computed all my talking hours over the years, the amount of training and speaking and keynotes and still fall frustrating short of the required hours. But then again doesn’t this prove my point that there is absolutely no shortcut to success. Success requires hard work. Imagine 10,000 hours.

And then I came across this book: “The Way we’re Working Isn’t Working” And it has a fancy sub-title: “The Four Forgotten

Needs That Energize Great Performance authored by Tony Schwartz with Jean Gomes and Catherine McCarthy, Ph.D.

Guess what they say? The magic number of 10,000 hours is right but it should be done in increments of 90 minutes. Meaning, every 90 minutes you take a break. You stretch yourself. You take a sip of water. This way you sustain your peak performance but if you force yourself to go on and on then you plateau and then your efficiency goes down.

This is just so helpful. Now I sit behind my desk banging away on my keyboards but I remind myself to take a short break every 90 minutes and I can continue with peak efficiency for hours.

God bless those authors and their books and God bless more those who bother to pick them up and read.

There is absolutely no difference between illiterates and those who do not read. So start reading books and find better ways to live life and perform with mastery.

One thing is clear though. Whether it is 10,000 hours or not, the fact remains that there is no shortcut to success.

(Experience two inspiring days with Francis Kong’s learning leadership skills in this year’s last run of Level Up Leadership Nov. 23-24 at EDSA Shangri-La Hotel. For further inquiries contact Inspire at +639158055910 or call Jean at +639285591798)