The key denominator is actually hard work. A lot of it, in fact. About 10,000 hours of it. That’s roughly 3 hours every day, for 10 consecutive years, before any one of them began to be defined as the ‘expert’ in their field.

This finding doesn’t come across as shocking. I feel the concept of natural talent has become overrated, right along with self-discipline. Often times, I see people around letting go of their dreams because they do not have the “talent”. Having an innate ability is definitely a nice bonus and great enabler, but the role it plays is lesser than what many may think.

While the aptitude to get an initial head start, beyond a certain stage, success becomes increasingly dependent on your attitude and the amount of work you put in, much more so than your aptitude. Hard work becomes the key determinant in the long haul. As Thomas Edison puts it: “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”.

As what Malcolm has found, even in fields such as sports and music where many see the key to success as having an innate ability, consistent hard work has proven to be the more superior factor by far. This is the case for many established names, such as Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Johnny Wilkinson, Bill Gates, Beatles, Beethoven and Madonna. For most (if not all) of them, their hard work started right as a kid. It was through relentless training since young before they attained their level of expertise today.

Here are specific examples of how top performers came to develop their talent through hard work:

#1. Victoria Pendleton’s emphatic gold in the women’s sprint cycling in Beijing came only after humiliating defeat in Athens four years ago. After training for four hours a day, six days a week the 27-year-old finally reaped the rewards. (from Times Online)

#2. Rebecca Adlington, the 19-year-old swimmer who won two gold medals at the Beijing Games, has put in an estimated 8,840 hours of training since the age of 12. (from Times Online)

#3. The Beatles burst onto the world stage in the 1960s, seemingly lifted from their hometown of Liverpool and dropped into the world’s biggest venues. But theirs was not an overnight success. One of the Beatles’ early gigs was performing near military bases in Hamburg, Germany; they would perform for eight hours a day, seven days a week. They did this for 270 days over the course of 18 months. By the time the Beatles enjoyed their first commercial success in 1964, they had performed 1,200 times, which is more than most bands today perform in their careers. When the Beatles first left for Germany, they weren’t very good. But by the time their Hamburg stints ended, they sounded like no other band in the world. They were well on their way to getting in their 10,000 hours. (from RCM)

#4. Generally regarded as a savant or a computer genius, Gates has a 10,000-hour story, too. Gates had the good fortune to attend a private school in Seattle that had a computer club. This was 1968, when most universities did not have a computer club. And Gates’ club didn’t have an ordinary computer — they had an ASR-33 Teletype, one of the most advanced computers of its day. Gates was hooked on computers and began programming in the eighth grade! This led to other experiences in Seattle, and by the time he graduated, Gates had practically lived in the computer lab for five years. He was closing in on 10,000 hours and was ready to take full advantage of the opportunities he soon would receive. (from RCM)

#5. By the age of 20, the best musicians at the Music Academy of West Berlin (as judged by the music professors) had practiced for about 10,000 hours, the “good” ones for about 8,000, and those trained to become teachers for about 5,000. (from Science Spectra)

#6. There are similar examples: Bill Joy, computer legend and founder of Sun Microsystems; Mozart, whose greatest compositions weren’t written until he had been composing for more than 20 years; and it takes roughly 10,000 hours to become a chess grandmaster. (from RCM)

Does that mean everyone who is successful in their niche is so because they have invested the 10,000 hours? No, not necessary. Some might have put in lesser hours; some perhaps more hours. The 10,000 figure should be treated as a reference point. The amount of work needed depends on the magnitude of your goal. The bigger the result you want to achieve, the more hard work required. If you want to be internationally renowned in your field, then 10,000 hours is definitely a minimum commitment.

My Skills

Many people often tell me I have a talent for writing and everything I’m doing. They say they can’t do the same for nuts. I take it as a compliment on my skill levels, but the statement itself a big generalization on what it took to get there. My writing skills came from endless hours of writing. My site building and web design skills came from self-learning since I was in secondary school. My analytical skills came from continuous problem solving and introspection in school and at work.

Was I born with those skills as a baby? No, of course not. Was there a time when I was a greenhorn in those skills? Yes, definitely. I wouldn’t go as far as to say I’ve mastered those skills – I definitely haven’t put in my 10,000 hours and there’s still a huge amount of improvement areas. I see it as an ongoing, improvement process. While my ability to learn things fast has helped in the process, I wouldn’t have been able to develop those skills if not for the many hours put in learning.

Others’ Skills

If I look at all the capable people I know around me, the same applies for them too. All their skills have been acquired through time, hard work and experience. I can’t think of anyone who is just “born” with their skills.

If you ever come across instances where people achieved certain results seemingly due to aptitude than hard work, there’s a good chance hard work has been invested. It’s natural to jump to a conclusion that people success without much work but closer examination usually reveals otherwise.

For example, when I was in school, there would be students who seem to breeze through tests and get great results. What many didn’t know was behind the great results were many extra hours spent in self-studying. Hours of private tuition their parents put them through. Assessment books done ad nauseum. Strong foundation in the subjects which came from earlier schooling years where more hard work was previously invested.

Another example: When I was in my previous job, there would be a handful of people who stood out against others. These were the same people who invested extra time in getting their craft right – whether it was on the work itself, collaboration skills networking, etc. Even in cases where the success was driven by some inherent talent, this talent probably took its roots from his/her past where due diligence was already invested in building those skills.

So why do so many people have a notion of talent as something innate only in certain people (as opposed to everyone)? I personally think it’s because people usually only see top performers when they have achieved a certain level of expertise. They don’t see endless hours invested before this expertise is attained. Without knowing that, it’s easy to jump to conclusions and assume they have always been this good all along. Another hypothesis I have is because the media tends to romanticize the successes of the “have’s” to increase their aspirational level, and one way they do that is by playing up on the successes rather than sharing how they got them.

Start Investing Your 10,000 Hours Today

Do you have a goal where you feel you don’t have the talent to make it? Whether you believe it or not, you already have the aptitude required to achieve your goal. The missing piece of the puzzle is not that you lack talent, but to invest the hard work.

Rather than see talent as something innate in only others, recognize that talent is innate in you as well. You just need to put in the hours to bring it out of you. If you start seeing talent = aptitude + hard work, where aptitude is already present in everyone and hard work is really the variable in the equation, you will have a lot more power over your goals.

Moving ahead:

• What are the areas you want to be talented in? Identify them.
• How do you plan to put in your 10,000 hours? How many hours can you invest every day? Draw out a plan. Your 10,000 hours should go into skill development and leveling up. Read Skills Development for more on this.
• How can you get started on this new plan? Work out your schedule.

In 10,000 hours, you will become the top talent in your field

This is part of Skills Development series:

• Skills Development
• Leveling Up
• 10,000 Hours To Develop Talent

Related Posts

• Leveling Up
• Skills Development
• Quitting To Win

The importance of skills development can’t be stressed enough. Behind every successful goal achievement, comes proper skills development.

Importance of Skills Development

Many of us often get impressed by the kind of results others achieve without realizing the time that was spent in developing their skills. There is a tendency for us to fill in other parts of the picture with our own assumptions.

For example, some severely underestimate the amount of work needed to attain those results. These people zealously set out for the same goals thinking they will get the same success, without investing time to learn and develop their skills. This is happening to many bloggers today. They read about the big name bloggers making six-figure incomes from full-time blogging. Seeing the low barriers of entry on the internet, they start out blogs as well, thinking they will be able to achieve the same level of success in a short period of time. In the end, they become rudely awakened when they see their blogs making no headway even after 3-6 months. Some press on; many give up.

Then there are some who are daunted by the scale of goals they are trying to reach. They become intimidated by their lack of knowledge and give up or put off their passions infinitely. Some conveniently attribute it to some ‘X’ factor or talent required and declare they are unable to do it because they lack those factors. The larger their goals, the more likely they get daunted by them.

Skills development is a necessary step in getting to where we want to be. With every new result you want to achieve, there are new skills you need to learn, new skills you need to develop. There is really no ‘magic’, ‘miracle’ or ‘quick fix’ behind it. If you try to skip the stage of learning, you become limited in what you can achieve. You will end up failing or achieving mediocre results.

For example, if you want to be an English writer, you need to master your fundamental skill first – your command of the English language. You can’t go far in your ambitions if you have problems with fundamental tenses, grammar and vocabulary.

Or, let’s say you are a budding graphic designer. To bring your creative visions to life, you need to be well versed in your image editing software, such as Photoshop. Else, you will be forever stuck with lots of envisioned ideas but no way of translating them into digital artwork.

The skills which you have define the boundaries you operate in. The more skills you learn and the more developed you are in those skills, the greater your capacity to perform. This means better results. By developing your skills, you literally expand your own boundaries. These boundaries can be as big as you want – they are defined by you. If you want them to be humongously huge, all you have to do is to keep learning and developing new skills to the point where you keep leveling up.

Example: My Writing Skills

I frequently have people commending my writing skills after reading the articles on my blog. They tell me that I have a flair for writing and I should consider writing a book.

While these comments are very kind and I do think I have much to improve on, these writing skills didn’t just pop out of nowhere. I wasn’t an English major in school or did I take any writing courses. The closest class that ever came close to writing was one of my business modules back in university which covered business writing (on a broad scale). And whatever was taught in the module is totally different from what writing on a blog constitutes.

These writing skills came about as an intentional effort to cultivate them. When I first started my blog in Dec ’08, I spent time reading materials on writing good content, such as how to select my topics, how to craft enticing headlines, analyzing top articles, and so on. Some resources I visited were Copyblogger, Men with Pens and Zen To Done.

My first batch of articles took a huge amount time to write. I remember starting out with the Discover Your Real Purpose series, because everything in life starts with our purpose and I wanted to get that topic covered first to lay down the blog foundations. It took a while to craft the content. There were so many different things I could write about on Purpose but I didn’t know which were the most pertinent and how best to present them. I spent almost a whole week getting the entire series down into 7 articles.

And it didn’t just end there. When it came to actually posting the series on the blog, I ended up rewriting a good part of it  because I felt what I wrote  before wasn’t good enough. In fact, the part 3 you see now is pretty much a whole new article from the original one I wrote offline!

This whole writing and rewriting process happened for a good 2-3 months for the other articles I wrote. It got quite frustrating sometimes because it was so inefficient. My disappointment series and Materialism Breeds Unhappiness article were great examples – They took way, way longer time to write than they should have. Copious amount of time was spent writing, rewriting and rewriting until I finally felt they were good enough for publishing.

Despite all that, I just kept writing, learning and improving in the process.

Today, all the hard work has leveled up my writing skills. Now, I’m much more on-point and hardly have to rewrite my content. My sentences and words flow out much naturally than in the past. And all this is a result of conscious, hard work in development of my writing skills: not randomity, some chance occurrence or magical innate ability. And you can do it too as long as you put in the due diligence in your skill development phase.

Core Skills and Secondary Skills

Skills can be classified into two key groups. The first group is core skills. Core skills refers to skills we absolutely need to have in order to perform our tasks. They are directly tied to the outcome. Without these skills, you cannot function properly in the task. The second group is secondary skills. These are skills which are nice-to-haves and not need-to-haves to achieve the desired output.

Let’s say you are a writer and you want to write an English fantasy novel. Typically, the core skills will be your a) command of language b) creativity and imagination skills c) story writing skills. Secondary skills will be things like your d) pitching skills (to pitch to the publishers) e) designing skills (to design the book) f) time management.

The differentiation between core and secondary skills really depends on what your goal is. As long as the skill has a critical impact in the outcome, it will be a core skill. If your goal is to write a novel that will be picked up by a huge publisher, pitching skills will become a core skill. If your goal is to write a novel in an accelerated timeline, time management will be a core skill.

The role the skill plays in your desired outcome should dictate the amount of resources you invest in it. By first identifying the core skills in the task you are doing, it makes you aware of the time and energy you want to spend cultivating them. The peripheral nature of secondary skills means it is sufficient to have a broad-level grasp of the skill, rather than an in-depth understanding.

In the times when it is not effective for you to acquire certain skills, you can have the option of outsourcing it to other people. I won’t be covering it in this article as it isn’t the focus here.

Developing Skills in My Work

In my personal development work, there are lots of skills which I need to learn and develop in order to be good at what I do. A partial list includes:

Core Skills:

• Personal development
• Analyzing; Problem solving
• Writing
• Speaking, Presentation
• Coaching
• Business management
• Project management
• People Skills
• Networking
• Marketing, Promotion

Secondary Skills:

• Graphic design (site design, namecards, etc)
• Programming (for my blog)

My core skills are what I focus on learning and developing. Earlier in this article, I shared how I cultivated my writing skills when I first started the blog. Beyond that, I also learnt how to market and promote my blog in the Web 2.0 landscape. I had prior experience running sites before but that was nearly 6 years ago, where the landscape online was entirely different. When I started Embrace Living in Dec ’08, I was overwhelmed by the new media that had taken over the internet – Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Twitter, just to name a few. They were entirely foreign to me. Before this, I had not even heard about them! Yet, all it meant was I needed to relearn the landscape and learn how to promote my blog in this new media environment, rather than being stumped by them.

As I expand my personal development business later this year, I will be starting to actively speaking/training at seminars and workshops. I’m currently working with a few partners to set up a career consultancy where I will be the key trainer and coach. Just like how I built up my writing skills, I will undergo the same steps to develop my speaking skills. For example, I expose myself to videos of some of the best speakers in the world, such as Les Brown, to get inspiration for my speeches. Recently, I purchased a white board and marker which I use to rehearse my speeches.

Even for my knowledge in personal development, I’m always constantly immersing myself in the best materials so I’m learning new things to apply to my life and share in my blog, coaching and speeches. It is a continuous journey of learning.

On the other hand, I spare minimal time on my secondary skills – I just do what’s necessary to get the things done and out of the way. After that, I will quickly focus on building my core skills again. This is why PersonalExcellence.co has such a simple design, even though I used to be a graphics designer. I did not start this blog to showcase my designing skills. I started it to enable others to live their lives more consciously and achieve higher potentials. As long as the site is functional and user-friendly, it serves my purpose. The same goes for my programming skills – I know near zero about PHP and I just pick up what’s needed from tutorial sites to get the php aspects of my site working.

How To Start Developing Skills

Here are some ways you can start off:

Break it down into smaller steps.

The process of skills development can be a daunting task, especially if it’s a new, high chunk skill. For example, starting a new business. Business management involves a whole series of different skills, such as project management, time management, leadership, problem solving, and so on. If that’s the case, break this down into mini steps. What is the first step you need to take to embark on this? Direct all your efforts into getting that first step into place, then move on to your second step. You will find things are much easier to handle that way.

Learn from the best.

It’s easiest to learn from the people who have been there before. Identify the people out there who are already experts in the skills you want to develop. Observe them. Model them if you want an exact same output. If you know them, approach them for assistance. Ask them to be your mentors. Seek guidance. Look for coaches who are experts in the field and engage them for coaching.

Research – Read up.

There are tons of excellent material out there with information waiting to be lapped out. In fact, in today’s world, we are more overwhelmed with the amount of information rather than the lack of it. Start off by researching on the internet. Download podcasts. If there is a library where you live, head to the library and borrow books related to the subject. Watch related videos. Hit the bookstores and buy recommended books of the topic. Books tend to be better sources because of the structured content and the holisticity of the information in it.

Attending trainings

Trainings, seminars and workshops are great sources to quickly develop skills. Depending on the quality of the training, trainings can sometimes be a one stop shop for the kind of skills you are developing. They serve as concentrated sources of information that is already organized and structured into a series of programs. The intensity of such events and the combined common intentions of the participants enable you to move forward much faster than if you were to do it alone.

Get into action – Do it.

There is no better way to learn than to get right into thick of things and do it. Strategizing and planning are important, but at some point you need to start executing the plans. When you start doing, you get immediate feedback on your progress and whether it fits with your expectations. Until you try it, it will always remain in your mind as a hypothesis. Doing things closes all the ‘what ifs’ and creates momentum to move forward.

What Skills Do You Need to Develop?

This is an exercise to start working out the skills you need to develop to succeed in your goal. Take out your pen and paper now or open up a document in your computer.

1. List down your top most important goal in your life now.
2. What are all the skills that are needed to pursue this goal?
3. Out of these skills, which are the core skills and which are the secondary skills?
4. For your core skills, how can you start learning and developing them? How can you apply the suggested ways above to develop your skill?
5. When can you start taking action on the different ways you have identified in (4)?

Start developing your skills now and soon enough, you will start seeing the merits of those skill building efforts coming through in your results.

This is part of Skills Development series:

• Skills Development
• Leveling Up
• 10,000 Hours To Develop Talent

Related Posts

• Leveling Up
• 10,000 Hours To Develop Talent
• Using Your Environment to Achieve Your Goals
• Creating an Inspirational Room [Video]

Many times in our pursuits of goals, we hit brick walls that stop us from advancing. This is especially so when what we are trying to achieve is bigger than what we are capable of accomplishing at the point.

To achieve a state where we become bigger than our problems, we need to level up.

Leveling up is a concept that comes from games. If you play games like RPGs, MMORPGs, or just games in general, you will be familiar with it. In RPGs, it is normal to run into a situation where we can’t proceed forward because our characters are not strong enough to defeat the enemies. This typically happens when we are advancing to a new area where we are exposed to stronger enemies than the ones we combated against before. At this point, we usually get KO-ed or battered down and have to return to the town/inn to recuperate.

However, this doesn’t stop us from progressing, does it? What do we do now? We start training and leveling up the characters. When they level up, they gain an increase in their stats, such as HP (hit points – your health bar. The more your hit points, the more damage you can withstand), strength, defense, dexterity, intelligence, luck, and so on. Sometimes the leveling up even results in our characters acquiring a new ability/special move/technique (or limit break for Final Fantasy fans) that adds a whole new dimension to what they can do! With their increased prowess, winning over the enemies becomes a piece of cake and you are now able to advance to the next stage of the game.

So how do you level up in real life to conquer your problems/goals? The most fundamental aspect of leveling up is to gain experience. The more experience you gain, the stronger you become, the closer you get to leveling up.

In games, the safest way to gain experience is to start off with the enemies that are weaker. Keep fighting them again and again and you will gain experience in the process. If you mirror this to real life, this means tackling smaller variants of the goal you are trying to achieve. If you are trying to write a book, go for a chapter first. If you are trying to increase your revenue by $10,000, go for a smaller goal of $2,000. These goals that you pursue should be goals which are well manageable within your current capabilities. Just by working towards these goals, you are already gaining experience points.

Assuming everything goes well, you will achieve the smaller goal. While you can try to aim the same goal again, you will discover that it’s now easier than the first time since you already know the strategy, the steps that are required and how to go about doing this. You already know the potential barriers you will face along the way and how you can counteract them to move forward. Just trying to achieve this goal again isn’t going to give you many experience points (if at all), since you are already coming from a place of higher experience and stronger capabilities. While you can try to achieve the same goal 100 times over, you might not even level up at all, since you are not even stretching yourself. Staying within your same zone of comfort isn’t going to put you in the position to learn new things and gain new experience.

Instead of trying to achieve the smaller goal again, you are now ready for you to move on to a more challenging goal. Increase the target you are looking to achieve. Shorten the timeline. Intensify the experience. With the larger goal on hand, work towards it until you achieve it. When you finally achieve it, you would have gained more experience points and leveled up! Rinse and repeat this cycle with even more challenging goals. In no time, you would have reached a sufficiently high level that enables you to eliminate your original goal with no problem.

Start thinking about the goals in your life which you might be having difficulty meeting. How can you level yourself up to become better and stronger? How can you level yourself up such that the obstacles no longer become obstacles? How can you level up such that you can conquer your goals with relative ease?

This is part of Skills Development series:

• Skills Development
• Leveling Up
• 10,000 Hours To Develop Talent

Related Posts

• Skills Development
• 10,000 Hours To Develop Talent
• Million Dollar Tip #2: Leverage on Your Current Skills