The Formula for Success

632 Words2 Pages

Michael Jordan once said, “I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I have been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed” (BrainyQuote). To be successful means to complete a goal or task at hand. Many people want success but do not know how to achieve it. In his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell writes “To become a chess grandmaster also seems to take about ten years…And what’s ten years? Well, it’s roughly how long it takes to put in ten thousand hours of hard practice. Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness.” (Gladwell 41). Gladwell is right that Ten thousand hours is the magic number because to achieve mastery in a certain skill it cannot happen overnight. The “Ten Thousand Hour” rule is the formula for success in achieving mastery of a skill because it integrates practice, talent, and most of all opportunity.
The first part of the “Ten Thousand Hour” rule integrates practice. Practicing a certain skill is essential to the ten thousand hour rule. If people expect to have success without practicing, they are not going to get anywhere. It takes days, hours, and years of practice to master something. A perfect example about hours of practice would be Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan spent countless hours on and off the court to improve his basketball game. Without those hours, his career would have never been as successful as it was. In his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell perfectly states what practice is about by saying “Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good It's the thing you do that makes you good” (Gladwell 42). Gladwell is corr...

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...ombining three key points, which are practice, talent, and opportunities. By putting a great amount of hours into practicing a certain skill people are bound to succeed in mastering their certain skill. People are born with different talents. Individuals need to develop their talents because the more they develop their talents the more range they have in success. Lastly, people who have right opportunities can have success in any skill. Therefore, people should take “Ten Thousand Hour” rule and apply it to their own skills to become successful.

Works Cited
Gladwell, Malcolm. "The 10,000-Hour Rule." Outliers: The Story of Success. New York: Little Brown and, 2008. 35-68. Print.
Gladwell, Malcolm. "Martia's Bargain." Outliers: The Story of Success. New York: Little Brown and, 2008. 250-69. Print.
"Michael Jordan Quotes." BrainyQuote. Xplore, n.d. Web. 07 Mar. 2014.

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