So what does
it take to become truly successful?
I have just
finished Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘Outliers’ A fascinating book on how success
isn’t black and white, it does not just come down to hard work and coming from
the right background. These things are important but there are other factors
that might not have been considered, like being in the right place at the right
time, being born at a certain time or coming from a family with a strong
historical working culture.
Gladwell
explores the key reasons that lie behind successful people. Bill Gates, for
example lived within a few miles of one of the very few super computers in the
world. He managed to be born at the right time, where he was at the right age,
to spend right time learning about computer programming. He also had the
financial backing from a club that his mother belonged to and also managed to
hack the system to spend more time on the computer without being shut off.
To top it
all off by the time the personal computer become available Bill Gates had put
in 10,000 hours of practice becoming an expert at his field of programming.
What if it
takes more than hard work to become a success?
Does Alan
Sugar, Richard Branson or Steve Jobs fit into this example? Would we find the
answer, if we explored this question in greater detail? Probably.
What does
this mean for the rest of us? What has happened during our time that we could
turn our hand to?
I collected Pokémon
cards; I had a pile so big that I needed a big elastic band to hold them
together. I used to believe that I could tell if a pack had a ‘shiny’ in it
before I opened it. One day I was walking around a wholesaler with my dad and
come across a box of 90 packs of playing cards for £90. Wow. “When I get older
I am going to by a box of them. It is what I dreamed about and if I could make
a career out of it back then I probably would have.
Long story
short my school banned them and I grew up.
A Tamagotchi
was something I was great at, unfortunately the same story above applied, I
grew up.
We have been
there for the mobile phone generation. My first phone a Nokia 3310 was one of
the first phones with a game on them – they had snake- and didn’t even think
about colour or anything internet based. I was there for when the phones went
micro to what they are now – a hand held computer.
We have been
there when the internet has become what it is now, I remember when I first Googled.
But I am not
that interested in phones or going on Google.
The thing is
that all of the above things we have been there for, we have been using these
things and probably have put in more than 10,000 hours on the mobiles or the
computers. The answer is that yes, we probably could find anything we wanted to
find on the internet without too much trouble or work out how to use a new
phone in a heartbeat.
We aren’t
there for anything new, yet!
Yet, is a
big yet. Because the point of what we can learn by the giants of innovation and
business is that you have to find the time, with a bit of luck, to discover
something revolutionary.
What could
we be working on today that could turn out to be great, how are we changing the
world, what is becoming important that isn’t quite yet. How can we change the world?
Find
something you love to do, there is no way that you will be able to put in
10,000 hours of practice into something that is just going to change the world
but you don’t care about it. So find your interest, make it an art.
Business is
changing all the time. The way that people are reacting to Business, ideas and
principles change all the time, every day in fact there could be one statement
that contradicts the other, and we are making sense of it. People are spending
the time to make sense of it.
I can’t make
a go of Pokémon cards anymore or Tamagotchis, I couldn’t make a business out of
texting or the internet, I might do these things but they aren’t my passion.
What is your
passion?
This is the
real answer and the truth of it all; you can be in the right place at the right
time in hindsight. What’s to say you aren’t in the right place or the right
time now?
Do what you
love, work hard, become an expert, work hard on becoming an expert. Enjoy the
experience, if you don’t end up changing the world, worst case scenario you
might just enjoy your life.
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