10,000 Hours vs. Overnight Success, Electric Guitar Lessons & Peyton Manning’s Legacy

This past Saturday my youngest son, Ethan, was concluding his electric guitar lesson with his great teacher Paige Garwood when the discussion of practice time came up. Paige took this opportunity as a “teachable moment” to illustrate to Ethan “the 10,000 hours rule”.

Malcom Gladwell puts forth this principle in his excellent book, Outliers, The Story of Success. Throughout the book detailing the success secrets and habits of the world’s greatest athletes and business people, Gladwell unveils the “10,000-Hour Rule”. Gladwell’s contention is that the driving principle to achieving world class expertise or mastery in any skill is a matter of practicing the correct way, for a total of around 10,000 hours. Gladwell does an amazing job of backing up this claim throughout Outliers.

Outliers

Paige went to the white board to calculate how many hours per year Ethan is currently practicing. Then he projected that out to 10,000 hours and how many years it would take Ethan to hit 10,000 hours. It was a great lesson in how we never become an overnight success story but instead we accomplish success through hours of practicing and preparing the correct way. Ethan learned that there is always hours upon hours of practice alone in order to shine in public some day.

Paige did a great job of laying “the 10,000 hour rule” for Ethan. He connected the dots to his hard work of learning the electric guitar. I loved that Paige took time to teach Ethan much more than music that day. The great teacher that he is, Paige used something Ethan loves to teach him some life lessons. Paige often takes time out of the normal musical technique lessons to provide Ethan with something that will impact the way he approaches life.

Sometimes he uses a funny story, joke or a Bible verse to convey the lesson that comes to mind that day. I am grateful to have such a great mentor in Ethan’s life that is guiding him along life’s pathway to becoming the man God created him to be.

It takes hours of preparation and practice to be really successful at anything in life. In today’s world where instant gratification and the myth of instant success is promoted in the popular media we often need reminders that hard work is at the core of true success.

Today we all had the privilege to see a real life example of the results of “the 10,000 hour rule” in the person of Peyton Manning. Peyton Manning conducted an amazing speech announcing his retirement from NFL football. The speech contained a multitude of lessons about life and what it takes to be successful in any endeavor we undertake in life. During his speech Peyton discussed all the hours of preparation he put in so he could perform at such a high level on NFL fields for they past 18 years. His work ethic and preparation are as legendary as his record-setting performance on the field.

Below is a short clip that highlights some of the key elements of his speech today. I would suggest you take in the whole speech to glean all the lessons he shared today.