How do you become successful?

• Rewrote Unix: the operating system of Macs

• Co-founder Sun Microsystems

• Wrote software which we use to access internet

• Wrote Java computer language

• “the Edison of the internet

• Spent hours programming

• Sometimes 8-10 hours a day

• University of Michigan kept computer rooms open 24 hours

Bill Joy

Violinistsat Berlin’s Academy of Music

Divided at age of 20

Had potential to be world class

Merely ‘good’

Unlikely to be professional musicians

How many hours have you practiced for, since you began?

10,000 hours

8,000 hours

4,000 hours

Researchers have studied

• composers

• basketball players

• fiction writers

• ice-skaters

• concert pianists

• chess players

• master criminals They all have something in common

Excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice.

10,000 hoursapprox

How much is 10,000 hours?

3 hours a day over 10 years

or

20 hours a week over 10 years

“No one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery”

Daniel Levitin, Neurologist

Mozart

• Started playing at age of 6

• But much of early work not good compared to other composers

• First ‘masterpiece’ age of 21 (i.e. had been composing for more than 10 years)

Chess

• To become a chess grandmaster

• At least 10 years• Only Bobby Fischer

did it in less (9 years)

How do some people put in 10,000 hours?

• Enjoy it• Want to learn• Parents push them• They push

themselves• Use opportunities

available to them• Sacrifice other things

“Revenge of the Nerds”

The Beatles

• 1960: still struggling to find success

• Hamburg, Germany• Over 2 years and 3

trips: 207 nights• Playing together for 5

or more hours a night• Sometimes played for

8 hours straight 7 days a week

Bill Gates

• Easily bored at school• Programming became

an obsession• By age 20 he had

been programming for well over 10,000 hours

These are people who were given an opportunity to work

really hard and seized it.

Success is no accident

Conscious

Deliberate

An Effort

Success is …

This presentation

• Newspaper article read a year ago and filed away

• Two and a half hours at weekend

Was it worth that amount of time?

I will perhaps never know.

Success is no accident

Conscious

Deliberate

An Effort

Success is …