Create Your Own Luck

Photo Credit: The Magical Green Lucky One by Oskaline

Thomas Edison once said, “I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” To quote from a book I am currently reading, “If you wanted to be a professional golfer, it wouldn’t be unusual to dedicate yourself to hitting 10,000 or more golf balls until the precise combination of movements in your swing were so ingrained in your muscle memory that you no longer had to think about it consciously.” This number, 10,000, is significant and has been made more popular as the basis of OUTLIERS: THE STORY OF SUCCESS By Malcolm Gladwell. The premise of Gladwell’s book is a study by psychologist K. Anders Ericsson. In this study Mr. Ericsson estimates 10,000 as the number of hours required to become an expert in a particular field, profession, or hobby.

With so much information at our fingertips I am afraid that our young and rising generation has come to expect too often what we commonly call “instant gratification”. In our fast-food society we mistakenly believe that success is at our doorstep with little to no effort. The stories told in the media of instant success, winning the lottery, or the guy who found a real copy of the Declaration of Independence at a thrift store for $2.48 and sold it weeks later for over $400,000 (this is a true story) do a great disservice to the overwhelming majority of us.

The most compelling part of Mr. Ericsson’s study is that he found no “naturals” and surprisingly not a single person who after putting in the required work was only mediocre at their craft. So it seems to me that not only are dedication and hard work the great equalizers among all of us, but they are the foundational ingredients to becoming truly great. True success in entrepreneurship and life is HARD WORK! And the sooner we mentally sell out to this truth, the sooner we’ll be on our way to experiencing success. Of course the human in us will cry for the easier route. No doubt it’s easier to watch TV shows and commercials where “get rich quick” is advertised so rampantly. Of course it is easier to walk into the gas station and buy 5 lottery tickets—it takes 5 minutes, not 10,000 hours! However, according to Mr. Ericsson putting our nose to the grindstone is really the only 100% sure-fire way to achieve success.

The number of 10,000 was reached after much study. However it’s really just a benchmark. Maybe you need more, maybe less to become a true expert. Choose wisely—if you’re going to endure 10,000 hours of anything it darn well better be something you love. The bottom line is that you ought to completely expel any belief in instant success and discover something you are passionate about and be dedicated, to the point of being consumed by this idea or subject. This laser-like dedication will mold our brains, and bodies to think, act, and be what it is we are trying to become.

So go be passionate about something. Go create your own luck. Be one of the very few on this planet who becomes a true maestro. Whether you reach your 10,000 hours in 5 years or 20 is up to you. Ten thousand hours, for a typical American worker is 5 years at his or her regular job (40 hours a week times 50 weeks a year). So if your passion lies outside of your regular job than you have got to put in time elsewhere to reach your desired level of expertise.

Go paint watercolor for 10,000 hours, go learn Chinese, go study the anatomy of the human body, go do something and don’t be afraid of hard work or failure. Wake up early. Stay late. Read more. Experiment more. Practice more. Do what it takes! I stand with Thomas Jefferson and loudly proclaim, “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it”

My question to readers is two-fold: Is the number 10,000 accurate or even relevant to your lives and pursuits? And are we as a nation willing to put off other distractions to reach such a difficult peak?

I look forward to your thoughts.

Cason Cusack is a new contributor on Ideas that Stick.  He is a graduate of Brigham Young University in Global Studies and Business. He currently works in the telecommunications industry and is the co-founder of the Raistone Group, a company focused on entrepreneurial ventures.