This is a short podcast mini-chapter from Brian Johnson’s book 'A Philosopher’s Notes' (Optimize with Brian Johnson). It argues that greatness is largely the result of extensive deliberate practice (commonly cited as ~10,000 hours) rather than innate genius, using Michael Jordan and Mozart as examples. The episode summarizes the 10,000-hour rule and offers reading recommendations (Gladwell, Colvin, Coyle).
Questions this episode answers
10,000 hours.
About 4 hours per day, 5 days per week, 50 weeks per year, for 10 years.
You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson More Wisdom in Less Time this is a mini chapter from Brian's book A Philosopher's Notes. You can find it on Amazon.
Jordan Mozart in 10,000 hours did you know Michael Jordan wasn't even the best athlete in his family as a kid? Nope. It wasn't until MJ didn't make the varsity team his sophomore year in high school that he decided to turn it up about 10 notches and become one of the hardest working athletes of his generation. And as a result, one of the best. People don't like to hear about that though. We prefer to think of Air Jordan as a born genius rather than an uber hard working guy who created his genius. Much easier to say the great ones were born lucky than to realize we might be capable of a whole lot more than we're up to. Huh? How about Mozart Born a Genius, right? Not if you scratch the surface of that myth. Mozart was born the son of Leopold Mozart, who just so happened to literally write the book on how to teach kids music. Fact is, Mozart watched his dad teach his sister music from the day he was born and was hard at work, barely out of his diapers. Sure, he did extraordinarily precocious stuff as a little guy, but we need to look at how hard he worked and how many hours of deliberate practice he'd put in by the time he created something truly world class. 10,000 hours. If you believe the experts, that's the magic number. 10,000 hours, or about four hours a day, five days a week, 50 weeks a year, for 10 years of what they call deliberate practice when we're at our edge, challenging ourselves to develop new skills in a given domain. From violinists to programmers, athletes to entrepreneurs, 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. Now, we may or may not want to invest the energy necessary to achieve greatness, but let's not pretend these peeps were born with the greatness gene. And for those of us who are committed to doing something great, how are your 10,000 hours? Little footnote here. Some of my favorite books on this subject that you might dig include Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, Talent is Overrated by Jeff Colvin, and the Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. Great reads.
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