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Get started NOW! 1 min read
Life

Get started NOW!

By T. S. Lim
Get started NOW! Post image

In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell argues that the reason for success lies in the accumulation of experience and practice on a specific task. He said in order to be good and successful at something, you need to spend around 10,000 hours doing it. In one of his research, he discovered a disproportionate number of elite Canadian hockey players are born in the first few months of the calendar year. (e.g. January to April) The reason for this was since the hockey leagues determine eligibility by the calendar year, someone that is born in the beginning of the year will be bigger compared to someone born in December. This is often enough to identify the children as better athletes and once they get into training camp, they get an head-start in accumulating practices and experience. Gladwell refer to this as the accumulated advantage.

If he is right and if practice does in fact leads to perfection, shouldn't you get started on what you always wanted to do and be good at? We don't get to decide which month are we born in but we can decide when we start practicing. The best day to start was yesterday but starting today is definitely better than tomorrow.

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