Outliers: The Story of Success. The 10,000 hours of work is just the beginning!

In my personal selling class today, the Dean of Business referenced the book Outliers: The Story of Success, By Malcolm Gladwell. He gave reference to the 10,000 hours rule of thumb; which states that in order to be the best in your field of expertise you need to put in about 10,000 hours of practice. I first read the book in January of 2009, about 2 months after it came out, instantly I found it hard to put down. The book has many great takeaways but my favorite one is also the most challenging, its the rule of 10,000 hours. This book gives examples such as the story of people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and The Beatles, who performed over 1,200 times in Hamburg, Germany before they made it big as a band. Gladwell says, "It's not enough to ask what successful people are like. [...] It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't." Successful people are more than just hardworking, they are also the recipients of an amazing circumstance or happenstance, which enables them to succeed.