I have been read­ing a really good book by Mal­colm Glad­well enti­tled  Out­liers . This book can address so many dif­fer­ent aspects that a per­son is fac­ing: their spir­i­tual lives, their work, their role as a par­ent, just them­selves in gen­eral. You could apply this stuff in so many dif­fer­ent areas of your life. I highly sug­gest you read it.

The book is a fairly sim­ple read, but chock full deep wis­dom. The wis­dom from the book becomes this: how hard do you work at being a husband/wife, a par­ent, a Chris­t­ian, at your job, at being a friend, etc. His premise is this, those who are exceptional—put in a lot of time in being excep­tional. Con­vict­ing, but some­thing to aim for…

Here are some pas­sages to high­light that I found in the book:

Once a musi­cian has enough abil­ity to get into a top music school, the thing that dis­tin­guishes one per­former from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. And what’s more, the peo­ple at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than every­one else. They work much, much harder.

It is those who are suc­cess­ful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of spe­cial oppor­tu­ni­ties that lead to fur­ther suc­cess. It’s the rich who get the biggest tax breaks. It’s the best stu­dents who get the best teach­ing and most atten­tion. And it’s the biggest nine– and ten-year-olds who get the most coach­ing and prac­tice. Suc­cess is the result of what soci­ol­o­gists like to call “accu­mu­la­tive advantage.”

For almost a gen­er­a­tion, psy­chol­o­gists around the world have been engaged in a spir­ited debate over a ques­tion that most of us would con­sider to have been set­tled years ago. The ques­tion is this: is there such a thing as innate tal­ent? The obvi­ous answer is yes. Not every hockey player born in Jan­u­ary ends up play­ing at the pro­fes­sional level. Only some do – the innately tal­ented ones. Achieve­ment is tal­ent plus prepa­ra­tion. The prob­lem with this view is that the closer psy­chol­o­gists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate tal­ent seems to play and the big­ger role prepa­ra­tion seems to play.

In fact, researchers have set­tled on what they believe is the magic num­ber for true exper­tise: ten thou­sand hours.

Prac­tice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing that makes you good.