You, Too, Can Be Wildly Successful!

My mom recently made a gift subscription to me of Reader's Digest, a magazine covering material that generally appeals to an older audience. But occasionally there are pieces aimed at younger readers, too, like this month's Q&A with Malcolm Gladwell, author of THE TIPPING POINT and BLINK -- books that discuss, respectively, "how ideas and products catch fire, and why gut decisions are often better than well-thought-out responses." His new book, OUTLIERS: THE STORY OF SUCCESS (Little, Brown), is about "people whose achievement exceeds every expectation."

Gladwell speculates that these wildly successful people -- Bill Gates, for example, or The Beatles -- have talent, yes, but they also spent a significant number of hours mastering their crafts before hitting the big time. "The magic number for them, for Mozart, and for so many outliers, as I call them, appears to be 10,000 hours."

As a writer who has spent six years on her craft, and who has written two novels and landed two agents, but who has still not sold a book, I wondered where I stood in that equation. Naturally, I penciled it out:

52 weeks x 5 days a week = 260 writing days per year.

260 days per year x 6 hours per day = 1,560 writing hours per year.

1,560 hours per year x 6 years = 9,360 writing hours.

Which explains why I haven't yet made it! By my calculation, I've got to put in another 640 hours before becoming as wildly successful as The Beatles!

Now, that's something to shoot for.