“Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell – Book Review
I recently read a book by Malcolm Gladwell, The Outlier. I am sure some of you will be familiar with his books. I found some interesting points that are relevant to sport in general and also to Table Tennis.
The 10,000 hour Rule
In his book he talks about the 10,000 hour rule. This rule relates to the amount of time required to master something. He refers to “The Beatles” being given an apportunity to play in Hamburg for 8 hours a day 7 days a week. On their first trip they performed 106 nights for 5 or more hours each night. On their second trip they performed 92 nights and on their third trip they performed 48 times for a total of 172 hours on stage. The last two trips in 1962 involved 90 hours of performing. They pefrformed in total 270 nights in just over a year and a half. By the time they had their first success they had performed 1200 times.
Another example is Bill Gates who had the opportunity to do real-time programming as an eighth grader. In 1968 his school decided to spend some fundraising money on a computer terminal. The terminal was hooked up to mainframe computer downtown. At that time most colleges didn’t even have computer clubs. From the time the school received the computer, Gates spent most of his time in the computer room. Over the next years he had opportunity galore to learn his trade and he used it.
Lesson for Us
The lesson here for us is that mastering a skill doesn’t come easily or even quickly. The Beatles didn’t just happen to get good. They put in hours and hours of work before success happened, as did Bill Gates. For we Table Tennis nuts, the same applies. You just can’t get good within a couple of weeks, or even months. To really succeed and to become great at the game requires dedicated work over a long period of time. So if you are struggling with a new serve, in many cases the simple answer is get out there and do it more. I often get complaints from students that their serve isn’t working. When I quiz them on how much they had practiced it, the answer is often “I did some serving last week” or something similar. If the Beatles had to put in 270 nights of playing for around 5 hours a night, over a year and a half to get better, we shouldn’t start complaining that we can’t do a skill until we have done some serious training!
PingSkills offers you our Training Secrets Revealed DVD as a method of teaching you how to improve your game. The answers are most often not in the type of guitar or rubber you are using but more in how much and how well you have trained. The answers are about what drills that you do and how you structure your time when you are training. It is about how much time you devote to each part of your training.
If you are stressing about a skill that you can’t perform, don’t! Just get out there and put some more time into it. Mastery will happen when you put in the quality time.
Outliers is a great book with many other intersting observations. It is certainly recommended reading, not just for Table Tennis.
rexb
commented on February 18th, 2010 at 5:38 am
great article! i read something similar about Michael Jordan. He was practicing and practicing his moves (ie. fade away jumper) until the move just becomes an instinct for him (muscle memory).
rolodexter
commented on June 13th, 2010 at 5:01 am
I dig the premises of the other books this author’s put out. And, he has a knack for writing for the masses, which is probably why he’s on the NYT Bestsellers list so often (what with mechanics like “Or are they?”–dun, dun, dun!). You would’ve certainly have heard of this guy if you listen to NPR at all.
Patrick
commented on October 13th, 2010 at 4:56 am
I read the book and I found it very interesting. I especially liked the chapter where he discussed that you need to reach 10,000 hours of practice to achieve greatness at something.