WHY YOU NEED TO BE OBSESSED
I recently decided to gift my mind and body three days alien treatment of utter idleness and inactivity which I call ârestâ. My schedule revolved around sleeping, praying, eating, heavily using social media and seeing a series I enjoy watching. I literally put my mind and brain in a temporary state of hibernation. Less than 24 hours of waddling into my new lifestyle, I became extremely bored and restive. Usually, when I experienced boredom, I turned to mind-numbing academic articles as my safe haven to distract myself from boredom. I know it is weird, but it works (mad sleep inducer). This time around, I decided to read an article that critiqued Adams Smithâs idea on division of labour in his famous book âA Wealth of Nationsâ.
In articulating his idea, Adams Smith used the analogy of a pin factory. He brilliantly noted that pin production entailed a relatively complex set of task and specialisation was the way to go. Smith argued that people needed to invest a certain amount of time and effort to become masterfully proficient in any given role. His idea was simple- If the process of production of pins become compartmentalized, with each worker working on a single monotonous task, they will attain mastery which will in turn produce better efficiency. While Smithâs theory has received unstinting accolades from some scholars of economics, his theory has also been heavily reamed with barrage of scholarly criticisms. Adam Smithâs theory is not the subject of this article, but his theory triggered me to an amazing realization.
Adams Smith pushed for specialization- he wanted people to focus on one repetitious task for the sole purpose of becoming masterfully efficient at it. I agonized over this and I came to the firm realization that if you want to be remarkably exceptional and dominate your field of work, hard work alone is not enough, you have to be obsessed with improvement. Look around, the very rare people who exude the godlike aura of exceptional efficiency and speed, are more than just talented hard-workers, they actually put in insane level of work and maintain a crazy work schedule with a freakish obsession for qualitative improvement. People who are obsessed with improvement constantly experience this unwavering nudge that they are not all that terrificâââthat they are mediocre, and that there is copious room to be much better.
I see practical enlightenment in understanding that no amount of innate talent you possess can give you that illusory colourful tale of a meteoric rise. There is only one way to be incredibly remarkable, and it is not by your talentâââYou have to be crazily obsessed with improvement! Corroborating this view, Malcolm Gladwellâs in his book âoutliersâ posited that the magic number for true expertise is 10,000 hours. In simple terms, no one exactly achieves true mastery in any field unless he has spent 10,000 hours of practice. Nothing else can substitute for this, nothing at all, not even innate talent. Psychologists have curiously researched on the role innate talent plays in the lives of remarkably successful people, and the closer they look, the slighter the role innate talent seems to play, and the larger the role of obsessive practice.
Malcolm Gladwell in driving home his point on the 10,000 hours rule analogized using a study conducted by a group of psychologists in the early 1990s (Anders Ericsson et al.). In the study, the psychologists split the schoolâs violinists into three groups. The first group consisted of stupendously talented students with the obvious potential to be âworld-class soloistsâ. The second group consisted of students adjudged to be merely âgoodâ, and the last group consisted of students who were âunlikely to ever play professionallyâ. At the end, all the violinists were then asked the same question: âover the course of your entire career, ever since you first picked up the violin, how many hours have you practiced?â The research revealed that the students who ended up as elite performers actually practiced more than their peers.
âsix hours a week by age nine, eight hours a week by age twelve, sixteen hours a week by age fourteen, and up and up, until by the age of twenty they were practicingâââthat is, purposefully and single-mindedly playing their instruments with the intent to get betterâââwell over thirty hours a week. In fact, by the age of twenty, the elite performers had each totaled ten thousand hours of practice. By contrast, the merely good students had totaled eight thousand hours, and the future music teachers had totaled just over four thousand hours. â Malcolm Gladwellâs Outlier Pg-38Â &39.
What is strikingly astonishing about the research is that there was no single ânatural talentâ who floated painlessly to become an elite performer without practicing as much as his peers. Neither was there anyone who grinded hard or practiced more than anyone else, but just didnât have what it takes to be a top performer. In simple terms, their research demonstrates that as long as a musician has shown enough talent to get admitted to a renowned music school, what sets them apart after that is how hard he or she works. While it is strong argument that people get more out of practice than others, the point is true mastery can never be accomplished on talent alone.
An easy way to practice the above: 100/365 days challenge- Pick an area of interest, ensure you learn one new thing every day, after this share it on your social media pages regardless of your engagements. Do this consistently for 100days or 365 days and see the power of obsession for growth and how it makes you like a demon in your field. Thank me later.