Skip The Line: Why You Don’t Need The 10,000-Hour Rule To Succeed In Life
An alternative to the famous 10,000-hour rule if you want to beat the hell out of competitors.
You might be familiar with the world-famous 10,000-hour rule. It served me great for the past couple of years. But when I joined Medium and started writing, it felt like absolute. Even though I was working a lot but I was not able to get any results.
Until I found an alternative to the 10,000-hour rule, I came across James Altucher’s “Skip the line” book. No doubt 10,000-hour rule is great for certain professions like sports or arts. But it’s not valid for everyone else. For others, you need to follow James Altucher’s advice.
Here’s what I have learned that helped me become a better writer.
The 1% Rule
Instead of working 10–12 hours daily to improve your craft, work 1% harder each day. Every day, improve one aspect of your life. Whether it’s work or work, find out what small thing you can do to become 1% better than yesterday.
The philosophy behind the 1% rule is continuous improvement. If you have a skill or a goal you are trying to improve, take one step towards it. 1% each day will add up to 365% in a year.
The 10,000 Experiments
If you want to skill the line, the fastest way is to experiment a lot. 10,000 experiments beat the 10,000-hour rule every time. Stop being a robot, be a scientist of your life. Ask questions. Experiment with new things.
When you experiment with something, you’ll either learn something new, or you’ll succeed at something. Treat failure as part of learning.
Treat failure as part of learning.
For an idea to succeed, you must execute it. How will you know if you don’t experiment with it? However, to experiment, James tells us few things to keep in mind:
- The experiment must be simple to setup
- It must be a low-risk experiment.
- Even if the experiment fails, you’ll learn something.
- If the experiment succeeds, there will be a huge potential for you.
- The experiment must be unique, and if it’s done before you ask, what more can you offer?
If you want to succeed at something, improve yourself 1% a day. Be it your skill, knowledge, or career the 1% will improve your life significantly over time.
Develop Micro-Skills
Business, entrepreneurship, finance, software development, writing are not skills. They are a collection of micro-skills that makes you better in one field.
To become the best at something, pick a pen and paper and write down the 10 micro-skills that will make you better at that field. For example, to become an artist, you need drawing skills, sketching, correct combination of watercolors and oils. These micro-skills will make you a better artist. Then there are “tribal skills,” also known as “soft skills,” necessary to help you sell your art better.
For each skill, experiment with that skill and figure out a way to improve it.
Strengthen Your Possibility Muscle
The world is filled with unlimited possibilities. But unless you exercise your possibility muscle, you won’t be able to explore the world of ideas. Once you start creating new ideas, a whole new world will open up for you. You’ll start seeing the world from a new angle.
One sure-shot way to exercise your possibility muscle is to write 10 ideas every day. When you write down new ideas, it will fire up your brain, and in a year, you’ll have 3650 ideas to experiment with. And we all know that.
You only need one big idea to succeed in life.
Don’t filter your ideas while you write them. Once you create many ideas, you won’t even be worried about your ideas being stolen because you’ll have tons of them already in your journal. And maybe sharing some ideas might give you powerful connections that can help you succeed faster.
The 50/1 Rule
You might have heard about the Pareto Principle — the 80/20 rule. It states that 80% of your output comes from 20% of the effort. Research suggests that in an 8 hours workday, an employee is productive for 2 hours and 53 minutes; for the rest of the time, he wastes time.
So, instead of giving 100% time to get 100% results, focus more on creating desirable results. The author breaks down the 80/20 rule into the 50/1 rule. It means that 50% of your results are influenced by 1% of the work.
Focus on one main work each day that gives you maximum results. And with leftover time, you can do other productive work.
You can even use other time to figure out your purpose, fall in love with someone, or working on your hobby.
Taking A Step Back
In life, you won’t always move forward. At times, to make a big jump, you must take two steps backward. It’s hard to let go of the ego because you have a status to maintain, but if you see the big picture and understand that leaping backward is actually course correction. You’ll actually be able to realize your self-worth and increase your chances of success.
Although there is a lot more you can learn from the book, I found these things worth writing about. Follow them and let me know which of these worked well for you.
