Becoming a social media pro doesn’t require all 10,000 hours
By Chris Abraham. Filed in Internet Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media Marketing |Tags: 10 000 hours, Beatles, Hamburg, Jascha Heifetz, malcolm gladwell, Niccolò Paganini, Outliers, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
While Malcolm Gladwell posited, in his book Outliers: The Story of Success, that one needs to engage in a challenging 10,000 hours of experience and practice before becoming a master, don’t let the belief that you need to accrue all 10,000 hours of challenging practice and experience before you sell yourself as a social media maven.
All you need to do is know more than the person who hires you in order to become a professional. It is in taking the risk upon yourself to fake it ’til you make it, to make mistakes while you’re making magic, and in learning and knowing more so that you can win clients who are smarter and more sophisticated.
If people are asking you for help with Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, reddit, blogging, Tumblr, WordPress, or anything else, you’re ready — to charge people for your time, expertise, insight, and creativity. Remember, 10,000 hours signifies mastery of the sort that is considered world-class — do you need to be the best in order to make a living?
No, you don’t.
You also don’t need to know the answer to everything in order to be ready to go pro. Your friends are resources as is the Internet and your larger social network. With experience comes an innate body of knowledge; however, don’t be fooled. Medical doctors and lawyers don’t know the answer to everything, either; case in point: House. They don’t know any of the answers, at first — but they puzzle it out.
And you can, too.
While 10,000 hours of increasingly-challenging study of the viola da gamba will probably get you to Carnegie Hall — practice, practice — is your goal, indeed, transcendent mastery or are you happy to play well enough that you can make a living being a musician?
Additionally, I believe that people are a little misinformed about Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 Hour Rule. It’s not like Scuba diving or flying an aircraft: the 10,000 hours of mastery are not accumulated like number of dives or flight time. That 10k is not billable hours you burn through by punching time-cards.
If you are, indeed, pursuing mastery (of social media, marketing, PR, light aircraft, diving, or the viola) then you need to constantly step it up. In order to become a master, you need to not only put in the time — of course, there are no short cuts, it’ll still take you all of those 600,000 minutes — but you need to constantly challenge yourself, take risks, try something new, innovate, interpret, create, expand, and move well out of your comfort zone.
The violinist Jascha Heifetz didn’t earn his 10,000 hours playing Chopsticks. There was a little Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky thrown in there. Maybe some Franz Liszt and Niccolò Paganini; Arnold Schoenberg and Béla Bartók for good measure.
And back to the Viola da Gamba, if you want to take a hint from Yo-Yo Ma, cross-training doesn’t hurt either. Other instruments and styles of music allow you to expand your experiential horizon while giving you a wider base upon which to do your pattern-recognizing and problem-solving.
If you haven’t read Outliers, Gladwell brings up the Beatles. They accrued their 10,000 hours by performing live in Hamburg, Germany, over 1,200 times. Not by practicing part-time but by really getting out there are working. They were professional musicians while they became masters. And you should, too, even if it’s in Hamburg brothels and flop-houses and not at Edelman or Ogilvy — that will come.
When artists and businessmen annoyingly talk about how important their suffering, depression, mental illness, and failure were to their ultimate success, I believe that some of the most important hours of those 10,000 hours are the hours when you really want to break that Stradivarius fiddle over the music stand — but don’t. Or do, but persevere. I believe that those manic all-nighters when you’re swept away by the Muse or just focused on solving an impossible riddle are essential to the craft; however, that’s not instead of practicing 8-hours-a-day, it’s in addition.
So, please don’t waste any more time with this article. You have 10,000 hours of something to pursue right now — and not for free. Please do not let Mastery get in the way of being better than the idiots around you. And remember, just because you think something’s easy or simple in no way means that it is — it’s only easy for you. Other people either don’t care enough to do the work like you have, don’t have your gift and natural affinity, or they’re just too dim.
Good luck and if you’re going to aspire to mastery, take advice from John, Paul, George, and Ringo: do it for money, do it in Hamburg, and do it in brothels. Viel Glück, mein Student, und gute Reise!
Related articles
- 10,000 Hour Rule: Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 Hours of Practice Theory from Outliers Visualized (zintro.com)
- BlackBerry World: Q&A with Malcolm Gladwell (bizblog.blackberry.com)
- The 10,000 Hour Rule (optionsanimal.com)
- 10,000 Hours To Become A Master…only 9,999 to go (wisdomasigo.wordpress.com)
- Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 Hour Rule” Doesn’t Add Up (allaboutwork.org)
- Forbes and National Geographic feature the “10,000 hour rule” Zintro-generated infographic (zintro.com)
- 10,000 Hour Quest to Social Enlightenment in 7 Steps (purematter.com)
- The Work Experience (patzalewski.wordpress.com)
- Here’s What’s Wrong With The ’10,000 Hour Rule’ (businessinsider.com)
- Practice, even with failure, more important than talent – update (timpanogos.wordpress.com)
Tuesday, December 18th 2012 at 11:52 am |
Chris,
Good perspective on mastery as described in Gladwell’s book.
First, I think to become a master requires a large investment on practicing your trade (in my case executive search professionally, or on a volunteer basis coaching high school girls basketball). I do believe that the hours it takes to master something is on the order of 10,000 or more.
However, mastery puts you somewhere in the top 5%. Does everyone need to be in the top 5%? This is the issue you raise. For most, that’s just not necessary. If you want to DOMINATE your niche or market, then you must make that investment. Part of the time investment comes from learning (reading, learning and observing from role-models, and being coached), part comes from applying your learning to the practice of your trade (conducting executive search or coaching basketball).
I’ll take these two subject areas and break them down further.
In executive search, I am in the top 1% of all recruiters servicing a niche that is top executives in entrepreneurial to middle market companies ($10-$50 million). I teach the executives how to hire. I have a database/contact list of over 7500 CEOs who have seen me speak over the last 20 years and continually seek my advice and grant me the honor of doing work for them. I have written books, articles, and have created the largest source of free content on the web for effective hiring. I am sought out by magazine and newspaper writers for my thoughts and opinions.
Did I get here overnight? No – it took 20 plus years of hard, intense, sometimes frustrating, and committed work. Do I have 10,000 hours that make me a master within my profession? I have over 50,000 hours of working to become a master in this one niche. To get into the top 5-10% is probably 10,000 hours. To reach the top 1-2% is a whole order of magnitude higher – perhaps in the 50,000 plus hour range. There are always exceptions to this rule/concept. In working with thousands of professionals over the last two decades, my experience is that the very best have 10,000 – 25,000 – 50,000 hours practicing, executing, and perfecting their trade/craft.
I have another niche I am working on to become a master – the use of social media, particularly LinkedIn for sales professionals, consultants, speakers, and personal service providers to build their business. I probably have around 5000 hours of learning, experimenting, applying, and practicing this trade or craft. I am on my way to becoming a top 5% master – not there yet – but building toward it.
Finally, I look at basketball coaching. For the last decade I have been a volunteer high school girls basketball coach. I’ve got well over 10,000 hours into coaching at the high school level. How do I know that I’ve attained mastery in this area. I find myself going up against other coaches who don’t have the same “investment of time” in coaching. It becomes a natural process for me to constantly adjust strategy and tactics during a game. Other coaches try to do the same thing over and over hoping for different results (the definition of insanity), or they just don’t know what to do or how to prepare their team. This is the difference between trying and mastering a trade or craft. There is no such thing as overnight success – it’s a long road of hard work, as in your Beatles example.
I think many professionals start out in a niche and claim expertise/mastery when the really don’t have a clue (sort of faking it until you can make it idea). Many professionals think they are masters of the trade and craft when maybe they are no better than the middle of the bell shaped curve – average, mediocre, and minimally qualified. It’s okay to hang out a shingle about your business – it’s another thing to portray yourself as a master – this takes years of hard work, practice, failure, and more hard work.
Excellent post regarding one of my favorite books and topics.
Barry Deutsch
Partner
IMPACT Hiring Solutions
http://www.impacthiringsolutions.com/blog
Wednesday, December 19th 2012 at 10:57 am |
So right. I could be called a master of the keyboard. At least my students call me that. But I tell them few want that lifestyle. It basically sucks wind. It is, however, mine.
Most folks would enjoy their life is they could simply be hobbyists. And that doesn’t require 10,000 hours. Good deal and thanks for clearing this up for them. I’ve been trying to say that for weeks on my radio show and in my books. In fact, you’ve given me an idea for a new book! So thanks again.
Friday, December 21st 2012 at 10:58 am |
Great article, Chris, and thoughtful perspective, Barry. I too like Gladwell’s notion. However — let’s not take it as received wisdom; Gladwell looks for anomalies (like January-born hockey players dominating top junior rankings) and hypothesizes a rule to account for them (10,000 hours).
* What counts as the 10,000 hours? Often childhood activities create relevant learning and therefore “count.” Constant sketching in schoolbooks leads to a distinctive style in the adult artist. Reading under the covers helps the budding author. Watching a parent run their business creates an entrepreneurial bent. Etc.
* What counts as relevant time in? Those who “learn how to learn” as children through reading above grade level, early professional opportunities, etc. gain an advantage in mastery that can cross subject matter. I was an interscholastic (later intercollegiate) debater from age 14. I learned not just how to craft an affirmative case, but how to persuade, think on my feet, that different cultural settings (e.g., ivy league tournaments versus midwestern liberal arts tournaments) reward different argumentation styles, and perhaps most of all, that everything, even difficult subjects (nuclear disarmament, e.g.) can be tackled, readily understood, and spoken about concisely when you have a clear idea about where you are going (e.g., a 10 min persuasive speech). I’ve always been a confident navigator in complex areas, but never connected that to my debate experience until now.
* There are a few big things that matter more than time in. Barry talks about his ease at shifting strategy during a high school game. I think this is a meta-strategy than not everyone develops in life. Some people can excel in serial activities (to wit: The Four Hour Workweek/Chef/Bodyetc. series by Tim Ferris) by mastering such a meta-skill.
* In business, time in can be more about building your bona fides — and your network — more than it is about raw skill mastery. Gladwell was talking about the latter.
* The opportunity structure for demonstrating expertise is not uniform. Social media is one where the field is emerging, and the only way to know what works is to get out there and try things. If we sit on the sidelines because we can’t figure out what an expert approach is, we’ll miss what is clearly a huge shift in our world, and specifically in marketing. So…being an expert in creating reasonable experiments, guided by logic and the experiences of others, seems important. It ultimately will be part of the 10,000 hours, perhaps, but you’d better not wait until you have 10,000 hours to jump in.
Oddly, I learned social media while recovering from a serious illness. I think I’ve put in more than my 10,000 hours, listening and watching as early leaders debated issues in the field (personal v. brand twitter accounts, how long should a blog post be, etc.).
Yet I don’t feel that time in makes me an expert. It actually takes me back to those debate skills…I feel comfortable wading in to a rapidly changing field with my meta-skills to guide clients in the right direction. I may be more fluent in guiding a client toward an integrated marketing strategy than someone with less experience, but many clients first need to learn the language of social media. And that takes someone who has mastered the language better than they have. Long may they prosper!