Abridged Diary of a Foreign Student - On Success and Other Abstractions

To be successful at something you need to spend at least 10.000 hours at it. I have to confess I had no idea that success hangs by a set number but so they say. Ok. Who are “they”? And should we believe “them”? “They” are Malcolm Gladwell, one my favorite writers. And Outliers is the proud bearer of this enlightening idea. And the story starts in class, in my psychology class, where I’m getting my latest source of wisdom. Ugh, it’s cold outside, even worse, cloudy and I need something positive to focus on to boost my good mood. Now I’m back to today’s topic and this is an absolute wow moment. Not necessarily because I’d think you can take the easy way to success, but because I never envisioned success under a number. 

Like most relative things in this world, success is combination of factors (or so I thought) not the number of hours you dedicate yourself to the activity that will bring it. Operant conditioning at its finest. You commit to an activity that’ll bring you a late benefit. A sort of abstract application of the Pavlovian basic reflex. However, we, humans, still hover in the realm of conditioning. I like to refer to the operant conditioning as ‘abstract’ as opposed to the ‘basic’ one that Pavlov’s dog displays. It’s basically still conditioning but at a human level. I’m not implying humans cannot be classically conditioned because they are, on a daily basis, but what it’s that very ‘abstract' one that prevails . 

I might use a term in psychology now and then but I’m no scientist, I simply try to connect the dots I see on the larger canvass, ignored most of the times because we’re so engrossed in our routine. Fair enough. I have no idea WHY I keep digressing from the main topic but yes success still is to my mind that perfect mix of incredible talent invested in unimaginable amounts of time. The day has just begun so better start working! 

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