There is such a thing – spiritual mountaineering. It was developed by the philosopher and thinker of the XIX-XX centuries, Aleister Crowley, who conducted many experiments with the mind and subconscious.
The allegory is that people are divided into three types:
The beauty of this metaphor is that any activity for a person is a journey to the height of the unknown. Many people live by inertia and do not realize, how wide and full the world is around. A certain part of population of the planet enjoys the diversity of mountain peaks, studies the approaches to them, fills his life with theoretical developments. And there is a very small percentage of people who, without hesitation, begin to climb. They break down, fall, stumble on sharp ledges, but always go forward. And reach the peak.
What percentage do you consider yourself?
Approaching the mountain, you will feel some discomfort. You will come up with many reasons to step back, postpone the ascent to tomorrow, Monday, to the next month, delay for a year. You will be too lazy to start the path already planned, it will seem to you, that your excuses are very expedient. And the reason for this – fear.
We are very afraid of failure. We are very afraid of the unknown. And we are very afraid of change.
If you are reading these lines, I hasten to congratulate you – you have come to the foot of the mountain and are seriously aiming at climbing. Some obstacles have already been overcome, you have learned something new. This fact sets you apart from the average percentage.
Moving on.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts”,
Winston Churchill
Let us turn to one fascinating theory, which Malcolm Gladwell derived in his book “Outliers: The Story of Success”, 2008. The author is a permanent employee of the New York Times, as well as the creator of such bestsellers as “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking”.
This work states, that genius is always accompanied by applied efforts to achieve mastery.
Using the biographies of Mozart, Bill Gates, and Bobby Fisher, Gladwell shows how important classes are to improve talent.
Many consider, that talent is actually the result of combining abilities, capabilities, and involuntary gains. Are opportunities in principle subject to any regularity? As it turns out, yes, of course.
One of the most respected professions in the world is the medical profession. And for good reason. Every medic goes a long way of learning, consisting of continuous improvement of their skills. Six years of university study, two years of internship and two years of residency. On average, about ten years is required to form a knowledgeable specialist from an inexperienced student. Is it a lot or a little?
Gladwell derived a formula of 10,000 hours, which is required to form the skills that distinguish a true professional. Let's translate this figure to our realities.
10,000 hours are about 417 days, i.e. just over a year.
Suppose that it takes 4-5 hours a day to concentrate on a particular subject and get a period of 7 years. It will take much less time dozens of times to master the speed reading technique. But to achieve phenomenal results will have to work a little.
Neurologist Daniel J Levitin, Ph. D. thought, that from numerous studies, the following picture emerges: no matter what field you are talking about, it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve a level of mastery commensurate with the status of a world-class expert. Whoever you take – composers, basketball players, writers, skaters, pianists, chess players, inveterate criminals, and so on – this number meets with surprising regularity. Ten thousand hours – about three hours of practice a day, or twenty hours a week for ten years. This, of course, does not explain why some people benefit more than others. But so far no one has encountered a case where the highest level of skill would be achieved in less time. It seems that exactly so much time is required for the brain to assimilate all the necessary information.
It would seem that this figure doesn’t inspire. Why spend so much time on what may not be useful in life? And now look back at your past life. Did the last seven years fly quickly? I think, yes.
During this period of time you studied at the university and began to work in the specialty, improving the knowledge gained. These seven years were not in vain. It is for this reason that you should seriously think about the fact that in the next seven years you will not regret that you started already now.
10,000 hours are worth starting to transform your own life, starting at this point.
The difference between failure and success – in relentless improvement.
Twenty years ago, psychologist Anders Ericsson together with his colleagues conducted a study at the Academy of Music in Berlin. Students were divided into three groups. The first included real stars of the faculty, potential world-class soloists. In the second – those, whom teachers consider the most promising. In the third group – students, who could hardly become successful musicians, at best, they could be useful for the role of music teachers in high school. All participants were asked only one question: “How many hours did you practice from the moment you first took up the violin until today?”.
The answer revealed a surprising pattern. Provided, that all students began to play at about the same age, for example, from age of seven, they were practicing an average of 1-3 hours per day, but after a couple of years there was a difference. The best students exercised the most: by the fifteen years of training, six hours a week were spent, then eight hours, and by the time they were studying sixteen! That is, they were constantly focused on improving their skills for more than thirty hours a week. By the time, they finished their studies, they had just gathered up to 10,000 hours of classes. The baggage of average students was 8000 hours, and the future music teachers – no more than 4000.
Many successful people do not realize that the beginning of their journey is a journey to the 10,000-hour mark, but you already have this advantage. Being engaged in 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening with speed reading exercises, you will feel the result after 50 hours. You will not want to stay anymore. There will be excitement.
Exactly with such excitement the Beatles started climbing the Olympus, playing in Hamburg five hours a night for two years! In total, they gave 270 concerts, which amounted to a total of 1,200 live performances. After that, a truly staggering success was waiting for them.
Hamburg became for them a real race in the attainment of genius. Perseverance and unrestrained work made them world stars. How many talented musicians play in their garages? Do they really have any hits? I think, yes. But staying within the comfort zone and not improving skills, it’s hardly possible to take off to the world Olympus.
However, on the path of becoming, there may be a feeling, that it’s enough just to mechanically reproduce practical exercises in order to achieve the desired result. Far from it.
After you have clearly seen the positive dynamics, there is a chance to “thunder” on the so-called “okay-plateau”. This is a psychological trap, which is very easy to become a hostage.
Easily going through some exercises, you begin to act on autopilot, which leads to the opposite result – degradation. The brain intentionally automates the process to reduce the load, so your attention is dulled. There is no thoughtfulness of the process.
If you follow the analogy, that the brain is a muscle, you can make out the situation with sports training.
Every day you come to the fitness center and lift your weight in 16 kilograms. At first, it’s very difficult. You barely lift the load off the floor. However, every day the muscles become stronger and get used to the load. After several months, you can easily perform the exercise and do not feel pain the next day. What happens to the muscles? They cease to grow stronger.
Our brain acts the same way. Having mastered a certain skill to a certain extent, he ceases to pick up speed. Only with a constant increase in loads, with an increase in the level of complexity of the exercises, you can upgrade your skills. Have you noticed that you can easily do speed text processing exercises? Press in the area of concentration and memorization.
Formula 10,000 hours works only with constant monitoring and improvement. That is why I recommend each time to check your skills. Select control texts and check the level obtained every week. Highlight your strengths and weaknesses to improve the former and pull up the latter. Without the right effort, the four-hour daily practice will be wasted.
This wave recalls the story of my friend - musician. For over ten years, he has been practicing various musical styles, from classical performance to mastering rap culture. Every time he wanted to discover the nuances of a new genre, right up to polishing the material studied. And then he ran into one problem. Jazz compositions were not given to him completely.
What did he do with his already formed baggage? Engaged in overcoming obstacles. Over and over again he began to perform jazz in a small studio. Time after time he failed, but he was not going to stop there. From the time he realized that it was becoming easier for him to play songs, but he longed for perfection.
Being engaged in jazz for eight hours seven days a week, he revealed the full potential of this music and became so involved that it made it the main line in his work. It took him about five years to master this skill. He continues his professional growth to this day.
What is the moral of this story?
Enthusiasm, multiplied by daily exercises with increasing load, really brings results.
The postulate hides the key to success. Congenital abilities are formed over time.
Books are an exceptional source of knowledge, indispensable at any stage of development. Many celebrities say, that without inspirational books, without a constant process of self-education, they would not have become who they are today.
Every book read today is the key to a successful tomorrow!
Undoubtedly, Elon Musk can rightly be considered an icon of the second decade of the XXI century. He is an innovator and revolutionary in the field of space development, the creation of alternative sources of fuel, technological systems. One of the secrets of his successful activity Musk considers the commitment to reading. Despite his busy schedule, he finds time to read every day, because it helps him move forward, be on the crest of the information wave. His favorite book, he calls the work of J. Tolkien "The Lord of the Rings." Preferring the genre of fantasy and science fiction, a billionaire admits that he is a true dreamer. Such people are not afraid to look ahead and turn their dreams into reality.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the world-famous Facebook social network, admits that reading is an indispensable source of inspiration and useful knowledge for him. With his busy schedule, he allocates every one to two weeks to read a new book. It seems to you that it is not enough? Do you develop projects 60 hours a week?
Well-known filmmaker Steven Spielberg observed in interview, that books have a function that nothing else has, because you can be delivered with them at any time and place. On the basis of the books read, Spielberg creates truly unique worlds. All his work is the processing of impressions from the read texts. His favorite work is the novel “The Last of the Mohicans” by Fenimore Cooper. This is a director's book of the director, which he speaks of as a work for all times.
One of the top TV shows of our time – "Game of Thrones" – would not have seen the light if it were not for the enthusiasm of the authors of the book "A Song of Ice and Fire" by George Martin of historical novels. According to his confession, the inspiration for writing a series of books came to him while reading series of novels of the French writer Maurice Druon "The Accursed Kings".
Summing up the above, I want to assure my readers that I myself am a zealous supporter of reading. Every day I make a lot of discoveries thanks to the mastered texts. First of all, the writing of this book pushed me to want to share my experience with those who seek to achieve success. I collected and refined unique speed reading techniques, exercises for improving attention, concentration and memory. I am sure that with due diligence you will surely reach the level of perception of information and the world that you could only dream of before!