In his latest book Malcom Gladwell claims that talent doesn’t make one successful. It’s more about practice and being lucky. He makes his point with insightful examples which can hold their claim. The Beatles are one example. They were lucky enough to be invited to play in Hamburg, Germany in 1960. In Hamburg they played seven days a week for eight hours straight! In those trips they made to Hamburg they played twelve hundred times together which is quite unique. So you can conclude that The Beatles had a lot of practice.

According to Gladwell it comes down the the 10.000 hour rule.  If you practice something for 10.000 hours you’re bound to get good at it. Outliers: The Story of Succes is loaded with great examples which demonstrate this 10.000 hour rule.

How does this 10.000 hours of practice apply to a designer?
Dee Barizo made a blog post about how to practice as a designer. He gives some great pointers:

• Practice is not enough, you need to improve. Doing the same thing over and over again won’t help you unless you improve.
• Seek feedback. Without feedback it’s hard to determine if you improve.
• Don’t overdo it. Your brain can handle so much, straining it won’t do you any good.

So, stop reading this blog and start practicing!

P.S: Dee Barizo talks about another book Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin. I haven’t read it but it looks very similar to Outliers. Fascinating.

In Grinding it Out, Ray Kroc tells the story how he build the McDonalds Empire. It is fascinating to read how he, at the age of 52, came across a fast food Drive in and made it into the fast food chain in the world. The McDonalds brothers had a smooth running fast food operation but they weren’t looking for any franchising. They were just happy with this one Drive in. Kroc per sued them to go big and from that moment the success story starts. What I found fascinating about this story:

• The age of Kroc. He was relatively old (52) to start something new but his energy and drive is really motivating.
• That said, his arrogance can be annoying sometimes. In the book he doesn’t elaborate on any mistakes. He is always right. He claims that it isn’t interesting to read about his mistakes but I would say you can learn a lot by mistakes.
• The book was published when Kroc was still alive (1977) and McDonalds didn’t even expand international yet! Little did Kroc know at the time that it would be much bigger now.
• It’s funny to read how he sees McDonalds also as support for the community. But lately it only helps people eating themselves to dead. Once it was an example of a great American product. Now it’s associated with bad and unhealthy food.

All in all it’s a nice read but I would like to have seen more about the standardizing process. How he took this one McDonalds restaurant and changed the operation so it can be easily be copied by other McDonalds restaurants. There is some of that in this book, but not nearly enough. One downside, my McDonalds cravings were really kicking up reading this book but so far I have restrained myself. It is after all, bad food.

I just finished the book ‘My Start Up Life – What a (very) young CEO learned on his journey through Sillicon Valley’ by Ben Casnocha.  Casnocha tells his life story about how he, as a 14 year old boy, started his own company. He takes you on a journey and tells about the things he encountered being a CEO of a ‘Start-up’. The story is inspiring and interesting. In between the story he advises aspiring CEO’s with lessons he has learned.

It’s a nice read with about 200 pages. The advise is obvious, but very important. These are the lessons that stuck most for me:

• Dare to take a risk.
• Don’t try to be a perfectionist. ‘Good’ is good enough.
• Profile yourself. (Work on your physical appearance, network and online identity.)
• Really listen to your clients and try to solve their problem and address their problems in presentations and communication.

All in all a good book with some inspiring advise.