Gladwell's Law of 10,000 Hours of Experience

What factors influence when predicting whether a person will be successful?

This is a complex question that many of us have ever asked ourselves. exist multiple causes that can play in our favor or against us when determining whether, throughout our lives, we will be able to achieve certain economic and employment goals.

From socioeconomic origin to luck, going through a factor that many times we do not take into account: the experience, especially the one that we have been able to acquire during our childhood.

Socioeconomic background is an important factor

You don't have to be very smart to figure out that one of the important factors is socioeconomic origin: if you were born into a wealthy family, you will have a greater chance of receiving a better training, you will be able to dedicate more time to study, you will have the economic mattress and family contacts, and so on.

However, if you come from a humble family, you have a bit (or a lot) more difficult in life: you will probably receive a not so good formal education, maybe you will have to start working early to contribute to the family finances

(This may affect the hours you spend studying), and you may not be able to afford higher education, even if you do not lack intellectual capacity, merits and motivation.

The social elevator has been broken for decades, and there are no stairs

All this that I have just explained is not a cliché: several studies carried out in Spain and published by the newspaper El País show that the ‘Social elevator’ It has been out of order since the 1960s. The social elevator is the mechanism by which, in a society, the humble can reach scale and see their personal economic reality substantially improved thanks to their merits and their effort*.

This meritocratic principle seems to be called into question when we analyze the data. that point to that, if you were born poor, you are much more likely to remain poor into adulthood. If you were born rich, you have to go very badly not to continue in a privileged position.

Malcolm Gladwell's Law of 10,000 Hours

Fortunately, there are other factors that come into play when deciding whether we can be successful and develop our potential. In this case I wanted to focus on a factor that perhaps is not taken into account: the experiences that we acquire during our childhood.

The reflections that follow are part of a conference by the Catalan economist Xavier Sala Martin, professor at Columbia University, and who reveal to us the decisive importance of this vital stage when it comes to to forge certain capacities and abilities that allow us greater probabilities of job success in the adulthood.

Children born in the first half of the year have an advantage

Let's start by thinking of a curious fact. A dramatically strong trend for no apparent reason is that, on most elite sports teams, 75% of its players were born in the first half of the year. And, in fact, there is a negligible number of high-level athletes who were born in the month of December. You can check this data for yourself by looking at elite professional teams of any sport: you will notice that this trend is a curious and disturbing constant.

If 50% of the world's people were born in the first half of the year, and the other 50% in the second half, How do you explain that elite athletes were mostly born in the first months of the year?

Malcolm Gladwell, the journalist who studied this curious phenomenon

An American journalist named Malcolm gladwell he was among the first to realize this question of athletes and the months of birth. Without being able to explain this phenomenon, he investigated different sociological studies.

He finally came to a conclusion, which had nothing to do with paranormal and astrological issues. The explanation was very simple: to be sports professionals, children must have gone through the base categories, where they train and play games. What happens is that these base categories are divided by years. When children start at 7 or 8 years of age, they play with those of the same year. Those that were born in 1993 with those of 1993, those of 1994 with those of 1994, and so on.

This means that children who were born in January 1993 and those who were born in December 1993 play on the same team. At those ages, a difference of one year has a great incidence: January's are taller, stronger, more agile, smarter ... and the coaches, who in addition to training also want to win the games, end up granting more minutes of play and responsibilities to the children of January. They are the ones who play, not only more minutes, but those who shoot penalties, those who play the decisive minutes... and therefore they acquire more experience.

The enormous importance of the experience we acquire (or not) during childhood

This dynamic is accentuated and consolidated as they advance in the base categories: the following year, the January children are still a year older and also have more experience. With each passing year, the greater the schism of experience between the children of the beginning of the year and the children of the end of the year.

Once children have grown up, for example when they are 20 years old, the physical differences between them have disappeared. What's left is a huge difference in the player experience - the January kids have had many more possibilities to train and play more minutes, therefore they are better players (with meritorious exceptions, Sure). In the end, This years of experience is a key factor in predicting whether or not one will be able to reach the elite..

To succeed in something, dedicate 10,000 hours

Malcolm Gladwell, reflecting on why elite athletes have the most experience, formulates a theory: to be very good at something, we must dedicate at least 10,000 hours. You need to train 10,000 hours to be really good at something and to stand out above the rest, be it programming websites, playing basketball, playing an instrument ...

This is a moral applicable to any area of ​​working life. But there are other reflections. For example, it occurs to me to throw a question into the air: Are sports teams in children's categories too focused on results? Because we may well think that December children are experiencing structural discrimination It affects your potential to develop your skills.

Educational implications: the Pygmalion Effect in children

In fact, the Sports field it can be just a reflection of an educational model that makes similar mistakes. When we evaluate children based on rigid parameters, December children are more likely to get lower grades.

This should not be anything worrisome, since greater effort and the passing of the years should level out these small differences between students at the beginning of the year and those at the end of the year. However the Pygmalion effect explains that as adults we place in children certain wishes and desires that can help the minor to conform to a selfconcept healthy and learn to move towards certain goals and challenges, which will allow you to mature. Of course, this can also be the reverse: teachers who can negatively influence the self-concept of many "December children".

• I invite you to learn more about the Pygmalion Effect: "The Pygmalion Effect: how children end up being the wishes and fears of their parents"