Comments on: ten thousand people: the antidote to ‘chasing gigs’

By: Ten Thousand People: the antidote to ‘chasing gigs’ ((tags; hughmacleod, gapingvoid, advice)) « Jon Mulholland

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:27:19 +0000

[...] Whatever your own, personal magic number may be, I hope you find it one day; I hope you find THOSE PEOPLE one day. via gapingvoid.com [...]

By: Stepan Baghdassarian

Stepan Baghdassarian — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 12:25:07 +0000

Napoleon Hill talks about a long period of apprenticeship also in order to be good at something in his seminal book “Think and Grow Rich.”

By: Elsah Cort

Elsah Cort — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 20:28:53 +0000

ONE
The Tao that can told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things…
TWO
…Therefore the sage goes about doing nothing, teaching no-talking.
The ten thousand things rise and fall without cease.
Creating, yet not possessing.
Working, yet not taking credit.
Work is done, then forgotten.
Therefore the work lasts forever.
(from Tao Te Ching, translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English)

By: hugh macleod

hugh macleod — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 17:20:52 +0000

@ Mike Drips-
I deleted the word “personal”… I meant “computer time, personally”, not “PC”. I can see where the confusion would lie. Thanks for pointing it out.
As for the facts of how many hours of computing time Bill Gates put in during his young days, take it up with Gladwell…

By: Mike Drips

Mike Drips — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:52:47 +0000

“He cites Bill Gates being one of the first high school kids EVER to have put in ten thousand hours of personal computer time before going to college”
This is a total urban myth. I met Bill Gates and Paul Allen (the OTHER guy who founded Microsoft and the better programmer of the two) in the 70s after Bill had briefly attended Harvard. There were no personal computers for Bill to have put 10,000 hours into. Granted, there were S-100s, SS-50s and Altairs (which Paul and Bill wrote their first BASIC for), but 10,000 hours of PC time for Bill (or Paul or anyone else in that era) never happened.
I know. I was there. I ran the Seattle Computer Society and met all manner of later-to-be-famous geeks.

By: hugh macleod

hugh macleod — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 06:23:59 +0000

@ carbonboy, good point…
Though I’m guessing what separates those who tried and didn’t make it, versus those who did, is about 10K hours.

By: carbonboy

carbonboy — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 04:40:10 +0000

So 40 hrs/wk X 52 weeks X 5 years gets you there?
Maybe
If I were to go in for brain surgery, I prefer the surgeon with maybe 20k hours. No make that 40K.

By: Jo-Ann

Jo-Ann — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:03:25 +0000

FAN-tastic post. So much to do. Thanks, Hugh

By: Darcy Moen

Darcy Moen — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 05:41:51 +0000

Hugh, did you know that the market in America is so large that if you had a product to sell at $20.00 each, you could sell one item to ten thousand Americans a day, every day for 110 years before you began to sell the same customer a second time?
There are some days I’d be happy to sell one thousand people a day at one dollar each. But then again, the freaking bank and credit card transaction fees eat up most of the profits.
Such is life: We eat what we kill.

By: Robin Dickinson

Robin Dickinson — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 05:31:36 +0000

Hugh,
I beg your indulgence to do some online
FAN-ta-SIZING:
1 fan = a tweet
10 fans = a thread
100 fans = a meme
1,000 fans = a highway
10,000 fans = a torrent
Best, Robin

By: Shelley Noble

Shelley Noble — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:14:30 +0000

Amen.

By: Toby Hede

Toby Hede — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 23:45:20 +0000

A Roman legion was actually about 5,000 soldiers. The number varies depending on the time period.

By: Ben Atlas

Ben Atlas — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 22:02:01 +0000

Reminds me of Leonard Cohen song:
Confined to sex, we pressed against
The limits of the sea:
I saw there were no oceans left
For scavengers like me.
I made it to the forward deck.
I blessed our remnant fleet –
And then consented to be wrecked,
A Thousand Kisses Deep.

By: michael

michael — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 22:01:19 +0000

I would suggest that in the 10k hours, that there are plateaus, much like in exercise, where you can stagnate for a while, even give up, or have to push even harder and just. Keep. Going to break through to the next level…

By: Ben Dawe

Ben Dawe — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:18:08 +0000

I would walk 10,000 miles to read a better post!
Nothing like a great idea + hard work.