I have done plenty of math and realize it is going to take me a total of 10 years to be an expert at my writing, 8 more years left! I have been writing for the past couple of years, but haven’t put in the amount of time to warrant even 1000 hours per year. In a year it is 8,760 hours. We spend 20% sleeping, another 25% working in order to pay bills, 20% bullshitting around, 10-15% with family and friends, and leaves about 20% of doing whatever else one wants to do. 20% of time in a year is equivalent to 34 hours per week. That is like adding another full-time job without necessarily getting paid from it, so what are our priorities?

Thoughts After Reading Outliers

I didn’t want to think about what I thought of the book until this morning. I was thinking all of it was the 10k hours and finding opportunity wherever and whenever it came around. But it is more than that, it has to deal with my past, where I was raised, and the lucky breaks I got throughout my life. As I kept reading I started to understand the shape of the world and how the majority of us are fucked, just by coming out the womb of a mother whose background warranted failure. The mother and probably the father were going to do what they were taught and through their life experience help their children with living a life of the past.

The Past Plays a Big Part

How can we get past this notion, how is it possible to succeed in a place where the same people are going to still grow up with the privileges their parents were brought up with? The sad thing is they will not and this book needs to not only be read, praised, and put back down. It needs to be given to all the poor people, needs to be given to the low self esteem bunch, it needs to be given to all. I see that we can start to change our way of being by facing the problem and developing the attitude and lifestyle of people who want more out of life.

What Did I Learn?

I learned of course to put in 10,000 hours of practice to my craft. I know I have to find or grab the opportunities that come my way. I am going to be more real with my writing and  increasing my description of what I am trying to say to the reader. There was a very good point in the book, where Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of his grandmother. He gets to the point and doesn’t put any extra substance in the telling of the story. Then, after he is done, he says that wasn’t even close to what the real story. He then begins to tell the back story, get a little deeper in the life of his grandmother and their family, expands on the life of his mother and aunt, drives home the fact the past, the way they were brought up, and the lucky breaks they got just for being the right skin tone help shape the future of their children. I got a sense of reading that particular part of the book I was going to have to evolve as a writer in order to make a for sure impact on my readers.

Outliers was and will be a book for the ages, it has content in it that will be relevant until the end of man. We just have to be willing to take hold of the saying and do something with our life and others along the way.

What Did the Book Teach Me About Helping Others Find Their Passion?

How can this be done in giving the people the insight and guidance in doing what they always wanted to do? Absolutely nothing. I can only tell somebody to follow their passion by me following and doing my passion. I can only tell people to try many things until something sticks only until I try things and see what sticks (writing and other crazy challenges). I can’t tell anyone to do anything for themselves because they have to be willing to look themselves in the mirror and say, “Is this the life I want to live? Am I really taking the steps to do what I have been dreaming about?”.

This is What I Mean About Helping Others

I have this friend, which I am sure each and everyone of yall have. Every so often she comes to me with her problems and how she can’t seem to do better for herself. I listen, I analyze, and then I give advice the best way I know how to. She says thank you and we both go our way. A couple of weeks go by and she calls again. She seems to be in worst shape then before. We talk again, I get the insight of what she was going through, and I give her some more advice. The advice is really the same, but a couple of phrases change here and there, this will probably help her out a little more than before I say to myself. The cycle continues and it gets to the point that I start to realize that this person will never change, they don’t want to grow from the experience they have been dealing with. I have done all that I can to help and me simply giving out advice for the wind is pointless and this is when tough love kicks in and I continue to live my life. I have done all that I could to help, to push, to guide, to give that person the hope to take charge of their life.

How many times can a person give out advice and the other person is not willing to at least try a small part of it out? How many times have we been in the same situation when somebody is giving us advice and we don’t take it? Outliers has taught me that the world is fucked and will continue to repeat the same things over and over again because it is in our make up and cultural history (many hundreds of years). However, even though we weren’t born with a couple of key traits we can still be a success in whatever we want to do. We just have to be willing to work hard, keep our eyes open for opportunities and take advantage of them and willing to help people, by our actions.