Saturday, January 31, 2009
Practice Makes Perfect
Did you know that scientists have arrived at the number of hours it takes to become a world-class expert at something?
Through years of study of experts in different fields, they found a common denominator in all of them. They found that each of them had more than 10,000 hours of practice in whatever skill they were known for.
It's the same for world-class athletes, musicians, scientists, writers, doctors... whatever the category, that 10,000+ hours of practice was absolute.
You note, I didn't say, 10,000 hours of study. I said 10,000 hours of practice. Practice takes you much farther than just studying does. The ancient Greeks had two different words for our term "to know."
Their word "oida" refered to intellectual knowledge. But they had another word, "gnosco," that described knowing by experience.
The Greeks drew a sharp distinction between simple book knowledge and knowing from experience. The experiential knowledge summed up in "gnosco" was always considered superior to the intellectual knowledge summed up in "oida."
They maybe didn't scientifically deduce the 10,000 hours needed to become a world-class expert, but they clearly understood that the only way to really "know" something was to put it into practice.
What does this mean for us?
One trap that most new business owners fall into is getting stuck in a constant pattern of studying marketing instead of doing it. Most of us come into online business lacking previous business experience. So we study. And we study. And we study everything we can get out hands on about marketing.
It's easy to stay stuck in that rut because we can always find new areas of marketing to study. We always feel we want to get everything down perfectly before we try our hands at it.
But what do both today's scientists and the ancient Greeks have to say about that rut?
Get out of it!
The only way to become a good marketer is to get out there and market. You learn far more by putting what you've learned from books into practice in the marketplace than what you learn just from the books.
I'll go into this more in upcoming weeks as I test this out for myself and share my results.
Until then, get going and put what you know into practice! You're on the clock. And you have 10,000 hours of practice to put into your business before you can truly feel that you're world class.
Jeff
Did you know that scientists have arrived at the number of hours it takes to become a world-class expert at something?
Through years of study of experts in different fields, they found a common denominator in all of them. They found that each of them had more than 10,000 hours of practice in whatever skill they were known for.
It's the same for world-class athletes, musicians, scientists, writers, doctors... whatever the category, that 10,000+ hours of practice was absolute.
You note, I didn't say, 10,000 hours of study. I said 10,000 hours of practice. Practice takes you much farther than just studying does. The ancient Greeks had two different words for our term "to know."
Their word "oida" refered to intellectual knowledge. But they had another word, "gnosco," that described knowing by experience.
The Greeks drew a sharp distinction between simple book knowledge and knowing from experience. The experiential knowledge summed up in "gnosco" was always considered superior to the intellectual knowledge summed up in "oida."
They maybe didn't scientifically deduce the 10,000 hours needed to become a world-class expert, but they clearly understood that the only way to really "know" something was to put it into practice.
What does this mean for us?
One trap that most new business owners fall into is getting stuck in a constant pattern of studying marketing instead of doing it. Most of us come into online business lacking previous business experience. So we study. And we study. And we study everything we can get out hands on about marketing.
It's easy to stay stuck in that rut because we can always find new areas of marketing to study. We always feel we want to get everything down perfectly before we try our hands at it.
But what do both today's scientists and the ancient Greeks have to say about that rut?
Get out of it!
The only way to become a good marketer is to get out there and market. You learn far more by putting what you've learned from books into practice in the marketplace than what you learn just from the books.
I'll go into this more in upcoming weeks as I test this out for myself and share my results.
Until then, get going and put what you know into practice! You're on the clock. And you have 10,000 hours of practice to put into your business before you can truly feel that you're world class.
Jeff
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