You can never practice enough

Malcolm Gladwell famously developed a theory that no one is born to be great at a skill or craft; greatness is earned through determination and hard work according to the famous author. Do some of us have natural attributes that make us more suitable for one task over another? Sure! At 6’6, 265 lbs., I was built more for an offensive lineman on the gridiron of football than to be a jockey on the racetrack. Just being big didn’t automatically make me a good football player. (To be honest, I was a serviceable player on my best of days!) Greatness, according to Gladwell, comes from devoting YEARS to your craft. 10,000 hours is the magic amount he deduced to reach that rarefied plateau of greatness. But the secret sauce is that the best of the best never stop practicing. They never stop learning new techniques or methods in what they do. And this can be applied if you are an athlete, a business person, work in a trade or in the arts, etc. The more you hone your skills, the better you will be. Michael Jackson is the best basketball player to ever strap on a pair of shoes and this is a hill I will die on. And he was notorious to practice as much as he could. He never stopped trying to improve. Now, most of us will never be on the level of MJ, but we can continue to learn, to practice and to grow at the activities we love or the methods we make our living, right? So, let’s put in the work and keep walking!