The Beatles and 10,000 hours

[rickboy88]

Each week, I received a Harvey Mackay column via email. I highly recommend subscribing on his website (www.harveymackay.com) if you haven't already.

At any rate, he mentioned the Beatles a couple of months ago. He is an excerpt:

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"For example, he describes The Beatles' rise to fame: They had been together seven years before their famous arrival in America. They spent a lot of time playing in strip clubs in Hamburg, Germany, sometimes for as long as eight hours a night. John Lennon said of those years: "We got better and got more confidence. We couldn't help it with all the experience playing all night long." Overnight sensation? Not exactly. Estimates are that that the band performed live 1,200 times before their big success in 1964. By comparison, most bands don't perform 1,200 times in their careers.

Neurologist Daniel Levitin has studied the formula for success extensively, and shares this finding: "The emerging picture from such studies is that 10,000 hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert in anything. In study after study of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, the number comes up again and again. Of course, this doesn't address why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others do. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery."

[brammy]

"For example, he describes The Beatles' rise to fame: They had been together seven years before their famous arrival in America.

John Lennon met Paul McCartney on Saturday July 6th, 1957 and George Harrison joined the Quarrymen in 1958. They appeared on Sullivan in Feb of '64. So the "seven years" is a bit of a stretch, but still, the 10,000 hours is interesting.

[jimk]

And what that segment of the article leaves unsaid is that the artist has to be in a place and time where that 10,000 hours of practice is going to pay off.

JimK

[rickboy88]

The big thing I got from the column was the "10,000 hours" bottom line. It was reinforced when there was an article in the Rocky Mountain News (now defunct) about a local bluegrass band in Lyons called "Spring Creek" and specifically their banjo player. I've seen the guy play many times, and he's definitely at expert level on 5 string banjo, and yes, he had 10,000 hours of practice time in just from his college years. He wouldn't have gotten there without all the time invested.

I hadn't realized that the Beatles performed so much, but I remember Lennon and others commenting on how quick of a stage band they were, being able to play songs in different meters and styles without too much of a problem.

I took the column as being more about "expert ability" than "making it" (which is a whole other column or book).