The Five Paths To Being

the Best at Anything

Eric Barker

March 11, 2014

Getty Images
Ive posted a lot about becoming the best in your field. Looking back, what are the
most successful methods for getting there?

10,000 Hours
Lets get the most famous one out of the way first: Hard work pays off.

Malcolm Gladwell popularized the theory in Outliers: approximately 10,000 hours of

deliberate practice at something can turn you into an expert.

Via Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined:

the most elite violinists accumulated about the same number of hours of
deliberate practice (about 7,410 hours) by the age of 18 as professional middle-aged
violinists belonging to international-level orchestras (about 7,336 hours)! By the
age of 20, the most accomplished musicians estimated they spent over
10,000 hours in deliberate practice, which is 2,500 and 5,000 hours more
than two less accomplished groups of expert musicians or 8,000 hours more than
amateur pianists of the same age.

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That said, 10,000 hours is an average. And deliberate practice is not just going
through the motions.

Youve spent more than 10,000 hours driving but that doesnt make you ready for
NASCAR or Formula One.

Deliberate practice means getting feedback and always pushing to improve. Its
not flow and its not fun.

But it is what molds champions.

(More on how you can become an expert here.)

Have Great Genetics

I wont lie to you: being a member of the lucky sperm club certainly has its
advantages.

Via The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance:
 Even in this age of hyperspecialization in sports, some rare individuals
become world-class athletes, and even world champions, in sports from
running to rowing with less than a year or two of training. As with
Gobets chess players, in all sports and skills, the only real rule is that there is a
tremendous natural range.

There are also genetic advantages in the area of music, math and writing.

Via The Complexity of Greatness: Beyond Talent or Practice:

Heritability coefficients were strongest in music (.92), math (.87), sports (.85), and
writing (.83) of the explained variance.

This is usually cause for many to throw up their arms and surrender. (These people
do not have much grit, mind you.)

But the existence of genetic advantages doesnt mean you should give up. Id ask you
two questions:

1. Have you tried a wide variety of things to see if you possess genetic advantages at
any of them?

2. Have you tried aligning your efforts with the areas where you show a level of
natural talent?

As David Epstein explains, the model is no longer good at sports or not good at
sports its which sport was your body designed for?

Via The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance:

But, as Norton and Olds saw, as winner-take-all markets emerged, the

early-twentieth-century paradigm of the singular, perfect athletic body
faded in favor of more rare and highly specialized bodies that fit like
finches beaks into their athletic niches. When Norton and Olds plotted the
heights and weights of modern world-class high jumpers and shot putters, they
saw that the athletes had become stunningly dissimilar. The average elite shot
putter is now 2.5 inches taller and 130 pounds heavier than the average
international high jumper Just as the galaxies are hurtling apart, so are
the body types required for success in a given sport speeding away
from one another toward their respective highly specialized and lonely
corners of the athletic physique universe.

Tall and thin? Try basketball. Short and thick? Weightlifting. Mom and dad are
successful engineers? Give math a whirl.

Taking advantage of genetic gifts is a matter of finding what your body

and mind might have been designed to excel at and aligning your efforts
appropriately.

(More on genetic advantages and how I had my own DNA analyzed here.)
Be Part Of A Great Team
Working 10K hours and having naturally steady hands can be a great advantage to a
doctor but surgeons only get better at their home hospital.

Why? Thats where they know the team best and develop strong working
relationships.

Via Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success:

Overall, the surgeons didnt get better with practice. They only got
better at the specific hospital where they practiced. For every procedure
they handled at a given hospital, the risk of patient mortality dropped by 1 percent.
But the risk of mortality stayed the same at other hospitals. The surgeons couldnt
take their performance with them. They werent getting better at performing
coronary artery bypass grafts. They were becoming more familiar with
particular nurses and anesthesiologists, learning about their strengths
and weaknesses, habits and styles.

Star analysts on Wall Street? Same thing.

Via Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success:

Even though they were supposed to be individual stars, their performance wasnt
portable. When star analysts moved to a different firm, their
performance dropped, and it stayed lower for at least five years.

What about for artists? Yeah, baby.

Via Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success:

Frank Lloyd Wrights drought lasted until he gave up on independence

and began to work interdependently again with talented
collaborators. It wasnt his own idea: his wife Olgivanna convinced him to start
a fellowship for apprentices to help him with his work. When apprentices
joined him in 1932, his productivity soared, and he was soon working
on the Fallingwater house, which would be seen by many as the
greatest work of architecture in modern history.

(More on how your friends can make you a better person here.)

Be A Giver
Researchers who hog the credit on scientific papers are less likely to win
a Nobel prize.

Those who give younger academics a bit of the spotlight are more likely
to have a trip to Stockholm in their future.

Via The Half-life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date
 One striking finding was the beneficence of Nobel laureates, or as Zuckerman
termed it, noblesse oblige. In general, when a scientific paper is published,
the author who did the most is listed first.There are exceptions to this, and
this can vary from field to field, but Zuckerman took it as a useful rule of
thumb. What she found was that Nobel laureates are first authors of
numerous publications early in their careers, but quickly begin to give
their junior colleagues first authorship. And this happens far before
they receive the Nobel Prize By their forties, Nobel laureates are first
authors on only 26 percent of their papers, as compared to their less
accomplished contemporaries, who are first authors 56 percent of the
time. Nicer people are indeed more creative, more successful, and even
more likely to win Nobel prizes.

We think of givers as getting exploited or walked on. And that definitely happens.

Wharton Professor Adam Grant explained in our interview:

What I find across various industries, and various studies is the Givers are most
likely to end up at the bottom. Thats primarily because they end up putting
other people first in ways that either burn them out, or will allow them to get taken
advantage of and exploited by Takers.

But thats not the end of the story. If givers resist being martyrs, or have a
circle of matchers who protect them, they end up on top:

Then I looked at the other end of the spectrum and said if Givers are at the
bottom, whos at the top? Actually, I was really surprised to discover, its
the Givers again. The people who consistently are looking for ways to
help others are over-represented not only at the bottom, but also at the
top of most success metrics.

(More on balancing nice with tough here.)

Combine Them
Only got 5000 hours and pretty good genetics? Combining these methods can
provide powerful results.

You dont need to work endlessly or be born brilliant. Theres a very simple formula
we can all use to get a benefit from this information:

1. Always work hard to improve.

2. When choosing tasks and strategies, consider your natural gifts.

3. Pick a great team and get familiar with them.

4. Within reason, always help others.

All other things being equal, I cant imagine how this combination would not lead to
an impressive level of success. Can you?
Source : http://time.com/18659/the-five-paths-to-being-the-best-at-anything/