We're Working Towards Our 10,000 Hours

The following is a blog post by Dan Miller, author of 48 Days To the Work You Love. You can read the post below or read it from his website by clicking here.

Put in 10,000 hours – then we’ll talk

I frequently encounter employees who want a guaranteed salary before they show up the first day, musicians who want to be signed before they’ve proven their talent, house cleaners who want to be paid even if not needed, celebrities who expect a meaningful marriage after a 3-day romance, and authors who want my endorsement for their book but don’t want to “give” me a copy to read.

Have we forgotten that to reap a harvest of corn you have to first plant seeds, and to receive warmth from a stove you must first put wood in?

Charles Dickens wrote for the Evening Chronicle for nearly three years with no payment. Much to his surprise and delight, he was then approached by a young publisher who wanted to collect his writings into a volume along with ten prints from an illustrator. That success led to The Pickwick Papers and made him the most popular author in the world at that time (1836). Over the next twenty years, more than 1.6 million copies of Pickwick were sold.

Joanne and I taught a free weekly seminar called CareerLink for over eight
years, simply encouraging people and giving them our own copies of information that would help them, before the overnight success of 48 Days to the Work You Love.

In Outliers Malcolm Gladwell says that people who attain extraordinary success put in 10,000 hours before reaching their “success.” Today too many people are expecting a short-cut to fame and fortune.

What are you doing to put in your 10,000 hours toward the dream you know is coming?