Experiment with your life

Forget 10,000 Hours Rule: Use 10,000 Experiments Rule Quickly Pave Your Path to Success

10,000 experiments rule is a quick way to skip the line and join the top 5% in whatever you are trying to do.

Malcolm Gladwell through his popular book popularized the concept that to be master and truly succeeded at one thing, you must devote 10,000 hours.

In his 2008 bestseller Outliers, Malcom Gladwell said, “you need to have practiced for 10,000 hours before you get good”. But after almost 12 years later. 

The idea was simple, that you need 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become a world-class performer in any field. This rule also got misinterpreted by most people and made people believe, it takes a lot of time to get good at anything.

Although, it holds true for some fields like sports and music, it is not accurate for all fields. You can’t spend 10,000 hours doing the same thing

Everyone can not devote 10,000 hours of their life to a single thing. They have to earn money, feed their families and other responsibilites. Even if they do devote devote 10,000 hours, and after getting good at it, they change theri passion.

This asks for a solution to be able to quickly learn new things and be good at them. So, that you don’t have to spend 1000s of hours on tasks you don’t know, will work or not.

That’s where 10,000 experiments rule work. This rule of thumb is used by many people who are successful in their field and have built something out of nothing. 

What is 10,000 Experiments Rule?

10,000 experiments rule is a quick way to skip the line and join the top 5% in whatever you are trying to do. This develops from the stem of science. Behind any advancement or development lies experimentation. You develop a hypothesis first, perform a test to see if the hypothesis is right or wrong. You analyze the results and create a new hypothesis based on the lessons you have learned.

This is rule that some of the most successful people in the human history followed knowingly or unknowingly. Thomas Edison performed 10,000 experiments before he finally invented a light bulb. Leonardo Da Vinci and Picasso used it. Richard Branson failed many times before succeeding in business.

If there’s one thing you take away from this article it is that, if you want to be truly good at anything, be a prolific experimenter.

As we were child, we used to do a lot of experiments. If our parents told us not to do something, or go anywhere, we used to do the exact same things. We used to experiment, We were curious to know.

But as we grow older, we started following the norms of society. We stopped being curious. We started giving a lot of importance to others and their opinions. We started to crave love from others.

And to get that love constantly, all I have to do is to stay with him/ her and not skip the line. We started being fearful. 

We started fearing failure. But there is no failure actually. In life, you either win or you learn. So, don’t fear experimentation. Do experiments and learn from them.

To do any experiments, look if they are viable or not:

  • Easy to set up and do
  • Have the least downside
  • Huge potential upside
  • It’s never been done before
  • You’re learning something

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