Sean D. Francis

The Second (or Third or Fourth) Chance

Posted on 21 January 2010

Since Malcolm Gladwell mentioned the ’10,000-Hour Rule’ in his book Outliers there has been a lot of discussion about  it.   I’m going to do it horrible service by simplistically describing it as practicing a task for 10,000 hours before achieving mastery of it.  Whether we accept this rule as a fact is not really my concern at the moment.  I’m more concerned with the idea of failure and the results of failure.

Within 10,000 hours of practice how many times would a person fail?  How many authors wrote a story that didn’t go anywhere?  How many musicians failed to master their instrument in 10,000 hours of practice? How many lawyers failed to create the perfect binding contract in 10,000 hours of their work?  How many failed cakes has a baker made in 10,000 hours of cake making? I know that these questions actually rely upon a clear definition of failure.  Consider, if failure is ‘not success’ then people fail a lot.  Failure is more common than success.

I can only speak for myself but I am risk averse. I spend so much time afraid that I’m going to fail and that failure will be irreversible that I am reluctant take the necessary risks to make significant strides forward.  I do believe the American business environment places a lot of weight on success and failure which in turn makes the idea of failure seem like a big deal.  This is exacerbated by depictions of make or break deals in movies and television.

Unfortunately, we can’t control how other people look at our failures.  There is always going to be the chance that people will look at a track record of failed efforts and dismiss us entirely.  We cannot be dissuaded by this chance, though.  Every failed attempt at mastering our work, our craft, our dreams is more hours spent trying to reach that 10,000 hour mark.  We may need multiple chances to get something right, but does that really matter?  The end result will be worth it.  We cannot fear failure. Failure is not the period at the end of the sentence that is our lives. Failure is more like a comma, a brief pause before we try again and again and again until we get it right.

Yes, there are those one in a lifetime opportunities but we cannot live our lives focused on those rare chances.  We need to focus on doing the legwork, breaking the sweat, and putting forth the effort to become masters of our works.