"JUST one look, that's all it took", wrote the songwriter about the wonder of falling in love.
But being a high achiever in business takes rather longer, contends Malcolm Gladwell in a new book entitled, 'The Outliers'. The book is an examination of what is required to be a success.
Among the factors Gladwell isolates is what he calls 'demo
graphic luck'; just happening to be born to the right people, at the right time. It is hardly earth-shattering, is it?
Bertrand Russell, the distinguished philosopher, was able to count the nineteenth century Prime Minster Lord John Russell among his forebears. Hardly surprising, then, that he was aged ten before he met some one who had not written a book.
With such a head-start in life, small wonder fame and influence followed. Gladwell found that the time of birth was also significant. The Chinese wish, "May you live in interesting times" applied to some significant achievers.
Bill Gates of Microsoft and Steve Jobs of Apple were born within a few years of one another, when the technological revolution was accelerating. Likewise, in the United States, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan, industrialists and bankers made their names at a time of economic explosion.
But after such accidents of birth, one other factor, open to all, is indispensable, that of sheer hard work. Gladwell claims that any skilled endeavour, from sport to music to programming, requires the accumulation of 10,000 hours of practice.
The great exponents in every discipline knew the need to take pains to hone their skills. John Constable painted 57 studies of cloud effects in the Hampstead sky.
Likewise, Monet the French Impressionist made 27 studies of light effects on a single haystack. When the Dutch artist Gerrit Dou, a pupil of Rembrandt's, was complimented on the painting of a broom, a detail the size of a thumb-nail, he remarked that there was still two days work to be done on it.
When he died, thirty alternate endings were found among the papers of Ernest Hemingway for his novel 'A Farewell To Arms'.
As a nine-year-old, Jack Nicklaus went to a golf course each morning, where a professional held his head still for an hour, while the young man perfected his swing.
But Gladwell's conclusions are not so amazing after all. The Greek writer, Hesiod, beat him to it. Writing 700 years before Christ, Hesiod observed that, "Over the gates of excellence, the high gods have placed sweat."
