What Makes Highly Successful People Different?

From 1990s, the trio of psychologists from Universität der Künst, Berlin, made a joined research on: What makes the most successful people different from average persons.

Their research results created a solid base for the 10,000-hours rule, which was popularized by psychologist Malcolm Gladwell in the Outliers book. Although Gladwell said that the public actually misunderstood his idea, this concept had already made its life.

In this research, the psychologists gathered a group of talented violin students, who are appraised to be world class players by their instructors. Let’s call this as the Star group.

Researchers also gathered another group of violin students who were really determined to be the best, yet according to their instructors’ record, they weren’t in the same league with the star group. Let’s call this group Average.

Every student was asked to record in details how they spent their daily time. Through analyzing their journals, researchers found that the Star group spent in average, 50 hours per week in practicing to play violin.

However, the biggest surprise is that Average group also spent 50 hours a week to practice. That’s right, this group of average players spent the same amount of time which the Star group did for practicing, fine-tuning their tempo, and did nearly everything necessary to improve their performance quality.

So, what makes these 2 groups different regardless of their time spent for art? There’re 2 big things. The first, the Star group spent more time to purposely practice at almost 3 times more than that of the Average group. Purpose practicing means purposely grind on difficult techniques to expand one’s ability.

The second is the time for which group 2 practiced. People in Average group scattered their practices throughout the day, whereas those in Star group slit their time into 2 specific periods. From that, we found that extraordinary ones are strict with 2 practice sessions per day.

This schedule is actually not quite stressful like we think. When researchers asked how much time the student spent each week for leisure activities – an important factor in assessing relax feeling – the Star group showed that they felt significantly more relaxed than their inferior ones.

It’s another finding that’s worth mentioning: students who practice harder – those committed more with a few hours of exhaustive working each day – are, basically, less stressed. They did the hard work, and then forget it all over.

In trying to improve something, whether you’re nurturing your mind or trying to turn to another career page, exhaustion is your enemy. You become victim of the fantasy that hard work equals value. To join the Star group, work less. But do it with full focus, seriousness and extensiveness. When you’re done, let it be done.