on Live Write Thrive:

Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 best seller, Outliers, centers on the premise that, regardless of a person’s pursuit, it takes about 10,000 hours to become proficient, or perhaps an expert.

Gladwell discovered that hugely successful people such as Bill Gates, Robert Oppenheimer, and The Beatles had put in the requisite 10,000 hours into their field or craft. It just seems to be a very basic rule that to become proficient in any field, you need to put in a lot of time—which equates to a lot of years of diligent effort.

There are no shortcuts or get-smart-quick ways about it. Unless you’re a prodigy or Mensa genius, you are going to have to become an expert the old-fashioned way—by hard work and persistence.

In this modern age of instant gratification in which we can’t even tolerate more than five seconds for a web page to load, the idea of having to take such a long time becoming an expert in our craft is downright annoying. We want it all now—success, recognition, fulfillment.