1. Naga Chokkanathan
July 2011
A Million Balls
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2. A Million Balls
• How many of you googled for it? ;)
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3. Recognize This Gentleman?
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4. Andre Agassi’s Father Believed in Math
• My father says that if I hit 2,500 balls each day,
I’ll hit 17,500 balls each week, and at the end of
one year I’ll have hit nearly one million balls
• A child who hits one million balls each year will
be unbeatable
• (From Andre Agassi’s Autobiography “Open”)
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5. But…
• Does it work? Really?
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6. The 10,000 Hours Rule
• From the book “Outliers” By Malcolm
Gladwell
• Gladwell claims that greatness requires
enormous time, roughly 10,000 hours of
practice
• Examples:
– Bill Gates
– Beatles
– Mozart (Child Prodigy, huh?)
– Sachin Tendulkar
– … (fill it yourself)
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7. Another Book
• Bounce By Matthew Syed
• Quotes Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule and
extends it with many more examples, mainly
from sports (Matthew Syed used to be an
international table tennis player, by the way)
• This book adds an interesting twist to the tale
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8. Importance of Practice
• Three groups of violinists
– Grade A, B, C
• Check History - How many hours they practice in a
week?
– Group A: Roughly 4 hours a day
– Group B: Roughly 2 hours a day
– Group C: Less than an hour a day
• Important: There were no exceptions to this rule, both
ways
– Nobody who practiced 4+ hours a day went to B / C
– Nobody in A practiced < 4 hours a day
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9. But, Is Practice Enough?
• Car Driving for more than 10,000 hours is not
equal to Cricket practice for more than 10,000
hours
• Why?
– Autopilot mode
• OK Plateau
– Once you get there, you can’t come back
– This term comes from Joshua Foer's book, “Moon
Walking With Einstein"
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10. How To Come Out Of OK Plateau
• 3 Stages of learning:
– Cognitive
– Associative
– Autonomous
• But Experts manage this differently
– They are always looking for higher goals
– They develop strategies for keeping out of autonomous stage
• Example: Practicing something you already mastered
Vs Practicing something where you fail often
– Don’t confuse “Hitting the ball” with practice
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11. Purposeful Practice
• Matthew Syed uses the
example of Roger
Federer to explain this
– You can imagine any
sportsman you prefer
– They make it look so easy,
How?
– Response Time – How do
they get those precious
extra milliseconds?
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12. Purposeful Practice (Contd)
• Peripheral knowledge Vs Strong Experience in a
domain
– It comes only with purposeful practice
• 10,000 hours of purposeful practice seems to be
the magic formula
• Going back to Agassi Example
– If he was hitting the ball 1 Million times a year in the
same manner again and again (auto pilot), we
wouldn’t be talking about him today
– He has seen 1 Million opportunities to understand
how to handle a ball
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13. Few Questions
• What is our 10,000 hour practice field (Domain)?
– Personal
– Professional
• Where are we, in terms of the 10,000 hour goal?
• Our Strengths / weaknesses?
• Are those weaknesses because of “OK Plateau”? If yes,
how can we break away from the Autonomous mode?
• Are we doing purposeful practice in our field? For how
long, when will we hit our 10,000 hour mark?
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14. Image / Video Credits
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Outliers.png
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Malcolmgladwell.jpg
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Joshua-foer-2007.png
• http://www.openclipart.org/detail/147121/tennis-ball-by-
netalloy
• http://www.openclipart.org/detail/38197/-by-rejon-38197
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZqOLYE9aWg
• http://www.andreagassi.com/
• http://www.maximisepotential.co.uk/matthew-syed-author-of-
bounce/
• http://collider.com/columbia-moonwalking-with-einstein/80897/
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/nov/08/open-
autobiography-andre-agassi
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15. Thank You
• And, Good Luck!
• Books Mentioned In This Presentation:
– Open: http://goo.gl/1PBq4
– Outliers: http://goo.gl/2IcIG
– Bounce: http://goo.gl/ZQ5f2
– Moon Walking With Einstein: http://goo.gl/oW0LQ
• Psst: There is something common between these three authors, guess what?
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