In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.

That was it! The whole Redwood City philosophy was based on a willingness to try harder than anyone else.

What happens when two people talk? That is really the basic question here, because, that's the basic context in which all persuasion takes place.

Why are man hole covers around?" If you don't knwo the answer to the questions, you're not smart enough to work at microsoft

Anyone who knows the marketing world knows that ideas come and go, and people latch onto things and think of them as a kind of solution.

My point is that the great challenge of an artist is to balance those two things: to be strong enough to have your own personal vision that you will put on the page or the canvas or the screen, no matter what people say, but it requires a radical sensitivity. You have to be completely open to what the world is telling you, to what your audience tells you. And balancing those two things is nearly impossible.

To become a chess grandmaster also seems to take about ten years. (Only the legendary Bobby Fisher got to that elite level in less than that amount of time: it took him nine years.) And what's ten years? Well, it's roughly how long it takes to put in ten thousand hours of hard practice. Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness.