Zhi Zhang

Tanya Lewis

English 1121

6 December 2011

No Pain, No Gain
Arguably the smartest man in the world, Chris Langan, has an extremely high IQ of one hundred and nightly-five yet worked as a construction worker, a farmer, and a bouncer in a bar later on in his life. When he graduated from high school, he got enrolled into Reed College with a perfect score on SAT and later attended Montana State University but eventually was dropped out of school. The man neither became a business tycoon nor a computer programming whiz in his lifetime. Most people would be astonished that a genius like Chris Langan ended up in such a fortune. People typically think that wealthy businessmen are born incredibility smart or top athletes are born with naturally gifted bodies. To think about individual success this way, people neglect to realize how much work and effort have to be done before he or she becomes successful in that specific area. The ten thousand hour rule is a great notion to encourage people that anyone who can reach to the top in his or her class by having ten thousand hours or more of practice and hard-work.
Bill Gates, also known as the wealthiest man on earth, is the founder of the world wide famous company Microsoft. His accomplishments have had huge impacts not just on the IT industry but on the whole world as well. The reason why Bill became so successful is not because he was smarter than all of his peers. It is because the enormous amount of time he spent of computer programming prior to his success. In Outliers, Gladwell mentions that Bill Gates started programming in eighth grade and in one seven-month period, Gates would spend eight hours every single day doing this. By the time when he finished high school, he was way past ten thousand hours of computer programming. It was his obsession, and he skipped classes just to do programming. Bill Gates himself even said he would be shocked if there were fifty teenagers had the similar experience as him at that time (51-55). This shows how Gates was serious about and dedicated to what he was doing. When he decided to drop out of Harvard in the second year to start operating his own software company, he was well prepared and confident because of the skills he gained from his past six to seven years of computer programming. This is what made the richest man, Bill Gates today. The key to his success is more about persistently work on that particular area than just being out-smart than anybody else.
When it comes to sports, most people think those ones who have the most physically gifted bodies are the best athletes. The truth is, those top athletes do not just become the best with their innate talents. The current highest paid NBA basketball player Kobe Bryant is said to be the best player in the league and is always in the same conversation with the greatest basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan. Bryant was very confident when he entered the league because he was ranked one of the most dominant high school basketball players in the nation. Unfortunately during his rookie season, he averaged a miserably low seven point six points per game. In 2008, an insider obtained a sample of Kobe Bryant’s training schedule from one of Kobe’s trainer at LA sports club and posted it on the prestigious online basketball forum Inside Hoops. It is called the 666 workout, 6 hours a day, 6 days a week, 6 months a year. (hotsizzle post 1). He was in the league for twelve years at that time, and this workout roughly adds up to twenty-two thousands hours of practice. Kobe told Men’s Fitness during an interview:”Consistency. If they watch me train, running on the track, it doesn’t look like I’m over-exerting myself. It’s a consistency with