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from the he'll-never-make-it-to-Carnegie-Hall dept.
The Atlantic has an article on Dan McLaughlin, the "average guy" who spent six thousand hours working on becoming a professional golfer
Seven-plus years ago, aged 30 and unsure even of which hand to grip a golf club in, McLaughlin quit his job as a commercial photographer, took in lodgers to cover the mortgage, husbanded his savings for green fees, and set out to make the PGA Tour, home to the world's elite golfers.
He created a catchily named blog to document his quest, and in short order the Dan Plan commanded magazines spreads and TV spots. Along the way, it drew an avid community of followers riveted by the spectacle of a regular Joe living out an everyman fantasy. No less captivated: a salon of leading figures from the science of learning and human performance.
What could you achieve if you committed to something completely, all-in, no excuses? How far could you go? For five years, McLaughlin cast everything else aside—career, money, even relationships—to put this to the test. But then his back gave out. He pushed himself to the limit and still came up short.
The article follows Dan's attempt to follow the idea, popularised in Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, that 10,000 hours of practice is the main factor in developing any skill to world class expertise.
(Score: 4, Touché) by bradley13 on Monday August 14 2017, @01:42PM
If you define "top 5%" that way, then it's pretty meaningless. Being in the top 5% of the population worldwide - including all the people who don't practice the activity at all is meaningless.
There are about 60 million golfers in the world. By your definition, when he played his very first round of golf, as the worst of those 60,000,000, he was already in the top 0.75% of the worldwide population. That doesn't make him "world class" by any sensible definition.
I'm a terrible piano player, by any definition, this despite years of lessons as a child. Given that the vast majority of the world's population has never even touched a piano, I'm world class! Whoopie!
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.