What’s the theory?
Talent has little to do with success. According to research
conducted by Dr. K. Anders Ericsson, Professor of
Psychology at Florida State University, “Elite performers
engage in ‘deliberate practice’–an effortful activity
designed to improve target performance.” Dr. Ericsson’s
studies, made popular through Malcolm Gladwell’s book
Outliers and Geoff Colvin’s Talent is Overrated, have
found that in order to excel in a field, roughly 10,000 hours
of “stretching yourself beyond what you can currently do”
is required.
So on April 5th, 2010, Dan took the plunge, he quit his
day job as a commercial photographer and began The
Dan Plan. Having never played 18 holes of golf in his life,
Dan started the 10,000 hour journey with just a putter.
After five months of putting, he received his second club,
a pitching wedge. Just before the first anniversary of The
Dan Plan he took his first full-swing lesson. After 18
months he swung a driver for the first time. On December
28, 2011 he played his first full round with a full set of
clubs. Since then it has been off to the races.
What was the spark that made you take that
leap of faith?
I just had this lingering thought of what could be possible, I
wasn’t growing in my job and I didn’t really see a challenge
in what I was doing. After numerous conversations the
feedback was really positive, people started to bring me
books on the subject of mental capability and it just grew
from there.
Roughly 10,000
hours of “stretching
yourself beyond what
you can currently do”
is required.
Why the 10,000 hours?
Having read the abundance of books on the capability
of the human mind they all seemed to carry the same
timeframe, I thought this was the right way to structure
my learning. At the start I really had no idea of how it
should take me to learn a certain skill i.e. putting so the
hours were a bench mark, for example, I didn’t beat
myself up if I wasn’t regularly sinking 15ft putts after
50 hours of practice. What it has helped me to do is
look back on segments of my learning and see where
and how long improvements have taken.
YOURCADDY MAG - ISSUE 06 | 21