Well, I’ve done it, folks. I now possess 10,000 hours of task repetition. It’s a plateau that, when reached, bestows upon the achiever the privilege of self-identifying as a master in their field and legally everyone has to agree with you. Since my accomplishment, it’s now blatantly obvious to anyone with eyes and ears that I am an actual walking god of a realm in which I am the only inhabitant. While sacrificing nothing, I’ve finally reached 10,000 hours of not shutting the fuck up about Malcolm Gladwell.
See, the thing about Malcolm Gladwell is that the guy is so many things. He’s a utility renaissance man: author, speaker, researcher, observer, interpreter, pop psychologist, half-Jamaican, half-British, afro’d, Christian, and a bachelor. These wonderful traits have coalesced into a person whose quirky observations and fascinating discoveries have provided invaluable knowledge to the world at large, providing me with the inspiration to never shut the fuck up about him wherever I am, no matter who is crying or why it was my fault.
My obsession with Gladz began while reading The Tipping Point, which took me a full calendar year to finish because I really like to let my thoughts marinate. In the book that rocketed him to fame and me into a nonstop blabbermouth of choice Gladwellisms, he talks about cool topics like New York City, old person shoes, STDs, and of course, tipping those points. From the moment I picked up the book I began to endlessly rave about him, changing my life forever and dramatically reducing the number of people who choose to associate with me. Their loss!
The thought did cross my mind to read his other books, but I knew immediately that I would never in a million years; it would simply take up too much time and be hard. As luck would have it, a bozo at a bar told me about the 10,000 hours rule a while back, which compelled me to explain the “Stickiness Factor” to him by putting a piece of wet gum in his hair. Plus, anytime someone asks me a specific/annoying question about one of the books, I just make up an excuse to go to the bathroom so I can look up the answer on Wikipedia. By the time I return they’re usually gone, which sucks for them.
Honestly, reading The Tipping Point gave me more than enough information about Malcolm Gladwell to enable me to perpetually talk about him with expert-level expertise. With my confidence at a justified high, all roads led to me bringing up Gladwell 24/7/365. We’re talking barbershops when I didn’t need a haircut, Best Buy trips to pretend I wanted a big TV, movie screenings of Coco I snuck into, funerals for the deceased that I didn’t know, Chatroulette, etc. No matter where I am and no matter what others are doing, I’m preaching all things Malcolm Gladwell. Much like a new religion, I don’t have any followers yet, but I do have thousands of leavers who could realize the folly of their ways any day now.
In case you’re a complete dolt, Malcolm Gladwell created the 10,000 hours rule in Outliers, one of his other books that I will never read. Apparently, he talks about how The Beatles spent the early ’60s farting around in Hamburg and playing over 1,200 shows in four years, after which they were “decent.” I, on the other hand, became world-class in 417 days. That’s right, I talked about Malcolm Gladwell for 24 hours a day until I hit the magic number. How? Eighteen waking hours were spent yelling the terms and situations I could remember from The Tipping Point to random strangers in public, while the remaining six sleeping hours were spent dreaming where I did the exact same thing, except I spoke solely to cartoon dinosaurs that I’ve known for years.
At this point, you’d have to attach a jaws of life to my maw and put it in reverse in order to shut my trap. I’m the world’s number-one Gladwell speaker-abouter, after all. I will never be bested by anyone – not even the man himself – and I will go down in history as the all-time greatest Malcolm Gladwell chatterbox that ever lived. Now, I’ve reached the stage in my career where I no longer have meaningful, personal connections with anyone and unfamiliar people avoid me like I’m infected with the plague, so I have no one to talk to anymore. But I can still talk about Malcolm Gladwell to myself, and the beautiful thing about that is this: I’m an amazing listener!
