If you have read Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers: The Story of Success then you’re familiar with his theory about how all successful men and women besides having wonderful and enduring qualities have a continuous common factor among them which is an incredible amount of hours at practicing and getting perfect at what they love and what they are passionate about. Gladwell claims that in order to be an “Outlier” one should complete 10,000 hours doing what one wants to excel in. The book is way deeper and more explanatory and it goes into greater details about his theory and how everything makes totally sense, so if you haven’t read it, I strongly suggest that you do.
I can’t help connecting everything I read to design, so the first American designer in my list of Outliers In Interior Design that came to my mind was Albert Hadley and with him some members of what I call “The magic circle.” No I don’t mean Palates, you!, I mean all the successful designers who once worked for Albert Hadley and seem to have enduring success. I’m not going to go into detail as how I calculated the hours because it could be tedious but only the period from 1962 to 1999 during the time of Parish-Hadley partnership He seems to have had under his belt more than 72,224 hours; business hours only. That is not counting the times when a designer keeps working mentally and takes every detail of the work home. Isn’t that amazing!?
Bunny Williams who worked for Alber Hadley for 22 years. During that time she had only 42,944 hours. Amazing!
Miles Redd, even though he didn’t work directly for Mr. Hadley but he got some of the magic circle through Bunny. Miles opened his firm in 1998 and before that he worked for Bunny Williams for 5 years and before that for John Rosselli. That is approximately a total of 23 years. You do the math…
David Easton worked for Parish-Hadley from 1967 to 1972 to then found David Eston Interiors. He’s been working ever since. Yes, that many hours! Uhm… I wonder if blogging counts. ah.. I don’t think so. 🙁
Bourbon&Pearls
Ah, great book and that part really resonated with me, I wish I had found something that i was good at when I was young – I'd be at my peak now!
Splendid Sass
Great post, Julie. I will have to pick up the book.
Teresa
xoxo
classiq
This is intriguing, Julie. I know how much time someone puts into his'her work when they do what they love, but have never thought of doing the math. Impressive! And thank you for the book recommendation.
Ada
julieatbellevivir
Tabitha,
Same with me here. Had I not dropped out of Architecture School in 95' I would be a successful Architect today. I guess we all have something to regret in our youth. I think is the way it should be in order to always remember to think twice when confronting an important decision.
julieatbellevivir
Teresa,
Thank you and the book is totally worth reading.
julieatbellevivir
Ada,
Isn't that intimidating? Amazing It's a huge wake up call.