Not a lot of people know this, but my High School Diploma isn’t really a normal diploma… well – it’s normal, just has a special addition to it.  In high school I was a part of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Program.  (Yes, it was for the smart kids.  Mock away – I’ve already heard it all.) In order to graduate I had to write this final paper for my history class on a subject of my choosing.  My paper was about the age-old question: “Do great men make history or does history make great men?” This was then applied to Lenin and the Russian Revolution as a case study.  (And somehow I ended up as a comedian… who would have guessed!)

The paper got a decent grade (to be honest, I kind of phoned it in) but that question of great men vs. history has been on my mind a lot while reading Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book:  Outliers: The Story of Success.  For those of that haven’t heard about the book it studies “outliers”: the people that have achieved major success and how they have done it.  While the book draws many conclusions the factor of luck comes up quite a bit.  Being born in a particular year (or month) could have a huge impact on what you are able to accomplish, not to mention your upbringing and coincidence.

Gladwell has so masterfully answered what my IB paper attempted to all those years ago.  While having the natural drive and ambition to succeed is necessary – it’s just the prerequisite.  He also stresses the importance of chance and the need to have achieved 10,000 hours of work in a field to become proficient.  Reading that forced me to think of my own field.  When you start out in comedy you are given 5 minutes of stage time (basically not enough time to do any “damage” to the overall show).  By Gladwell’s logic that would be 120,000 spots on stage.  I think of this number when new comics ask me if they should enter the field and I laugh (internally of course).

I strongly recommend Outliers and hope that, if you read it, it changes your opinion on success and thus on failure.  Sometimes all the ability in the world isn’t enough – you have to be ready when luck strikes.

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In the same shipment from Amazon that contained Outliers was also David Crowe’s new comedy DVD, Crooked Finger.  I worked with David on New Year’s Eve here in Calgary and was honoured to do so.  He is definitely a comedian that has put in his 10,000 hours and it shows in his work.

The DVD is 75 minutes of non-stop laughs.  The material is selected very well and a delight to watch.  If you are putting in an order for Outliers be sure to add his DVD to it as well (or vice versa)… it’s the best one that I’ve watched in a while.

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