She finds her silver medal on the GM lot. Sure, it’s not as elegant and well-designed as the Audi, but it’s the right size and more importantly, in her price range. So if the message were “buy what you can afford” or “inferior products are cheaper than superior products” you might get up thinking the ad made sense. But in fact, the commercial reaches a very different conclusion:

“GM. Better than Audi.”

This would be about as convincing as Microsoft’s new commercial:

I like my ad better. Let’s see what was left on the editing room floor:

After she buys the car, she can’t drive it until she goes through a long and painful setup procedure. It’s stockpiled with third-party add-ons she never wanted and has to remove one by one. The vehicle is frequently recalled. Often these are in the form of an interruption while she’s at work: “YOUR VEHICLE REQUIRES AN URGENT SECURITY UPDATE.” Depression and anxiety mount. Her hands start shaking as she discovers the whiskey bottle her children had long since hidden from her, the shards of which surround her corpse when the body is found the next day. The police pry open her rigor-mortized hand to find a note. One line, written in blood:

I’m a PC.

Poor Lauren.

Anyway, I left this out because it would make my analogy too convoluted, but Microsoft DOESN’T EVEN BUILD THE FUCKING PC, SO THE COMMERCIAL IS TOTALLY INVALID UNLESS IT’S AN AD FOR HP. If Microsoft wants to get into a logically consistent price comparison with Apple, it should be on the grounds of its OS. But don’t worry, I’ve already done it for them:

vs.

Oops. Looks like I’d have to pay three times as much to buy the only version of Vista that managed to satisfy 12% of its users. Where do I sign up?

This isn’t an anomaly, just look at the other recent commercials:

• The I’m a PC ads. You remember, the ones that were made on a Mac.
• Then there’s the one where Microsoft has to trick people into using their product.
• And let’s not forget The Three Hundred Million Dollar Afterbirth.

It’s painful to watch a company with so much money and talent caricaturize themselves. Microsoft knows they need a revolution, but for some reason believe it’s going to come from their ad department. The money that was spent on Seinfeld cracking dumb jokes about shoes and cake should’ve been given to the nerds instead. They need only to look at their own history to see why.

There’s plenty of noise, but of a different sort than the old Mexican neighborhood. The police helicopters, ice cream trucks, honking carts, car alarms, the mariachi band (really), the dogs, the cats, the birds, the catbirds, the mockingbirds that mocked the catbirds, and that guy who would constantly blast his horn at random, cacophonous intervals independent of the hour of day or night–these have all been replaced by the stops and starts of buses, live bands, and homeless people, who like to scream while they defecate.

There really are an astounding surplus of these (homeless people). I can’t imagine why they’d want to loiter downtown instead of the beach, but questions like those are only a few inches down the rabbit hole of perplexing homeless behavior. Living here has given me the opportunity to go a bit deeper, and I intend to make the most of it.

Here are a few of the characters I’ve come across so far. Having recently been told that the homeless are indeed people, I’m using out of courtesy what I’ve decided are their real names:

Black Mark Twain - I’m not even exaggerating, he looks Photoshopped. And though he lacked the author’s vocabulary, he made up for it with simplicity of language, limiting himself to just one word: “Vaginas.”

“Vaginas. Vaginas vaginas, vaginas vaginas vaginas. Vaginas.”

Our proximity on the bus made me a little uncomfortable, but probably not as much so as the young woman he was talking to.

C. - This guy approached me just as I was exiting the local Rite Aid, enjoying my scoop of Thrifty brand Mint Chip for Poor People ice cream. He looked at me sideways and growled, “Just how many of you are there?”

Do you think he was talking about:

A. The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics?

B. The duality of man?

C. I’m a crazy homeless person who should be ignored, but you’re going to be thinking about our interaction for weeks, thereby making you sorry you ever made eye contact with me in the first place?

The Woman Who Is Probably Watching Me Right Now - I was dozing off on the Metro Rail, jolted out of my sleep by these strange gospel jingles. Short and saccharine little rhymes you might learn in Sunday School. When I heard the weird guttural intonations, I realized they were not coming from a child of God, but rather a woman of Satan. She had a shaved head and black eyes and sang the way Billie Holiday would if she had psychologically regressed into a child. With AIDS. She was a real-life horror movie, the most disturbing thing I had ever seen, and I felt that if displeased she could dissolve me from the inside out somehow.

The Ten-dollars-and-fifty-cents-on-sale-at-Wal-Mart Man - To be fair, I don’t know if he’s homeless. But he’s definitely legless. His torso is capped watertight by a silver tarpaulin and he roams the streets using two wooden handles to propel himself forward. The world is his pommelhorse.

And no, I don’t know how he goes to the bathroom either, but I imagine he just shits the tarp and then donates it as shelter to the Santa Monica homeless, which explains why they smell worse.

You’ve practiced at least 10,000 hours.

Therefore, you’re an expert.

Sound fishy? I hope so; it’s a basic fallacy. So it’s a fascinating thing when people read Outliers and conclude that success is a mere 10,000 automatous hours away. As Ryan said, it’s a sticky number. I got carried away enough to host a challenge based on the premise–actually that was the original intent of this post. Really, here it is:

The Challenge: Commit 10,000 hours to something you want to excel at, and track your progress. You can log the hours at the end of each post, scribble hash marks in a notebook, whatever. Share your progress with everybody, and invite them to do the same. Or keep it to yourself if you want, then casually inform your friends that you’re a chess grandmaster or world-class kickboxer. If you’ve already made serious headway, start wherever you honestly feel is appropriate. There’s no background check, your involvement is your business. But if you’re going to participate, leave me a comment and tell me about it. Or blog about it. (And if you still don’t have a blog, I would spend the first thousandth of my time setting one up.)

As daunting as that figure might be, it’s just as reassuring in its meritocracy. The research shows that talent can be supplanted by hard work. The biggest opportunity of my life came when I tested those boundaries just a little. But something happened afterward. I let them rebound back. I started waiting for things to happen again, to be perpetually assigned. How about you? And are you even close to that number, in anything? I’m not. That’s why I’m issuing, and taking part in, this challenge.

Then I realized that’s just another easy way out, veiled in hard. Umair said that communities need love, not math, and I think the same holds true for success. While there is a lot to be gained from trying to deconstruct successful behavior, there will always be variables difficult to quantify. Like practice, which Gladwell kind of glosses over in the book, but is critical when qualifying the research.

This notion of deliberate practice is to me far more substantive and less arbitrary than the 10,000-hour rule. I mean, if you just accumulate hours, you’ll eventually hit the target–assuming you don’t get bored and give up. But if you want that number to actually quantify your effort, to be more than some worthless binary, that’s up to you. Deliberate practice, perfect practice–call it whatever you want, but I’d spend the first of those hours understanding the distinction.

People have also used the book to affirm their belief that success is a matter of luck and circumstance. Obviously it plays a role; I mean, here you are, alive. Relatively healthy and hopefully free. You’re reading this, so you have access to the internet. But anyone who would argue that success today requires more than that is, on a historical scale, preposterously selfish. I didn’t really think that view would be seriously held, but in a discussion we had recently, about a guy who uncovered AP23 “for fun,” people were still pulling the luck card.

You just can’t say that anymore. You can learn anything you want for free. Become a post-graduate level expert in the field of your choice. You can produce almost anything for nearly nothing, and get funding for the exceptions.

Hell, even looking at the examples in the book: Bill Gates may have had the opportunity to program more often than many of his peers at the time. Remember though, that University of Washington mainframe was free at night–Gates was just the one who snuck out of his house to use it. That’s what it means to have success ensue.

So, I’ve revised the challenge, and while it might not be as sticky and formulaic, I think it’ll help you, and me, a lot more:

Find something you like doing so much that you won’t even realize 10,000 hours have gone by.

It’s something to think about when I’m in front of the heavy bag. Which kick do I throw? Not necessarily consciously or overtly. It’s like the feeling you get when someone adds 4 plates to the bar every time they alternate sets with you, or when the guy on the next treadmill is running twice as fast–on an incline. How do you respond to it? Keep the plates on and cheat out the reps? Ruin your pace and stop early? After all, most people prefer validation over embarrassment. And that’s just what my left kick, and really most everything I do in MMA is right now–embarrassing. But I’ve gone from 100% helpless to 95 in the past couple months, because I’ve let some of that embarrassment get literally beaten out of me:

• If you can’t defend the other guy’s strikes correctly, it doesn’t matter that yours are twice as strong. You’re the one getting knocked out.
• If you can’t leverage your strength to take someone down properly, it doesn’t matter that you can deadlift 400 pounds.
• If you neglect basic posture and get caught in a painful choke, it doesn’t matter that you know complex submissions.

(That last one: I lost my base so badly I couldn’t even tap. He had ahold of one wrist and the other hand was pinned down. When this is the case, you usually try and tap verbally, by saying “tap” or “stop” or whatever. But try doing that with a shin crushing your windpipe. “TLAGH!” Yeah, that was fun.)

It’s the decision between a fixed or a growth-oriented mindset, and along the way, you start to notice the distinction. In other people, in yourself. Some guys just want to work on the fun stuff, and others are busy shoveling coal–doing the repetitive, exhaustive work that’s necessary to become a complete fighter. MMA can be seen roughly as a combination of 3 different phases–stand-up, clinch and ground–that are each represented by a multitude of sports that people have devoted their entire lives to. Although it’s quickly evolving into more of a unified discipline, there will always be gaps to fill and seams to weld.

So would you rather do what you’re good at, or do what you’re bad at?

If you haven’t done so already, you should subscribe. It’s a lot easier than refreshing my page every few seconds.

Photo: Job Koelewijn

(Hat tip to Neatorama)

So I filled it completely. More actually, since the sauce crowned over the top and was held there only by surface tension. Forgetting Bernoulli’s principle entirely, I snapped the lid back on. It was like putting your thumb over a garden hose. The teaspoon of Tabasco only had one place to go, and it did–straight through the goddamn pinhole, jet-streaming the liquid right into my eyes.

The first quarter-second registered only annoyance at having to clean myself off, and the slight embarrassment of giving myself a money shot. This quickly dissipated when my eyes reacted to the mixture of red peppers, vinegar, and salt.

I didn’t know a person could be so instantly filled with rage. It was like a flipped switch, a spraybottle before a cockfight. I wanted to rip out someone’s eyes in a vain attempt to replace my own. Instead, I just flailed around like a retard.

I may as well have been kicking and screaming. I don’t explode very often, so that moment of complete loss of control was unusual enough to stick with me. I must have looked ridiculous and small. Ryan talks about this here, and I think the Bill O’Reilly thing is a good barometer:

If someone were watching a video of your outburst, would they laugh at you?

I took some time to visit Kansas City this weekend, mostly sticking around the place where I grew up, a small town that you may have read about exactly once. Although I couldn’t have asked for a much worse start to a trip (I’ll write about it another time), the dust has settled and I’ve been able to unwind a bit. I walked with my friends to the costume shop nearby, in a strip mall that has never housed much else, other than a grocery store. But there’s been a recent addition, something that wasn’t there last time I was around: a mixed martial arts gym.

Later, when I drove down my old street, I noticed two kids, probably 12-14 years old, grappling on the front lawn. You can see the booming popularity of the sport in the attendance and Pay-Per-View numbers, but it’s experiences like this that lead me to appreciate the perpetual influence of the sport, and make me excited to be a part of it, no matter how small and newcomer that part is.

Apart from this being a personal blog, where I’m trying not to limit my voice to any particular theme (if you’ve been here for awhile, you can tell I’m bad with this), you might still be curious about the shift in material, why I want to write about blocking kicks, and what it means.

I mentioned this recently, but I am in perhaps a unique position in that I’m not only a beginner to MMA, I am a beginner to sports. You wouldn’t know it by looking at me, because I lift weights and work out a lot, but there is a huge difference between an athletic-looking person and an athlete. This is one of the gaps in my development, and I am trying to fill it with one of the most intense and demanding sports possible. I chose fighting for several reasons:

• I’m a fan who was excited about and interested in MMA anyway.
• I’ve never been in a street fight, and although it’s not something I anticipate, it wouldn’t hurt to be prepared for it.
• The level of conditioning and toughness–both physical and mental–you must develop is rivaled by very few sports. I don’t have that yet, and I want it.
• Violence is part of humanity. It’s not even a matter of condonation, it’s about control and acceptance versus ignorance.
• Let’s just say I’d rather have my arm raised in victory inside a ring, no matter how amateur, than winning a local softball match.

So I think there is a lot of value to be extracted and shared. But if nothing else, at least you’ll get to laugh at an uncoordinated grown man as he learns new concepts like left, right, front, back, and stop getting hit in the face.

That bruise was made through a 4″ pad, by a guy 40-50 pounds lighter than me. He kicks hard. I doubt many people question the toughness of professional fighters, but next time you watch an event, keep in mind this is the sort of power that lightweights are repeatedly giving and receiving. Without pads.

That’s the best thing I’ve ever heard after getting my ass handed to me. I was sparring with someone, and he told me this right after the round ended. I’m not some sort of MMA prodigy or even close. I have strength and size on the guy, but cannot leverage it properly. He also sees me training regularly, so he knows it’s just a matter of time.

I’d like to say that this didn’t really affect me, that I would have trained exactly as hard if he told me I’d never win, or if he said nothing at all. That validation is irrelevant. But that would be a lie. I started taking more classes, and qualifying to take new ones. Starting next week, my schedule will look like this:

2-3 sessions Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
2-3 Muay Thai
2 MMA
2 Wrestling
3 Strength training

A big part of it is rebound from not playing sports at all in youth and adolescence. No Little League, no high school football. I started weight training when I was like 20, but had nothing to apply it to except itself. Now that I have an athletic focus, I’m probably being a little obsessive because I want to see what I can do with it. What my limits are, where my body breaks down.

So in 3 months, I may still throw like a girl, but I’ll be able to kick you pretty hard if you tell me so.