Tag: ability

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Overnight Success

Kathy and I had dinner two weeks ago at the home of a couple we’ve grown close to the past few years. At the end of a wonderful evening together that included intriguing conversation and a meal featuring delicious pork, our hostess asked if we would like to see her latest paintings. Chris is an excellent artist and illustrator – with several published books – and she wanted to share her recent foray into impressionism.

As she shuffled through various outdoor, still-life and portrait works, I was amazed at her ability to vividly capture subjects on canvas. Being a neophyte to the art world, I asked about one nighttime scene of a bridge with water flowing rapidly beneath it, “How long did it take you to do that?”

“An entire lifetime,” she quickly responded. “It’s my art degree, the decades I’ve spent learning colors and technique, the ability to transfer what I see with my eye to my hand and onto the canvas, and the 10,000 hours I’ve stood in front of an easel. That’s how long it took me to paint that bridge.”

Malcolm Gladwell highlighted the 10,000 hours phenomenon in Outliers, using Bill Gates and the Beatles as prime examples. It’s become the accepted standard for the amount of time someone must put in to become an expert at his/her craft. Gladwell got it right… and our friend Chris is living proof. So, keep practicing.

[Note: Kathy and I commented that night how much we liked the pork entrée. Chris said it was her mother’s dish. A few days later, a note arrived in the mail. Enclosed was the recipe for “Mom’s Tender Lemon Pork Chops.” Those artists… they don’t miss a thing.]

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A Look Back In Time

One of the necessary skills for being a sports television producer is having the ability to back-time a broadcast off the air. That means if your designated off-time is 4:58:30 p.m. EDT and it’s 4:55:08, you have to quickly recognize you have 3:22 to conduct an interview with the player of the game or winning coach, get in the last two 60-second commercials, and have the announcers smoothly wrap up as you count down, “5-4-3-2-1-black.”

Having lived that life from 1981-’95, I find those particular talents come in quite handy in the business world. First, I’m seldom late for anything. In sports television, you’re judged on two things: how you got on and off the air, and what the other three hours looked like. It’s pretty much 50/50 on the grading scale, so you learn to be on time and on your game. Second, I break down big projects into small pieces and typically get them done as scheduled. That ability likely comes from knowing that in a football game you had four commercial breaks each quarter, so you learned to think and communicate in terms of ‘here’s what we’ll do during the next segment.’

You don’t have to have worked in television to become more efficient. The key to improvement is to adjust your approach to think in terms of the clock counting down. The moment you walk in the door you’re losing time. So plan your day accordingly… schedule specific tasks and commit to getting them done. Remember, you can never gain back a single minute, so treat each one preciously. You’ll become more adept at moving forward and within no time you’ll be judging yourself as an A+ in productivity.

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