What factors influence when predicting whether a person will be successful?
This is a complex question that many of us have asked ourselves at some point. exist multiple causes that can play in our favor or against us when determining whether, throughout our lives, we will be able to achieve certain economic and work goals.
From socioeconomic background to luck, including a factor that we often do not take into account: the experience especially what we have been able to acquire during our childhood.
You don’t have to be very clever to realize that one of the important factors is socioeconomic background: If you were born in a rich family, you will have greater chances of receiving a better education, you will be able to dedicate more time to studying, you will have the financial cushion and family contacts, etc.
However, if you come from a humble family, you have it a little (or a lot) more difficult in life: You will probably receive a formal education that is not so good, perhaps you will have to start working early to contribute to the family economy (which may affect the hours you dedicate to studying), and you may not be able to afford higher education, even if you do not lack intellectual capacity, merits and motivation.
The social elevator has been broken for decades, and there are no stairs
All of this that I have just explained is not a cliché: several studies carried out in Spain and published by the newspaper El País show that the ‘social elevator’ It has been broken since the sixties. The social elevator is the mechanism through which, in a society, the humble can climb the ladder and see their personal economic reality substantially improved thanks to their merits and effort*.
This meritocratic principle seems to be called into question when we analyze the data. which point to that, If you were born poor, you are much more likely to remain poor as an adult If you were born rich, it must be very bad for you to not continue in a privileged position.
Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 Hour Law
Fortunately, There are other factors that come into play when deciding whether we can be successful and develop our potential. In this case I wanted to focus on a factor that perhaps is not taken into account very much: the experiences that we acquire during our childhood.
The reflections that follow are part of a conference by the Catalan economist Xavier Sala Martín professor at Columbia University, and which reveal to us the decisive importance of this vital stage when it comes to forging certain capabilities and skills that allow us greater chances of job success in adulthood.
Children born in the first half of the year have an advantage
Let’s start by thinking about a curious fact. A spectacularly strong trend and for no apparent reason is that, in the majority of elite sports teams, 75% of its players were born in the first half of the year And, in fact, there are a negligible number of high-level athletes who were born in the month of December. You can verify this fact yourself by looking at elite professional teams in any sport: you will notice that this trend is a curious and disturbing constant.
If 50% of the world’s people were born in the first half of the year, and the other 50% in the second half, How do you explain why elite athletes are mostly born in the first months of the year?
Malcolm Gladwell, the journalist who studied this curious phenomenon
An American journalist named Malcolm Gladwell He was one of the first to realize this issue of athletes and birth months. Without being able to explain this phenomenon, investigated different sociological studies
Finally he came to a conclusion, which had nothing to do with paranormal and astrological issues. The explanation was very simple: to be sports professionals, children have to have gone through the base categories, where they train and play matches. What happens is that these base categories are divided by years. When children start at 7 or 8 years old, they play with those of the same year. Those born in 1993 with those from 1993, those from 1994 with those from 1994, and so on.
This means that children who were born in January 1993 and those born in December 1993 play on the same team. At these ages, a difference of one year has a great impact: those in January are taller, stronger, more agile, smarter. and the coaches, who in addition to training also want to win the games, end up granting more playing time and responsibilities to the January children. They are the ones who play, not only the most minutes, but the ones who take the penalties, the ones who play the decisive minutes… and therefore they gain more experience
The enormous importance of the experience we acquire (or not) during childhood
This dynamic is accentuated and consolidated as they advance in the base categories: the following year, the January children are still a year older and also have more experience. With each passing year, the schism of experience between the children at the beginning of the year and the children at the end of the year becomes greater
Once children have grown up, for example when they are 20 years old, the physical differences between them have disappeared. What remains is a big difference in the players’ experience: the January kids have had many more opportunities to train and play more minutes, therefore they are better players (with worthy exceptions, of course). In the end, This years of experience is a key factor in predicting whether one will be able to reach the elite, or not
To succeed at something, dedicate 10,000 hours to it
Malcolm Gladwell, reflecting on the reason why elite athletes are the ones with the most experience, formulates a theory: To be very good at something, we must dedicate at least 10,000 hours to it It is necessary to train 10,000 hours to be really good at something and to be able to stand out above others, whether programming websites, playing basketball, playing an instrument…
This is a moral applicable to any area of work life. But there are other reflections. For example, it occurs to me to throw a question into the air: Are children’s sports teams too focused on results? Because we can well think that December children are suffering structural discrimination that affects their potential to develop their skills.
Educational implications: the Pygmalion Effect in children
In fact, the sports field can only be a reflection of an educational model that makes similar mistakes When we evaluate children based on rigid parameters, December children are more likely to get worse grades.
This should not be anything worrying, since greater effort and the passage of years should level out these small differences between students at the beginning of the year and those at the end. However the Pygmalion Effect explains to us that adults deposit in children certain desires and desires that can help the minor form a healthy self-concept and learn to move towards certain objectives and challenges, which will allow them to mature. Of course, this can also happen in the opposite direction: teachers who can negatively influence the self-concept of many “December children”
