The BeatlesDo It Again and Again to Get Better

 
I'm currently reading
The Beatles: The Biography,
by Bob Spitz. One of the keys
to the Beatles success, I feel,
was that they did the same thing
over and over again.

In this biography, Bob Spitz mentions
that the Beatles used to take a 2 or
3 minute song and turn it into a 30
minute song. They did this because
their time on stage was 5 hours or
more a night and they needed to keep
the song going so that they would not
run out of songs. This was in Hamburg,
Germany where the song sets were mercilessly
long.

Imagine taking a 3-minute song and
stretching it to 30 minutes. To do
this, you'd have to learn to play endless
variations on the same song. This must
have given them great creative license
and great creative insight.

Do a 30 minute version of a song night
after night and you are going to know
the song inside and out. That's one
thing that seemed to characterize the
group. They knew their songs very very
well.

I think this is one of the keys to success
in life. People become good at something
after they've done it over in over again.

For example, one of the metrics used to
measure pilots is how many hours of flying
time they have. Seems that experience
really counts when it comes to flying.

Same thing with driving a car. You are
a much better driver after you've driven
your first 100,000 miles than before you've
driven 100,000 miles. You get better at
responding to situations appropriately as
they come up.

So it is with anything. Do it over and
over again with any kind of care and concern
and you are going to get better at it. Of
course, not everyone does get better. Some
people relive the say hour or same day of
their lives over and over again. I'm not
talking about those people.

I'm talking about people who really and truly
wish to get a little better at something each
time they do it. When these people do something
over and over again, they truly get better at
it.

Stick with the same thing, really and truly
in your heart, and you get better at it.

Ed Abbott

The Beatles,Success Ain't Easy Until It Is

 
Success ain't easy. That's
the underlying message I'm
getting from a book I'm
currently reading called
The Beatles: The Biography,
by Bob Spitz.

As I recall from the book, the
Beatles had some gigs in Hamburg,
Germany where they were contracted
to play music for 7 hours straight
with barely any bathroom breaks.

That's 7 hours a day, which is more
than 40 hours a week of time on
stage. That's a 40-hour week
if you count weekends too. I
don't think I've ever heard
of a musician actually working a
40-hour week on stage.

Most musicians these days might work
3 hours a week in front of an audience.
Of course, conditions are very different
now. However, it doesn't surprise me
that the Beatles became so good at what
they do. They had a lot of experience.

Perhaps a better name for talent is
hard work. It takes lots of time
put in to become good at something. Of
course, time put in is not always the answer.
You have to be dedicated and curious about
what you do too. Time put in with no curiosity
about how you might become better is like
having put in no time at all.

While success ain't necessarily easy, it
does have a way of finding those who have
taken the time to develop the necessary
skills. By the time the Beatles got a
recording contract, they had the stamina
and the skills to record a whole album in
one single day.

I'm going to amend this a bit. Success
ain't easy until you've developed the
necessary stamina and skills. Once you've
done so then outsiders looking in will
think that your success was an easy one.

I'll amend this further. Success ain't easy
until it is.

Ed Abbott