"You got the heart, but you ain't got the tools!"
Updated: 3 days ago
As a new book casts a shadow on the oft-quoted ‘Ten Year Rule,’ we ask: How long does it take to become a contender in your chosen field?
What were you doing when you were fifteen years old? Studying for your GCSEs or O-Levels? Exploring the daunting new continent of hangovers? Learning thirty ways to conceal a love bite?
On the 3rd of September, 1658, the fifteen year old Isaac Newton ventured out of his home in Lincolnshire and into the teeth of The Great Storm then wreaking havoc across the countryside. Newton took a run up and jumped into the raging gale. Then he did it again. And again…
It was the day of Oliver Cromwell’s death, but the adolescent Newton wasn’t mourning The Great Protector. Neither was he exhibiting early signs of the eccentricity that would later cloud his legacy as arguably the greatest scientific mind in Western civilisation; his obsession with alchemy, his efforts to forecast The Apocalypse, his insistence that the rainbow was made up of seven colours, rather than the originally observed five, so it would correspond to the seven notes of the musical scale. No, young Newton was jumping into the gale as part of his experiments to measure the force of the wind, observing that The Great Storm was ‘a foot stronger’ than any wind he had previously measured.
This week’s Nature newsletter reviews a new work on Newton which cites him as an exception to ‘the ten year rule.’ *
‘The ‘ten-year rule’ of creativity and genius, identified by John Hayes in 1989, states that individuals in both the arts and sciences need a decade of learning and practise before they can make a breakthrough.’
A later study of ‘215 contemporary fiction writers** similarly concluded:
“…we found that these writers took an average of 10.6 years between their first publication and their best publication, although there was a high degree of variability. This tentatively suggests that at least for modern fiction writers, a second phase after the first ten years may be crucial for achieving eminence.”
In support of the ten year rule, the Nature Newsletter lists Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Tim Berners-Lee.
In response, The Business of Pleasure has elected its own contender, a real heavyweight, to step into the ring and knock seven shades out of the Ten Year Theory…
It is now fifty years since Rocky Balboa, the ultimate underdog, jogged onto our screens and into our hearts. It was 1976, the year of the American Bicentennial, and in order to tap into the zeitgeist, Rocky was consciously set in Philadelphia, the birthplace of the America, rather, than the more familiar cinematic backdrops of New York or Los Angeles.
TALIA SHIRE: ‘Never forget that this was supposed to be a celebration in the birthplace of America—1776, 1976. You can’t forget that. Because that is the frame around this mythological piece that gave it its mythos.’
Only the film didn’t take Stallone 200 years to write…
Inspired by the Muhammed Ali vs Chuck Wepner fight of 24 March, 1975, in which Ali defeated Jersey underdog ‘The Bayonne Bleeder’ by a technical knockout in the fifteenth round, Stallone sat down one morning and began to write. Stallone’s start-time was reportedly 6am, and he was writing longhand with a Bic biro. Three-and-a-half days later, the first draft of Rocky was complete, although, somewhat reassuringly for us lesser mortals, Round One went as badly as in the film:
STALLONE: “Ninety percent of it was not good.”
Like his creation, Stallone got back up off the canvas. A couple of drafts later, the newbie screenplay writer was able to convince John Avildsen to direct the movie. But there was one area in which Avildsen was also an absolute beginner, so Stallone had to step into the ring again:
JOHN AVIlDSEN: ‘I had never seen a boxing movie, so I looked at some, and the boxing looked so silly. Then Sylvester and Carl get into the ring and start bouncing around. Sylvester says, I’ll do this, and then Carl says, I’ll do this, and I said, We’re going to be here forever. So I told Sylvester: Go home and write out the moves—left, right, fall down. Write it like a ballet. He came back the next day with 32 pages of lefts and rights.’
Fortunately for generations of Rocky fans, Stallone had some boxing experience, but not enough to qualify for the Ten Year Rule. Even if he had spent a decade courting brain damage, there would probably only be an 18% chance of it improving his performance, as a 2007 meta-analysis suggests:***
‘More than 20 years ago, researchers proposed that individual differences in performance in such domains as music, sport, and games largely reflect individual differences in amount of deliberate practice, which was defined as engagement in structured activities created specifically to improve performance in domain. This view is a frequent topic popular-science writing but is it supported by empirical evidence? To answer this question, we conducted a meta-analysis covering all major domains in which deliberate practice has been investigated. We found that deliberate practice explained 26% of the variation in the performance of games, 21% for music, 18% for sports, 4% for education, and less than 1% for the professions. We conclude that deliberate practice is important, but not as important as has been argued.’
On the 9th of January 1976 principal photography for Rocky began in Philadelphia and reportedly ran for just 28 days.
The film premiered in New York on the 21st of November 1976, and four months later won the Oscar for Best Picture, beating All The Presidents Men, Network and Taxi Driver among other contenders.
It also left me shadow-boxing a bus stop sign when I saw the film in London.
The bus stop won …then I sat down at my typewriter and set my skinned knuckles back to work
DT 9 September 2026
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