Why?

how?

Everything is hard before you do it.  Everything gets easier with practice.  You cease to improve only when you cease to try. 

Consider one thing Malcolm Gladwell discusses in his book Outliers regarding success.  The book looks at patterns of success and tries to draw conclusions about good practices and successful thinking.  In this excerpt Gladwell discusses the findings of education researcher Erling Boe who discovered a link between the amount of time spent on a problem and the probability of success.  Here’s the big secret:

THE LONGER YOU WORK AT A PROBLEM THE MORE SUCCESSFUL YOU WILL BE.

If you read to the end of the excerpt you’ll find that in a study of first graders who were given a difficult problem, American children worked on the problem an average of 9.47 minutes while Japanese children worked for an average of 13.93 minutes, roughly 40% longer.  How long will you work (did you get to the end of the excerpt)?

Now you’re talking.