The secret of your success? 10,000 hours

There's one figure that everyone takes away from Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Outliers: 10,000 hours. That, he says, is the difference between success and non-success, genius and mediocrity. Anyone from the Beatles to Bill Gates who has succeeded has done so on the back of at least 10,000 hours of practice. Plus, obviously, some intelligence and talent. This is an extension of his last book, Blink, in which he praised the power of intuitive snap judgments - but you need to have experience to make those judgments.

Like all the books in this peculiarly American genre, it expands a one- sentence conclusion into a book, and few of us are in a position to dispute the statistical basis. It will give heart to nature's plodders, to the tortoises over the hares. The relationship between success and IQ works, says Mr Gladwell, only up to the point of reasonable intelligence - any more is a waste.

Outliers, like most pop social science, has some obvious truth. In fact, the essence of the argument was made in 1859 by Samuel Smiles in his immortal book, Self-Help. "Strenuous individual application," he declared, with plentiful examples, "is the price paid for distinction; excellence of any sort is placed beyond the reach of indolence."

It is, in fact, very difficult to think of any markedly successful individual who has succeeded without practice - though attributes such as low cunning, ruthlessness and consuming self-regard also help. It's too easy to assume that geniuses are simply lucky and terribly clever. As Alexander Fleming remarked of his penicillin bacillus: "It didn't just stand up and say, 'I produce penicillin', you know." It was all that advance preparation with the Petri dishes.

Alexander Pope came nearest to a declaration of effortless genius with "I lisped in numbers and the numbers came", but his output was very considerable. Oscar Wilde was a natural humorist but a certain preparatory effort went into the gags. One of the best linguists I know is the distinguished political philosopher Noel Malcolm, who knows 20 languages. He dismisses the natural genius approach: "It's blood, sweat and tears," he once told me chirpily.

Even supermodels don't get by on the strength of Carla Bruni's cheekbones: have you ever seen them pose? Again and again. On the celebrity circuit, the correlation between effort and success - as opposed, say, to raw talent - is the only explanation for Madonna.

In fact, if you cut out the provocative figure of 10,000 hours you can sum up Outliers with Thomas Edison's familiar maxim that genius is one per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration. Expanding that into a 285-page bestseller does take genius.