got geoint?

Welcome to the Friday’s Food for Thought post from got geoint? Our faithful readers may have seen our post yesterday about the USGIF Awards program (deadline is today!), we have many talented, visionary and hard-working professionals in the GEOINT community. We would go so far as to say, we have some GEOINT rock stars in our midst. As such, we wanted to make this week’s FFT post about extraordinary people and what it takes to be a major success. Is it all about in-born talents? Or does it take good old fashioned hard work? Perhaps it is a mixture of both. We try to tackle these questions today. Hope you enjoy and happy Friday!

The Rabbit and the Turtle: Story of Tenacity Over Talent
One day a rabbit was boasting about how fast he could run. He was laughing at the turtle for being so slow. Much to the rabbit’s surprise, the turtle challenged him to a race. The rabbit thought this was a good joke and accepted the challenge. The fox was to be the umpire of the race. As the race began, the rabbit raced way ahead of the turtle, just like everyone thought. The rabbit got to the halfway point and could not see the turtle anywhere. He was hot and tired and decided to stop and take a short nap. Even if the turtle passed him, he would be able to race to the finish line ahead of him. All this time the turtle kept walking step by step by step. He never quit no matter how hot or tired he got. He just kept going. However, the rabbit slept longer than he had thought and woke up. He could not see the turtle anywhere! He went at full-speed to the finish line but found the turtle there waiting for him. Classic story that shows how the talented don’t always succeed — especially when they take their talents for granted. Good news for us hard-working, less-than-talent folks! Read more here.

What it Takes to be Great
What makes Tiger Woods great? What made Berkshire Hathaway (Charts) Chairman Warren Buffett the world’s premier investor? We think we know: Each was a natural who came into the world with a gift for doing exactly what he ended up doing. As Buffett told Fortune not long ago, he was “wired at birth to allocate capital.” It’s a one-in-a-million thing. You’ve got it – or you don’t. Well, folks, it’s not so simple. For one thing, you do not possess a natural gift for a certain job, because targeted natural gifts don’t exist. (Sorry, Warren.) You are not a born CEO or investor or chess grandmaster. You will achieve greatness only through an enormous amount of hard work over many years. And not just any hard work, but work of a particular type that’s demanding and painful. Again, good news for us hard-working folks! Read the full CNN Money article here.

How to Use The 10,000 Hour Rule to Achieve Success
Made popular in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, the 10,000 hour rule was derived from a study by Anders Ericsson, a psychologist who researched the success of violinists at the Berlin Academy of Music. In his study, he found that in every case the violinists that performed the best spent more time practicing. Outliers, further describes how the magic number of 10,000 hours was the average number of hours the violinists as well as athletes, composers, writers, artists, even criminals spent to achieve their success. Interested in learning about how you could use the 10,000 hour rule to become exceptional at something? Check out the full eHow article here.

The Five Most Talented People on the Internet
There are a lot of talented people on the Internet. It’s not like back in the ’90s, when attention-starved hams had to wait for their big break performing stupid human tricks on Letterman or be left to wallow in their isolation, performing at family parties and neighborhood fairs, spinning plates and toiling in their obscurity. Now all you need is a webcam, a dream, and a wellspring of confidence disproportionate to your station in life. Don’t get me wrong — there are plenty of reality TV shows and virtual competitions that will exploit your talents. But the best of the best remain the home-grown fare: adults not given enough attention as children and children given too much attention by adults. Check out the full Esquire article here (note: it’s from 2008).

Manning Bowl II: Brothers Compete for Greatness on Sunday
If the Colts were playing anybody else, Archie Manning would want to kick back in Lucas Oil Stadium and enjoy Sunday night’s game like every other fan. Not this time. With sons Peyton and Eli squaring off in Manning Bowl II, Archie and his wife, Olivia, plan to keep quiet as they watch their two boys. They’ve never had a favorite son and they’re not about to start choosing now. “You can’t go in there pulling for one of them to win because it’s almost like pulling for the other one to lose,” Archie said. “We’re going to show up, we’re going to be there, we’re going to support the offense and make sure neither gets hurt and be proud and move on.” Ahh, the challenges of having two great sons. Surely both Manning boys put in more than 10,000 hours in the QB training. Check out the full Boston Herald article here.

I’m Young, Handsome, I’m Fast, Pretty and Can’t Possibly Be Beat
When you think about the most boastful sports heroes, Muhammad Ali immediately comes to mind. He did not shy away from telling the media just how great he was. And, you know something…he was right. He was great. Perhaps the secret to success is all about having extremely high confidence? Who knows…it worked for Ali. Check out this great clip.

Tags: 000 Hour Rule, 10, Archie Manning, Friday's Food for Thought, GEOINT 2010, GEOINT 2010 Awards, geospatial intelligence, got geoint?, Malcom Gladwell, Manning Bowl, Muhammad Ali, Peyton Manning, The Outliers, United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, USGIF