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I’ve been reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and thought the following was interesting, especially as it pertains to stand-up comedy:

“‘The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert - in anything,’ writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin…’It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”

A page later, Gladwell remakes this point:

“Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness.”

After reading this, I tried to calculate how long it would take the average comedian to accumulate 10,000 hours of stage time.  Let’s start with the assumption that a working comic is performing, on average, 2 shows a night, 7 days a week.  The average length of a set here is between 6-7 minutes and 20 minutes; we can lean towards the 20, however, as someone being booked 2 shows a night, every night, is probably good enough to be doing longer sets.  (This is a calculation based on professional comics working in New York.  If you’re headlining on the road, you might only do 5 shows a week - 2 Friday, 2 Saturday, and 1 Sunday - but are on stage for 45 minutes, for a total of 3.75 hours a week, which is very close to the 3.5 hours a week accumulated by doing 14 15-minute spots.)   At 3.5 hours a week, it would take this theoretical comedian 20,000 days to reach his* 10,000 hours of stage time.  That’s nearly 55 years.  If your average comedian starts at 20, he doesn’t become a master until 75.  This doesn’t seem right, though, because there are plenty of “master” comedians younger than 75.  There must be something missing.

Stage time is not the only means through which a comedian can practice - the comedian can go over his performance, can write and work on jokes offstage, and get feedback from other comedians - that’s all time we need to incorporate into our calcuations.  Let’s say the average comedian works diligently on the craft and dedicates between 1.5-2 hours of each day to working on his act (this isn’t a number taken out of thin air, but based on what I’ve realistically seen most comics, including myself, dedicate to these activities).  Now we have between 2 and 2.5 hours of “comedy time” each day, 7 days a week.  At that rate, the comedian reaches his 10,000 hours in 4000 to 5000 days, or sometime between 11 and 14 years.

Here’s the fun part.  Let’s look at famous comedians and see how long it took for them to become “masters.”  We’ll say they became “masters” when they released their first major album - that is, the first album that became popular or achieved mainstream success.  Let’s start with George Carlin.  He started in 1959, when he joined a comedy duo and began performing in California.  Although Carlin released a solo album in 1967, Take-Off and Put-Ons, it’s not even recognizable as Carlin (the album features Carlin in a suit and is devoid of any profanity).  In 1972, however, Carlin released two albums, FM & AM and Class Clown, both of which are still considered classics.  FM & AM was the first album Carlin released to receive a Grammy for Best Comedy Album;Class Clown contains the legendary and monumental routine, “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.”

Okay, let’s go to Richard Pryor, who also started in 1959 as an MC at a nightclub.  He, too, changed his style, from a more Bill Cosby-esque clean cut storyteller to the brash and startlingly honest comic we all revere him for being.  The first album he released to broad acclaim was That Nigger’s Crazy, Pryor’s first album to receive the Grammy for Best Comedy Album.  The record was released in 1974.

Steve Martin started performing comedy in nightclubs around 1967, while he was still in college.  His first album, Let’s Get Small, won a Grammy for Best Comedy Album, but his second album, A Wild and Crazy Guy, which also won the Grammy, is Martin’s most famous and well-known album.  (In terms of chart position, Let’s Get Small, reached 10th, while A Wild and Crazy Guy reached 2nd.  In terms of sales, Let’s Get Small went platinum while A Wild and Crazy Guy went a staggering double platinum.)

How about a more modern example?  Chris Rock started out in 1985.  His first album to go platinum was Roll With the New, which was released in 1997.  (His previous album reached gold status.)  This was also Rock’s first album to receive the Grammy for Best Comedy Album.

We had said that a comedian should reach mastery somewhere between 11 and 14 year, so now that we have the dates, let’s see if it confirms our calculations. 

Carlin: 1959 -> 1972  (13 years)

Pryor: 1959 -> 1974  (15 years)

Martin: 1967 -> 1978 (11 years)

Rock: 1985 -> 1997   (12 years)

All of these comics reached “masterdom” between 11 and 15 years after starting out as comics, closely reflecting our calculations that mastery can be achieved in 11-14 years!

It’s both a sobering and empowering piece of information.  For me personally, 11-14 years seems a long way away!  That being said, the only way to reach 11-14 years is to perform, practice, and write at least 2-2.5 hours each and every day - otherwise, it will take even longer!  So, if anything, knowing this information only inspires me to work even harder and to continue to put in these hours every day.  Not only that, but the 11-14 years is how long it takes to become a true master - for all of these comics, becoming “simply” great and successful came much sooner.  (In fact, for each of these four comics, their first “classic” album was their second or third release.)  Still, I know there’s a long journey ahead of me in the pursuit of mastery and am unbelievably excited and thrilled to be in the process of undertaking it!

* As with previous blog posts, I use the pronoun “he” in this essay instead of “he or she” only because “he or she” is a bit clumsy both in the writing and the reading.  This is not to say, however, that I believe all comics are or should be male; in fact, I believe just the opposite - females can be and are just as good at stand-up as men!  For future blog posts, I will continue to use use the singular pronoun - just know I don’t mean it as a statement about what gender a comedian can or should be!