How did Sachin Tendulkar become a great cricketer? How did Sonu Nigam become a great singer? How did Satya Nadella become a great technologist and a leader? How did Harry Houdini become the greatest magician ever?

Well, if you are thinking that it’s just innate talent, you are mistaken. Behind their greatness are several hours of practice. As Malcolm Gladwell in his book “Outliers” stated, it requires 10,000 hours of ‘deliberate practice’ to become good at what you are doing. So, the names you’ve read above and many such names in the world have actually spent thousands of hours on ‘deliberate practice’ to reach the place where they are now.

Now, are you as a learner practicing enough?

Practice – two missing links

Missing link #1 – Not enough practice

We get technical education in colleges, online service providers and even when we join a corporate. What is really missing? Practice. Let’s be honest to ourselves and really count the number of hours we’ve spent in practicing the theory we’ve learned – be it Java or Big Data or ML or AI or even Excel? My guess, it will not be more than a hundred hours.

Missing link #2 – Quality of practice infrastructure

Just like the kinesthetic related activities, practicing technical education needs access to the right infrastructure and environment. Not any environment is good enough. E.g. Imagine Sachin Tendulkar practicing in a gully with a bunch of kids ahead of a world cup or Metallica practicing on a kid’s guitar. Doesn’t work like that, does it?

Many learners do not get access to the right infrastructure that is a replica of a real-world environment that is used in a corporate. Then why would you practice on dated technology and infrastructure that is not what you are going to use in real? Universities, learning providers and even corporates at times do not have the real-world environment.

Cloud-based Practice Labs – The Solution

The cloud-labs is a blessing for the learners who want to put in the hours of practice that can make them a great talent. The Cloud Labs provide the required infrastructure with a real-world configuration at a lower cost to encourage users to practice more. Practicing on latest technologies will also improve the employability of the learners and be more relevant.

We see that progressive universities, learning providers and corporates have started adopting Cloud Labs to give their learners a great learning experience.

Now, there’s no one to stop you from becoming the Sachin Tendulkar of the tech industry. Go Practice.

A question to the universities, online learning providers and the enterprises:

Are your learners getting enough practice?