I was nineteen when I first heard Mozart's Salzburg Symphony #1 Divertimento in D major K. 136.

Something about those opening notes captured me instantly.

There was an energy, a freshness to it that I couldn't quite explain.

Years later, I stumbled across Malcolm Gladwell's famous "10,000-hour rule" in his book Outliers, where he uses Mozart as a prime example. According to Gladwell, despite beginning to compose at age six, Mozart didn't produce truly original masterpieces until his twenties, after he had achieved his 10,000 hours of practice.

This gave me pause.

The symphony I loved so dearly was written when Mozart was just a teenager (nearly 16) supposedly before he had achieved "mastery".

It made me wonder: what if the conventional wisdom about expertise has it backward, at least when it comes to creative expression?

What if there's something uniquely valuable in the work we create before we know all the rules?

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