How to successfully complete a Ph.D.

One of the strategies that this guy identified for the completion of a Ph.D. program is, strangely enough, blogging:

That's why I recommend that new students start a blog. Even if no one else reads it, start one. You don't even have to write about your research. Practicing the act of writing is all that matters.

Yes. This of course was really the critical reason why I started this site back in 2001. Can I use this as a good excuse to spend even more time posting to this site? Honestly though, I suspect that the more I blog the worse and/or lazier my writing gets.

I'm still not quite sure that I buy into the notion that article mentions that it takes 10,000 hours of work to become an expert. Malcolm Gladwell is the one who made that notion a little more popular recently - the blood, sweat, and tears approach to life. I've read his other books, but I still haven't tackled the book Outliers in which he laid out this argument. A copy of another book which I suspect is somewhat similar in theme arrived from Amazon a few weeks back: The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You've Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong. Haven't yet read it but when I do I'll have to see if it convinces me. Here's one blurb from the author's Amazon Q&A:

The clichés we’ve been taught about genetic blueprints, IQ, and "giftedness" all come out of crude, early-20th century guesswork. The reality is so much more interesting and complex. Genes do have a powerful influence on everything we do, but they respond to their environments in all sorts of interesting ways. We’ve now learned a lot more about the developmental mechanisms that enable people to get really good at stuff. Intelligence and talent turn out to be about process, not about whether you were born with certain "gifts."