I just started reading it, but I'm already in love with the book "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell. It's a fascinating read, and has some particularly interesting insights. The best is that people who succeed put in 10,000 hours of work on their given field. Bill Gates, for example, had already put in 10,000 hours of programming time when he started the foundations of microsoft. It isn't so much that Gates was talented (to a degree he was), but accruing that much computer time was amazingly lucky during that period. Having access to a computer at all was rare and incredibly expensive. Good fortune after good fortune allowed Gates, as a teenager, to accrue more experience than professionals could have had a hope of ever achieving at that time. But it was the work that allowed him to succeed.
If you want to break through into greatness, you only have 10,000 hours to go. That's a lot but... it's also very encouraging to me. Talent might help, but only hard and diligent work will get you there. Anyone can work hard, anyone can succeed… if they put in the time.
Me? I have a crapload of time still to invest, but I am working to invest it, and this adds a sense of urgency to that investment. The clock’s ticking, make every moment count towards something you want.