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Dec
15
Outliers, The Story of Success
Filed Under Reading Room
“This is a book about the meaning of work.”
I became a Malcolm Gladwell fan after reading his first book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. His second book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, was equally engaging yet more of a shift from the business/marketing angle found in Tipping Point.
In his third book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm continues his journey toward pop-sociologist. Outliers is a fascinating perspective on success, and blows away so many of the myths we have for what success looks like and how we achieve it.
In typical Gladwell fashion, Outliers is packed with stories that bring research to life. A premise of the book suggests, “It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn’t.” Gladwell says that “the closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play.”
A reoccurring theme throughout the book that Malcolm observes is the “ten thousand hour” rule. Every story of success can point back to a person who has invested at minimum and approximately ten thousand hours of practice. Bill Gates. The Beatles. Lawyers. Immigrants from Europe to America in the early 1900s who brought their experience in making clothes. The list goes on.
The power of the ten thousand hour rule (about 4 hours a day for 10 years) is that you’re ready to “succeed” when the time is right. It’s tempting to pick a trendy thing and attempt to get good at it, but the trend might be over by the time you’ve mastered the craft. Outliers suggests that we should get good at what we’re passionate about. “Practicing isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” Malcolm continues, “And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.”
“Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig.”
There were two phrases in the book that deserve to be unpacked further, and Malcolm merely scratches the surface of their definitions. The idea of “social inheritance” and “concerted cultivation” are powerful allies in the journey of Outliers.
One should be careful when absorbing Outliers because a premise of the book assumes we all measure success in terms of wealth, health, influence and power. “If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires.”
The conclusion of Outliers gets personal as Malcolm tells the story of his own life and family background, including generations of slavery in Jamaica. Gladwell goes on to argue that more of us would become Outliers if we lived in a “society that provides opportunity for all.”
“Outliers are those who have been given opportunities—and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.”
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Just came home from Targt where I picked up Outliers, only to come home, turn on my computer and find you’ve alreay read it for me.
well thanks for the head sup. It is incredible.