Malcolm Gladwell is a "best-seller machine." His first book, The Tipping Point continues to show up on best-seller lists, as does his second book, Blink. But his third has become part of a national conversation. Outliers, The Story of Success presents a clear and compelling premise: success is not a matter of gift, but of "hard work," with plenty of culture and luck thrown in.

This book, as with his others, draws on the research of others. But Gladwell's great talent is to tell the stories in a popular, accessible way.

Outliers makes many points, but clearest and most important is that getting really good at almost anything, I mean really, really good at something, takes a lot of hard work. How much hard work? A minimum of 10,000 hours, to be exact.

{An aside from Randy: though not in the book, read the Wikipedia article about Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot who landed in the Hudson River successfully. As you read about his 19,000 hours of flight time, and his expertise developed over years re. safety, you will see the 10,000 hour rule come to life.}  

Quotes from the book

When Jeb Bush ran for governor of Florida, he repeatedly referred to himself as a "self-made man," and it is a measure of how deeply we associate success with the efforts of the individual that few batted an eye at that description. In Outliers, I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don't work. People don't rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage. (Successful people) in fact are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways that others cannot. (pp. 18 & 19).

Biologists often talk about the "ecology" of an organism: the tallest oak in the forest is the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also because no other trees blocked its sunlight, the soil around it was deep and rich, no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling, and no lumberjack cut it down before it matured. We all know that successful people come for hardy seeds. But do we know enough about the sunlight that warmed them, the soil in which they put down the roots and the rabbits and lumberjacks they were lucky enough to avoid? This is not a book about tall trees. It's a book about forests - and hockey is a good place to start because the explanation for who gets to the top of the hockey world is a lot more interesting and complicated than it looks. In fact, it's downright peculiar. (pp. 19-20).

Most parents, one suspects, think that whatever disadvantage a younger child faces in kindergarten eventually goes away. But it doesn't. The small initial advantage that the child born in the early part of the year has over the child born at the end of the years persists. It locks children into patterns of achievement and underachievement, encouragement and discouragement, that stretch on and on for years. (p. 28).

Think for a moment about what the story of hockey and early birthdays says about success. It tells us that our notion that it is the best and the brightest who effortlessly rise to the top is much too simplistic. It's the "Matthew Effect." (from the sociologist Robert Merton). It's those who are successful who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success. It's the rich who get the biggest tax breaks. It's the best students who get the best teaching and the most attention. And it's the biggest nine-and ten-year-olds who get the most coaching and practice. Success is the result of what sociologists like to call "accumulative advantage." (p. 30).

The question is this: is there such a thing as innate talent? Achievement is talent plus preparation. The problem with this view is 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. (p. 38).

The people at the very top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else.  They work much, much harder.  (p. 39).

Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don't.  They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy.  Their success is not exceptional or mysterious.  It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky - but all critical to making them who they are.  The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.  (p. 285).

The key concepts

Intrinsic talent may be necessary, but it is not sufficient. Success is a combination of factors, including culture, opportunity, "practical skills," and plenty of hard, hard work that includes much intentional practice!

1.  Outlier, noun:

• something that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body

• a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample

 2.  The stories (all of these support the 10,000 hour rule claim):

• The best junior athletes (hockey; soccer; baseball) are usually born in the earlier part of the "competitive" year.  (He uses many statistics to back this up).  This is because, since athletes start so young, in the first year or two they are noticeably larger and faster than those born late in the year.  A 10-month advantage is a huge advantage in the 1st or 2nd grade.  And then, because they are chosen for the better teams, they get more practice, more games - and the year after year accumulated advantage builds to a 10,000 hour experience, thus creating superior skills.  

• Bill Gates went to the only school on the west coast that had a computer he could learn to program in class. By the time he finished his school career, he had far more hours on a computer than anyone (before anyone else even had such a chance).  

• The Beatles spent four years playing night after night in German strip clubs.  The accumulated hours led to superior skills in front of live audiences.  Only after this experience did the Beatles become known.

 3.  Other Factors:

• Culture creates behavior

  • For example, Korean Airlines (KAL) experienced more crashes because the Korean culture made it very, very difficult for a junior co-pilot (first officer) to question/correct/even react to a mistake of the always elder Captain/Senior Pilot.  

  • In the south, grudges lead to excused behavior, even up to killing.  (Read the story - it really is unbelievable!)  

  • Asians really are better at math.  This flows from a culture that practices meticulous work on very small pieces of land - and as developed capacity for patience, great enough to answer any long questionnaire, and thus, any long series of math problems.

Some Observations:  

1. You really are a product of your culture.

2. It really does take a lot of hard, hard work - the 10,000 hour rule really is close to an actual rule!

3. Hard work requires much intentional practice.

4. Success is the result of "accumulative advantage."

5. Luck also plays a role...

6. "Good enough" is good enough, and all you need - if you put in the work!

7. Luck - breaks - learning by/from privilege - all really, really matter.

{ - and - maybe those soft skills really do matter}.  

You should read Outliers to learn more about what went into your own patterns of behavior and thinking, and, of course, to learn how to look at the success of exceptionally successful people.  This book is a true revelation.