Lessons from “Outliers: The Story of Success”
Outliers by Malcom Gladwell is a book I was excited to read from the moment it was released. The previous books by Gladwell, Blink and Tipping Point set a high standard for excellence. Often, however, when I’m this excited to read a book, my expectations are not met and I finish disappointed. Thankfully Outliers lived up to its advance billing. It is an excellent book that everyone should read.
Outliers is a fascinating read that uses research from Psychologists, Sociologists, Anthropologists and others to try to understand what makes people successful. Gladwell builds on this by doing his own research into fascinating people and events that help to build an understanding of what success is.
Early on in the book we see that Gladwell truly is focused on the exceptional. These are the outliers, those “markedly different” from the rest of people. The book takes these outliers and looks to determine what makes them successful.
Gladwell’s findings in many ways go against the grain of what we might expect: “What’s the question we always ask about the successful? We want to know what they’re like – what kind of personalities they have, or how intelligent they are, or what kind of lifestyles they have, or what special talents they might have been born with……. I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don’t work. People don’t rise from nothing…… They 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 others cannot.”
Now this might sound a little fatalistic. People become successful because of factors that they can’t control. In reality, as you read the book, you see a trend. Yes, successful outliers tend to have some advantages over others. But the purpose of those advantages was to create the type of person who will work hard, practice hard, and get the right sort of training to become successful.
The first section starts of by looking at athletes in team sports. The particular case study looks at hockey players in Canada and soccer players in Europe. The same phenomenon occurs in both, because there is a January 1 cut off for when kids play with a certain age group. The best players tend to be born early in the year. This is not because there is some magical quality that makes kids born in January, February, or March better athletes, but rather it is because these kids are bigger when they are young and get chosen to be on teams that have better coaching and get more practice. So the success factor is better coaching and more practice.
The second chapter is called “The 10,000 – Hour Rule” and it shares how researches have found that to become an expert at something it takes 10,000 hours. That’s 10,000 hours of hard work and extra practice that it takes to become successful. Gladwell looks at what kinds of childhood advantages allow someone to have that much time to put into an endeavor. He looks at Bill Gates and The Beatles as examples. Of course they didn’t just have the opportunity to put in the hours, but they had the passion, the drive, and the willingness to work hard for that much time.
Later, Gladwell compares geniuses and looks at how geniuses from different backgrounds perform later in life. The thing that separated geniuses who succeeded from those who didn’t was often the family background and economic status of the home they grew up in. Those that grew up in middle class homes had the opportunity to be in more activities. This gave them more confidence, taught them skills like teamwork, and gave them the ability to interact with others. In other words it helped with social preparedness.
As you read through the book you’ll continue to be exposed to fascinating research and examples that show why people born at a certain time, or from a certain ethnic background living in a certain city tend to be more successful. Usually it’s because something about these events drove them to work hard, study well, or get better education. All of which then allowed them to become successful.
One final study I’ll share is Gladwell’s look at why Asian students tend to do better in math. He traces it back to two factors. One is the nature of numbers in most Asian languages. They follow a logical system that makes math easier than the English language. A second, and perhaps more fascinating reason, is because of the cultural heritage. The cultural heritage is traced back to the way rice farmers work. He argues, “the people who grow rice have always worked harder than almost any other kind of farmer.” The effect of this kind of hard work on a culture, caries on for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Today this is seen in the success of Asian students, particularly in the area of math. It also helps them have an attitude that doesn’t give up. In math, Gladwell concludes, “Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds.”
So, while reading Outliers won’t give you a magic list of things to do to become successful, it will open your mind to the forces at play around you. The events that take place “behind the scenes” so to speak that help people become successful. But you’ll also be inspired by one trend that Gladwell brings up as he brings the book to a conclusion: “Virtually every success story we’ve seen in this book so far involves someone or some group working harder than their peers.” So….. get to work!
Written by:
The Success Professor — Danny Gamache
On Twitter: @successprof
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