David Boies Chapter Summary

In chapter 4, Gladwell introduces us to the topic of desirable difficulties. To explain this topic, he talks about dyslexia and how he identifies it as a desirable difficulty. Dyslexia is a brain condition that makes reading, spelling, and writing difficult. It is difficult for a person who has dyslexia to understand a text and process what is written. One of the examples he uses is the story of David Boies. Boies is a very famous lawyer who suffered from dyslexia. As a child he had a hard time reading and to read and understand he had to do it very slowly; this made him try harder. In order to understand, he began to lend more interest by listening and memorizing what he was listening to. He began to practice the process of memorizing; used his ability to memorize and remember things and turned it into an advantage. In addition to his ability to memorize; he used other strategies to achieve his goal of being a lawyer. First he chose a small private University; a small pond where he was going to be able to do the work; also in this university he found the way to study law without having finished an undergraduate degree; so he was able to avoid some courses that included having to read a lot of material. Already in Law school, Boies used his memorization advantage to excel and achieve his goal of

A person with dyslexia has to work harder than others to achieve their goals, this makes them develop skills that a person without dyslexia would not need. He thinks that this force you to develop other skills that compensate for your disability. During the chapter gives us several examples of how some people affronted their dyslexia problem; such as Boies who developed his ability to memorize, like Grazer who developed the art of negotiation and how Cohn lost his fear of losing and decided to face situations, and make decisions that a person without disabilities would never have thought of as an