There is no concrete definition for success, and there is not a foolproof way to obtain it, but it is something many strive for. In Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell explains, with examples of successful people throughout history, that hard work along with a little bit of luck and willingness to seize every opportunity is the only way to become successful. Malcolm Gladwell illustrates throughout the story external factors that are mostly uncontrollable and internal factors like hard work that are very controllable lead to these outliers and unimaginable success stories. Malcolm Gladwell argues without hard work success is unachievable, and putting in countless hours is only one requirement. The help of others and being presented …show more content…
“Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good.” (42) Here Gladwell uses cause and effect to show the importance of practice. He wants to show that people are not born as outliers it is something they achieve with hard work. “researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.” (19) Here he appeals to authority and logos to support his idea that in order to become an expert in a field ten thousand hours of work must be put in. Gladwell uses examples of the Beatles playing in clubs all night for roughly ten-thousand hours to become an extraordinary band, and he uses Bill Gates’ time spent programming after school for roughly ten-thousand hours to support his idea that one must work hard put in countless hours to become successful. “So far in Outliers, we've seen that extraordinary achievement is less about talent than it is about opportunity.” (76) Malcolm Gladwell also use Bill Gates as an example here saying he would have never been able to found Microsoft if not for the high school he went to being so prestigious and him being able to code at a computer lab in his high school …show more content…
Gladwell divides the book into sections based on the story of the person or group of people he is talking about. He talks about all the opportunities given to successful people like Bill Gates, Joe Flom, and Bill Joy. He also talks about the lack of opportunity given to Chris Langan. “if you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires.”(151) With this quote Malcolm Gladwell is talking about what the kids who have a higher chance of being successful learn. Gladwell talks about these stories of both success and failure like he knew the people involved on a personal level. He does not quote others or cite sources for the most part. He shows what trials and tribulations (or lack thereof in some cases) the subjects of the book had to go through to become successful. The Chinese rice farmers had to go through a lot of trouble in order to be able to eat, and this lead to hard work being something very important to them for generation after generation. He supports his claims with evidence. Malcolm Gladwell shows some evidence using graphs to support his ideas. When talking about the wealthiest people in history Gladwell made a graph cherry picked certain rich people to make it support his argument that people born in mid-19th century America had a unique opportunity to become
Many people question the success of an underdog because it once seemed impossible for them to come out on top. In his article, “How David Beats Goliath,” Malcolm Gladwell addresses the key aspects in the triumphs of the Davids in society. The biblical account of David and Goliath is not considered an anomaly by Gladwell because David’s success could be predicted by the formula of “effort over ability” (2). Gladwell writes this professional magazine article for The New Yorker. Through his writing, Gladwell has developed the face of the outsider in today’s society. In doing so, Time Magazine has “named him one of its ‘100 most influential people’” (The Gladwell Effect, Rachel Donadio). Gladwell has
People may argue that Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell is all about family background and family legacies. Others may say that what mattered most is the way someone are brought up and how much time and dedication they put into a skill or goal. People may also say that all of these factors are what the book focuses on in order to be successful. The book is not about family background, the “10,000 Hour-Rule”, or “Rice Paddies”. All of those encompass something very important, opportunity to actually apply those theories. The most important theory Gladwell presents is that opportunities are the key to become successful more so than the other theories.
Outliers written by Malcolm Gladwell uses several stories as examples on how specific variables can predict certain outcomes. The Matthew Effect, The 10,000 Hour Rule, and Three Lessons of Joe Flom are all examples of people’s stories of success. People can predict an outcome based on certain variables such as a birthdays, number of hours worked, or when and where someone was born. With that said the reader should remember, “People don’t rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage.”
“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves” (William Shakespeare). The fate of one’s life is determined by the actions and decisions they make over time. Success is not predetermined from the moment an individual is born. The choices in life can determine if an individual will rise to the top or fall to the bottom. “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell is an non-fiction story that reveals how much time and effort is required to achieve mastery at anything. David Epstein explains that success depends on the fortunate genetics in a person in the non-fiction excerpt “The Sports Gene.” The text from the “Outliers” supplies credible sources and evidence to support the idea that hard work and preparation results in success while the sports
Gladwell states in his novel that success depends on the opportunities granted. For example, without being in the right place at the right time, Elon Musk couldn't have taken advantage of the Internet Boom. If the Physical Therapy program in the 1980s wasn’t a five year program, my mother would not have been able to afford schooling for her career. Furthermore, if presented the opportunity, Dr. Jekyl could have defeated his evil. All these sources come together to prove that personal merit will only get you halfway to your goals. It is imperative to recognize and take advantage of the opportunities presented to be
The popular saying “practice makes perfect” has been used for many years encouraging younger generations to strive for success in whatever area they wish to excel in. Success is something everybody in society strides for but some do not know how it is achieved. However, there are many people throughout history who are known for achieving success in many areas. Malcolm Gladwell, a best selling author and speaker, identifies these people as being outliers. Gladwell identifies the word “outlier” in his story Outliers as “a scientific term to describe things or phenomena that lie outside normal experience.” Although Malcolm Gladwell does not establish credibility for himself in his novel, his targeted audience of a younger inexperienced generation feel the need to be informed by his detailed theories about becoming successful and eventually becoming an outlier. Although the reality of becoming successful can depend on instances one can not control, Gladwell tells his readers there is a great portion they can control through his theory, the 10,000 hour rule. He does this by using well presented logical persuasive appeals and interesting rhetorical devices such as: onomatopeias, exposition, and argumentation.
Gladwell’s purpose for writing this novel included his desire to alter the way one understands success. He wanted to challenge the typical belief that someone
Gladwell emphasizes throughout the book that one of the keys to being successful is being born at the right time. When Gladwell is talking about the world’s seventy-five richest people of all time he remarks, “Of the seventy-five names, an astonishing fourteen are Americans born within nine years of one another in the mid-nineteenth century” (Gladwell 61). This was a very interesting observation to me. All of those fourteen people were extremely lucky to be born when they did. They were born in the perfect time period, right as America’s economy began to boom and as industrial manufacturing became more important than ever. By being born in that time period, those fourteen people took advantage of the immense opportunities and paths that were available for them. This example is the epitome of how important opportunity and luck is. If opportunities or chances, that could change a person’s life if he or she take advantage of them, are not given then success will be unattainable. Opportuni...
Some people that are excellent examples of this include Bill Joy, Bills Gates, and The Beatles. All of these people were successful because of their hard work and dedication to what they do. How much dedication does it take? Gladwell states that to become an expert one must spend at least ten thousand hours on the skill. Prior to this milestone, these three were all nothing, no one knew who they were. Starting out I’ll discuss Bill Joy, a computer scientist who made vast improvements to the way we use technology today. Joy went to the University of Michigan looking to become a mathematician or a biologist, but he came out an expert in computer science. The world of programming was still a very new field at this time, so one would think that Joy succeeded due to his dedication and raw talents alone right? Gladwell disagrees, Joy just so happened to have gone to a school where instead of coding with punch cards students were using time-sharing, a much more efficient way to code. Joy was just so fortunate to go to one of the few schools in the entire nation that was using this method of coding. After Michigan, Joy moved on to the University of California Berkley whereby his second year he hit his ten thousand hour milestone. Prior to hitting this milestone, Joy wasn’t widely known in the coding world, but that would all change. Joy would go on to rewrite UNIX and Java, two
In Asia, people believe all the hard work will lead to profits through the experience of growing rice paddies. According to the writer, this argument is not limited to the rice paddies but continues over the experiment of the math tests. For example, Gladwell introduces a story of Renee. Renee is Alan Schoenfeld’s, a math professor at Berkeley, student. He considers Renee different. When Renee meets a problem she does not know, she will not stop until she is absolutely sure she has it right. Renee’s studying spirit helps her to succeed during studying. It is based on a function of persistence and doggedness. However, under the US education system, students are not good at focusing on one thing. Gladwell ends by noting the result of the test called TIMSS, the difference between how Asian and American students learn math is the emphasis on effort and hard work. This doggedness is not
I would first like to clarify that I am not disagreeing with Gladwell’s ideas; they are quite inspiring. However, when the book states that “… if you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires" (151) I can’t help but think that this quote seems to defy one of the cornerstones of his teachings. This, of course, being opportunity. Gladwell makes many efforts to explain that an individual’s success is not solely based on the subject’s personal attributes like, in this quote, would be personal assertion and imagination. I am merely here to remind the quote of its place.
According to Gladwell success emerges through a matter of circumstances. In his novel Outliers, Gladwell argues that the 10,000 Hour Rule is an important asset to becoming successful because it allows for the individual to master the skill he or she is trying to succeed in. He states that in order for one to master a certain skill, they must have practiced it for a minimum of 10,000 hours. I agree with Gladwell’s theory in which one becomes successful due to the external variables, like circumstances, opportunities and other factors that contribute to success, and that to be successful you must dedicate at least 10,000 hours to master one’s craft. Outside studies agree with the importance and indispensability of the 10,000 Hour Rule.
Throughout the course of the years, scholars, researchers as well as teachers have developed a common perspective in regards to the notorious 10,000-hour rule. Of course, the idea that one must practice and devote their relentless time to a certain activity in order to thrive was developed and reshaped by many. Yet, Malcolm Gladwell presents this idea in a new light which utterly stimulates a new way of thinking. Throughout the passage, “The 10,000-Hour Rule”, Malcolm Gladwell argues that although innate talent exists in many individuals, preparation plays an even bigger role in the lives of many. Malcolm explains through a plethora of research and test studies that in order to thrive in a certain area one must be able to sacrifice their
Gladwell explains that we have bought into the thought that successful people are made from only hard work; instead, he says 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” (67). Gladwell defines an outlier as a person that looks at achievement in a different way than most others do. According to Gladwell, successful people come to be because of collaboration, time, place, and culture. An outlier is not necessarily a genius, but rather a person who was presented an opportunity and has many hours logged working at their craft. I can personally connect with the ways of an outlier because I have witnessed my mother be extraordinary my whole life through practice and hard work. One of Gladwell's case studies was done on the Beatles life and how they became so successful with their rock and roll music. Gladwell goes into detail on how the beatles got their start at these clubs in Germany where the clubs were run down and the people in the audience didn’t really care about what they were listening to. The only reason that playing at these clubs was beneficial to the beatles, was because the gigs were 8 hours long and they played every day of the week. So once The Beatles started to gain
“Effort will get you wherever you need,” you’ve always heard that as a child. In the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell , Gladwell shows us examples of how effort is not always the key to success. I agree to some extent with Gladwell’s claim. I agree when he states that the family you are born into can determine your success. On the other hand, I do not agree when he explains that the time you’re born into determines how successful you can become. All the other factors Gladwell addresses vary within the choices of the individual.