Essay On Outliers By Malcolm Gladwell

Success is defined as the accomplishment of an aim or purpose and/or the attainment of popularity or profit.
Malcolm Gladwell’s, Outliers: The Story of Success, similarly tells different stories of different people and how their lives came to be. He examines what makes a successful person successful and he addresses the fact that one can come to be successful from several different factors; some self-made, some born to it and raised around cultural and societal forces as well as parental guidance, some because of great luck of time and opportunity, and others because specialization in their own talents or having passion for what they do. Gladwell debunks the myth that success is handed only to those who work hard. He does, however, suggest

that if one specializes in a talent of theirs, they can master the art of it if they have practice of over 10,000 hours; like Mozart and The Beatles.

That, in his eyes, is the only way success can be self-made, by practice and perseverance. Otherwise, one must be at luck with the chances of opportunity handed to them, opening the doors to a road of success, like Bill Joy, and/or be born in a certain time period that maximizes their chances and highly influences their luck, like Bill Gates. He also suggests that parents play a role in the success of their kids, the more involved and present they are in their childhood, the more the child becomes one of greater success than one with a non-involved parent. Last but not least, he mentions the factor of how passionate the individual is about his work. It’s like a small chain reaction, the more meaningful the work is to you, the more hours and effort you will want to put in, the more hours and effort you put in, the better you become at what you do, the better you become, the higher the chances that will bring you success. With children of successful people, the apple usually doesn’t fall far from the tree. Looking down the branch of a family tree that values hard work, that can influence generations of

prosperous people. Passing down such values and traditions for example, cultural morals and principles, have an impact. This novel comes about the idea of success from a variety of aspects and it expresses that the key to it is seizing our opportunities, do what we love, and be good at what we do, otherwise you’re just plain lucky (unless you have the secret power to change your birth date and/or ethnic origin).
I feel that the most apparent questions these two books were commonly trying to address were, how does culture and how one is raised play a role in the amount of success they might accomplish later in life? Furthermore, what does the success of one person, tell others about them? Now these are very straight forward questions but they seem to hold a more convoluted answer to them.
Growing up with parents very traditional when it comes to Vietnamese values and beliefs, I know, first hand, the impact of cultural/societal forces that can influence kids towards working harder. It’s a daily reminder to me, made by parents, that school is important, school is the part of our lives that we need to make use of our time the best we can and if we try our hardest, it can and will take us places in the future. But then again, this means starting routines for school work schedules when we’re as little as 2nd graders and taking on rigorous class courses in high school I never would have thought I wanted to take. In The Overachievers, AP Frank was raised to become a perfect child who got perfect grades and all these expectations of him were stowed upon him since he was little. He grew up working hard, working himself so hard to the point he didn’t think he was himself. Where he was going for school and what he was studying, it wasn’t what he wanted; it was what his mother wanted of him. She pushed him to work intensely and she pressed onto him principles she was used to in her asian cultural belief of hard work brings success and money. “The students talk about the pressure to be perfect; they worried about disappointing their parents and measuring up to others’ standards. We have to keep up with expectations that have already been set.” (Robbins, page 50). It was there, that the influence of how parents involve themselves and push values onto their kids became evident and that how kids are raised by their parents, along with their cultural values, affect kids beyond belief.
In Outliers, Gladwell talks about how cultures in China and other asian countries hammer the importance of hard work. “In winter, the lazy man freezes to death. If a man works hard, the land will not be lazy and no one who can rise before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich.” (page 238). These sayings alone from chinese peasant rice paddy workers expresses the value upon hard work many asian cultures abide by let alone how this kind of legacy in cultural traditions must have as an impact on the generations following as they’ll have the need to be up to par with such expectations set of them. “The countries in the world that hold the highest emphasis on effort and hard work is Singapore, South Korea, China, Hong Kong and Japan mostly because of their cultures based mainly on their tradition of wet-agriculture,” (Gladwell, page 248). It is from those areas, I assume, the most disciplined and hardworking kids derive.
Success is, undeniably, a different destination for everyone and however long it takes to get there also varies for each person.

However, when one achieves success, does that make that person a hard worker? Are they a happy person because they’ve accomplished so much? Are they labeled as a person who worked truly the best they could for what they earned? Gladwell makes it coherent that successful people are people taking upon the opportunities handed to them at fortunate times. Bill Joy and Bill Gates seized their opportunities to do computer programming at their school’s because their access to computers at a time when many other schools didn’t have the chance, giving them the advantage. Both Joy and Gates obviously took these opportunities and made something out of it the best they could and got their practice in early before the revolution of computers had officially risen, also making them lucky; date-wise. Does this imply that both Bills were hard working, self-made, successful men? Or does it simply just mean they had a great deal luck when they were represented with an opportunity that’d bring them great success down the road as long as they practice with the resources available to them? Gladwell explains the description of success as not simply of a person’s personalities and traits, but rather by considering more quantifiable things. Essentially, he suggests that some people’s success is not so much because of their personal qualities, it’s because they’re placed in

situations (by sociocultural status, birth date, opportunity, luck of timing, etc.) that allow for them to attain a higher chance at success. Maybe being a successful person doesn’t always mean it makes them, themselves, a person of exceptional qualities; instead, the fact that they were in the right place at the right time allowed them to become the highly succeeding person they are afterall.
Throughout the novel, The Overachievers, Alexandra Robbins attributes the reason why all these kids are trying so hard to make it on the top tier of their class to the rise of the need to be successful. To many, an acceptance into Harvard could be seen as a fastpass ticket into success already but AP Frank is not one who seems as though he has come to accomplish one of his lifetime goals. Frank grew up not being able to experience things; he went through high school, a time to not simply learn but to find yourself, only to discover he’s regret so much. There’s no doubt this kid can and will go far, owing to the fact that he’s got so much potential, but what’s to say about him when he succeeds, in the meanwhile regretting the whole ride? Doesn’t success bring happiness? “All these expectations build up, and after so long, it’s like that’s all you’re living. Everyone is stressed for the simple fact that we’re not sure if we’re working for our own passion and dreams or for other people’s expectations. I pictured AP Frank.” (Robbins, page 50).