Success is almost as hard to define as it is to achieve. In Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, he argues that success cannot be something you achieve by yourself. He believes that a persons success depends on multiple factors such as their heritage, the people who surround them and luck. Gladwell uses many examples that seem to support his argument but they can also lead to a contradiction to his thesis. Gladwell’s most convincing argument is his argument about 10,000 hours because his examples support his thesis and his least convincing argument is his argument about Asians being good at math because his examples do not entirely support his thesis.
In the chapter The 10,000-Hour Rule, Malcolm Gladwell argues that you are not born with innate
…show more content…
success or talent, you gain it thought effort and time. He also argues that it takes approximately 10,000 hours or 10 years, for someone to completely master something. He states 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.”(Gladwell, 38). He then provides examples of studies on people that are considered masters of their craft and the studies conclude that people who are considered masters at what they do have at least 10,000 hours of experience. His most convincing example is Mozart because many people consider him to have been born a musical master but Gladwell shows that he was never really a master until he had more than 10 years of experience. If the key to success is just 10,000 hours of performing a task then why does everyone not devote 10 years of their life to do so? This could be a major flaw in Gladwell’s argument but it is not because he uses Bill Joy and Bill Gates to disprove it. He says that their success is “a product of the world in which they grew up in.”(Gladwell, 67). Both of them had the 10,000 hours put into their computer programming but they would not have been successful if they were not given the opportunities that they had while practicing their 10,000 hours. Gladwell successfully provides convincing evidence that 10,000 hours is a key to success but it is only one of the many keys to success that are required to be successful. In the chapter Rice Paddies and Math Tests, Gladwell tries to argue that the reasons Asians are good at math and school is because of their cultural heritage. He says that the reason that they succeed is because of their work ethic, which he argues does not come from nowhere, it comes from the work they did on their rice farms.
The problem with Gladwell’s argument is that something had to give the farmers the work ethic to work hard on their farms. Gladwell states that “year in, year out, as far back as history is recorded, farmers across Asia have engaged in the same relentless, intricate pattern of agriculture.”(Gladwell, 225) He never explains how and why they started to work on their farms, he just says they have been doing it as far back as people can remember. This leads you to believe that farming is not what has given Asian people their work ethic. It must have started from a source long before farming and was then transferred to their farming culture and now has transferred to the way they learn. Asians better attitude towards learning may help them in the academic world but it does not seem to make them have a better chance of succeeding than everyone else. In chapter two, Gladwell provides a list of the 75 wealthiest people to have ever lived only three of the people are were from China or Japan. Americans with our simple more efficient way of farming have somehow managed to dominate that list of people. Having the cultural advantage of a good work ethic and persistence may make it seem like you have a greater chance of succeeding but it does not transfer into actual
success. Overall Malcolm Gladwell creates a very convincing argument that a persons success depends on many factors. The most effective way he proves his argument is in the chapter The 10,000-Hour Rule because he provides great examples. His only argument that does not make sense is his argument about the origin of Asians success in the academic world. Working hard also does not mean you will be successful, even though Asian culture pushes them to work hard they are still not considered some of the most successful people. Success is an unpredictable occurrence because of the seemingly infinite amount of factors that determine it.
I found Gladwell’s first chapter of Outliers entitled “The Matthew Effect” to be both interesting, confusing, and perhaps somewhat lopsided. Based on Matthew 25:2, Gladwell simply explains, “It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given to the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success.” (Gladwell 2008, pg. 30) The Matthew Effect seems to extend special advantages and opportunities to some simply based on their date of birth.
In the second chapter of his book “Outliers: The Story of Success,” Malcolm Gladwell introduces what he believes to be a key ingredient in the recipe for success: practice. The number of hours he says one must practice to obtain expert-level proficiency in a particular skill is ten thousand hours. He goes on to list several examples of successful individuals and makes the correlation between the amount of hours they practiced their skill and when they achieved expert-level proficiency (almost always around ten thousand hours of practice). While the magic number appears to be the main focus of the chapter when it comes to success, Gladwell seems to put more emphasis on the advantage and opportunities each individual experienced. However, I believe the determining factor that distinguished their successful careers was their drive, passion and dedication to put in the hours necessary to turn those unique opportunities into success.
Malcolm Gladwell, in the nonfiction book Outliers, claims that success stems from where you come from, and to find that you must look beyond the individual. Malcolm Gladwell develops and supports his claim by defining an outlier, then providing an example of how Stewart Wolf looked beyond the individual, and finally by giving the purpose of the book Outliers as a whole. Gladwell’s purpose is to explain the extenuating circumstances that allowed one group of people to become outliers in order to inform readers on how to be successful. The author writes in a serious and factual tone for the average person in society of both genders and all ethnicities who wants to become successful in life.
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.
In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell argues that there is no such thing as a self-made man, and that success is only the result of a person’s circumstances. However, throughout the novel Gladwell points out that your circumstances and opportunities only help you become successful if you are willing to take advantage of them and work hard. From a twelve year old living in the Bronx, to those who were born at just the right time to become millionaires, one thing is the same throughout; these people because successful because they seized the opportunities they were given. The advantages and opportunities that came from their circumstances would not be important if they had not grasped them. Every successful man is self made, because he has seized the
What would happen if our world today was monotonous, sorrowful, and grey? What if no one was here to form new creations, and think of bold ideas? Would triumph have a definition? Would there be outliers in our world today? We are constantly thinking, always generating new ideas and forming new thoughts. People even proceed by creating inventions, and building objects no one would of thought would be made today. But, what we don’t perceive is how they became successful and how they took advantage of the moment that was given to them. In the novel, Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell, the author explains that an outlier is one who is given an opportunity and knows how to take advantage. He believes that in order for a person to be successful they need at least ten thousand hours of hard work and effort in order to succeed at a skill. It is clear to me that like Malcolm Gladwell, I believe
Outliers-The Story of Success is a sociological, and psychological non-fiction book, which discusses success, and the driving reasons behind why some people are significantly more successful than others. Malcolm Gladwell explains this by dividing the book into two parts, opportunity and legacy. Opportunity discusses how select people are fortunate enough to be born between the months of January through March, and also includes the idea that those who are already successful will have more opportunities to improve and become even more successful. The 10,000-hour rule proves the idea that in order to become successful in a certain skill, one must have practiced that skill for at least 10,000 hours. In addition to the 10,000-hour rule, timing is also a major component that implies being in the right place at the right time, which brings the author to discuss Bill Gates who was born during the time where programming and computer technology was emerging, therefore sparking his interest in computers, later bringing him to create Microsoft. Another point Gladwell brings forth is the notion of one’s upbringing, race, and ethnicity can be a factor behind their success. And lastly, pursuing meaningful work will cause one to continue working with their skill and not give up. Legacy is a collection of examples that support the idea: values are passed down from generation to generation, which may cause a certain group of people to be more persistent in a skill, or occupation.
In “Outliers” Malcolm Gladwell organizes his argument for their being a rule for overall success by showing statistics of people who are defined as being successful such as Bill Gates, Billy Joy, and The Beatles. He also uses a Berlin music academy to help prove his rule. He presents an argument that Bill Gates and The Beatles and the violinist attending the music academy may have been born with innate talent but that is not the sole ...
Once in a while, it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to. Gladwell believes that cultural legacies are powerful forces. Cultural legacies are the customs of a family or a group of people, that is inherited through the generations. According to Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, Cultural legacies is something that’s been passed down for generations to generations. It depends on what type of legacies was passed that will affect a person. If a good legacy was passed down, someone can keep that legacy going by trying hard at keeping the legacies going. If a bad legacy was passed down; I believe that cultural legacies can be altered or changed, by good working habits, determination, and a positive mindset to succeed. Culture can affect either positively or negatively, but we have the power to turn our cultural
The definition of success varies around the world, but according to Malcolm Gladwell its achievement can be broken down into a few components. Although Gladwell never truly establishes credibility in his book Outliers, he still backs up his proposed theories with reputable studies and sources which intrigue the audience to keep reading.The purpose of Outliers was to enlighten people about the different elements of success while also informing them of real life situations where seemingly less than likely people beat the odds and became the powerful figures that they are today. The intended audience is anyone who is looking to become successful or who is perhaps interested in the idea of success itself and wishes to learn more about it. Understandably, a secondary audience could be high school students who are about to venture out into the world on their own because with this book they will hopefully start paying attention to different factors of their lives and seizing opportunities that they may have otherwise passed up. Malcolm Gladwell talks about the 10,000 Hour Rule and also how I.Q. does not amount to much without creativity. He also speaks of how chance opportunity comes into play and that the distant background of a person still reflects how they handle situations in their present day life. Gladwell’s Outliers successfully informs the reader about the different components that add up to success with probable theories and credible studies to make for an interesting and motivational read.
Malcolm Gladwell’s overall purpose of Outliers: The Story of Success is that success is largely determined by an individual’s socioeconomic and sociocultural environment, and individual ambition, effort, or talent, are less significant, contrary to the societal notions associated with success. In other words, success is not something that someone randomly gained; success is earned through opportunities that develop dedication, interest, and skill over time. By doing this, will one become an outlier, or “something that is situated away or classed differently from a main or related body,” (Gladwell 3) that distinguishes great from good and best from great, as exemplified by “The striking thing about Ericsson’s study is that the and his colleagues couldn’t find any “naturals”, musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did.” (Gladwell 39) Gladwell also acknowledges societal norms such that “All of the fourteen men and woman on the list above had vision and talent,” (Gladwell 62-63) to assert hard work, ability, et cetera can lead to success, but a social environment that offers such opportunities immensely increases the likelihood of success.
If people work hard, focus, and are disciplined, they will succeed in the future. This has become a universal idea taught by parents, teachers, and peers. People have passed down this idea to the younger generations and they chose to live by this moral that makes sense. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell debunks the universal idea that working hard will allow people to play hard and get further in life. Gladwell eliminates the traditional ideas of success by showing that opportunities, family background, and being born at the “right” time are actually what lead to success.
In the book Outliers: The Story of Success Malcom Gladwell defines an outlier as something that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body and as a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample. Gladwell introduces the readers to the idea of outliers using Roseto Valfortore, a town one hundred miles south east of Rome. Gladwell considers Roseto an outlier because people there were simply just dying of old age, nothing else. Gladwell says “…Roseto--- a place that lay outside everyday experience, where the normal rules did not apply”(Gladwell 7).
To those of you that are willing to open your minds and consider the possibilities of new and different concepts about the way our society’s views successful people and the reasons behind their success. I invite you to accompany me, as I take a closer look into Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers and more specifically reviewing and analyzing the reasoning behind the logical, ethical, and emotional examples used by Gladwell in chapter two. While also acknowledging that the selected examples support the concept presented in the chapter regarding success and clearly show that Gladwell has chosen to rely on a more logical approach for his argument. However, he still uses an ethical and emotional aspect
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