Malcolm Gladwell Outliers
Outliers: The Story of Success is an informative book by Malcolm Gladwell dealing with the topic of human success. The book talks about outliers or “men and women who do things that are out of the ordinary.” by Malcolm Gladwell. In Gladwell’s book, he mentions that most humans believe that the successful people in the world are “self-made” but that isn’t completely true.
The overall theme of the book is that successful human beings don’t rise up from nothing. There are many factors that play into being successful. We seem to believe that the successful were born with some quality or talent to help them be the way they are. The author states, “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 …show more content…
special talents they might have been born with. And we assume that it is those personal qualities that explain how that individual reached the top.” When talking about what question we tend to ask about those who are successful. We want to think that it takes talent and superb qualities to reach the top, but the statements we tend to turn towards are incorrect.
Opportunity and time are two important factors in being able to reach the top.
Gladwell uses both Mozart and The Beatles to prove that they are not so much musical geniuses, but they both worked in the musical industry and succeeded after 10,000 hours of work. Not only does time play an important part, but opportunity does as well. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, had many opportunities to use computer softwares at a young age. He also worked and studied for 10,000 hours before he began rising to the top which points us back to our theme. None of these people rose from dust and was able to rise to the top on their own, they had opportunities and time.
Talent and Luck on the other hand are not as important in reaching the top. Of course having talent is necessary, but it is not sufficient in being able to succeed. Not everyone has talent or even luck. In Gladwell’s book he mentions that because of the way a certain athletes birthday is, he’s able to rise to the top, but that's not the only thing helping him to get there. You can’t base success solely on talent and luck because you will inevitably never reach the top. Without opportunity and time, you can’t get very
far.
In conclusion, Malcolm Gladwell’s book has a theme that success doesn’t come from having a certain quality or talent. The article I wrote stated that you must have time and opportunity to be able to rise and conquer. If you rest just on your talent and luck, soon enough your success will turn into failure. Gladwell was very good in showing examples such as The Beatles and Mozart to shows that they didn’t just become musical geniuses, they worked and studied for hours while also having opportunities. Yes, they used their talent and possibly luck came in for some of the journey, but humans don’t rise up from dirt.
The overall theme of the book is that successful human beings don’t rise up from nothing. There are many factors that play into being successful. We seem to believe that the successful were born with some quality or talent to help them be the way they are. The author states, “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 …show more content…
special talents they might have been born with. And we assume that it is those personal qualities that explain how that individual reached the top.” When talking about what question we tend to ask about those who are successful. We want to think that it takes talent and superb qualities to reach the top, but the statements we tend to turn towards are incorrect.
Opportunity and time are two important factors in being able to reach the top.
Gladwell uses both Mozart and The Beatles to prove that they are not so much musical geniuses, but they both worked in the musical industry and succeeded after 10,000 hours of work. Not only does time play an important part, but opportunity does as well. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, had many opportunities to use computer softwares at a young age. He also worked and studied for 10,000 hours before he began rising to the top which points us back to our theme. None of these people rose from dust and was able to rise to the top on their own, they had opportunities and time.
Talent and Luck on the other hand are not as important in reaching the top. Of course having talent is necessary, but it is not sufficient in being able to succeed. Not everyone has talent or even luck. In Gladwell’s book he mentions that because of the way a certain athletes birthday is, he’s able to rise to the top, but that's not the only thing helping him to get there. You can’t base success solely on talent and luck because you will inevitably never reach the top. Without opportunity and time, you can’t get very
far.
In conclusion, Malcolm Gladwell’s book has a theme that success doesn’t come from having a certain quality or talent. The article I wrote stated that you must have time and opportunity to be able to rise and conquer. If you rest just on your talent and luck, soon enough your success will turn into failure. Gladwell was very good in showing examples such as The Beatles and Mozart to shows that they didn’t just become musical geniuses, they worked and studied for hours while also having opportunities. Yes, they used their talent and possibly luck came in for some of the journey, but humans don’t rise up from dirt.