Outliers Gladwell Summary

Success is determined by the opportunities given to you leading up to your success. Gladwell displays this in Outliers by telling us the story of a few very successful people. Gladwell tells us that “achievement is talent plus preparation” (38). So what kind of preparation are we talking about? Researchers have decided that the “magic number for true expertise is ten thousand hours” (40). Anders Ericsson and his two colleagues underwent studies trying to find out what made someone successful. They took a group of violinist that started playing at the same young age. They proceeded to ask them how many hours of practice they had. They found that the older the kids got the bigger range there was in between the kids and how many hours they practiced. They found that the kids that continually practiced more and more every year were the ones that went on to be great violinists. They did this study with pianists, athletes, writers and etc. It is with these studies that they came up with the “magic number of 10,000 hours” (41). So why doesn’t every kid put forth the effort to accomplish 10,000 hours? Along with time, it takes opportunities. These kids need the opportunity to expand their knowledge and skill. Not everyone gets the same opportunities
He gives us the story of the Beatles and Bill Gates. The Beatles would not have been the success they were if it were not for the opportunities given to them in Germany. They were given the chance to perform in Hamburg, Germany, at night clubs. The band was “forced” (49) to play an extraordinary amount of times in these clubs. The Beatles performed live roughly twelve hundred times in a course of 5 years. Philip Norman, the author of the Beatles Biography “Shout” says, “they were no good on stage when they there, and they were very good when they came back” (50). It was this opportunity that set the Beatles apart from the rest when they arrived in