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Outliers: Debunking the American Myth of Success |
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Written by Miriam R. Kramer
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As we head into the steam and dreaminess of August, when sand drifts through our toes and we gaze out over the ocean haze, it can be refreshing to put down our disposable thrillers and read a book that makes us think without falling asleep. Although it has been out for a while now, I recommend Outliers as one of your summer reads. I have always thought of Malcolm Gladwell as an intelligent beach book writer, so now I get to make my case with his third blockbuster book. The Tipping Point and Blink, both great reads, made Gladwell a household name, and Outliers merely solidifies his reputation.
His fourth book, a collection of essays called What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures, was not as cohesive, and I enjoyed it less. That being said, one reason I like him so well no matter what he writes is the way he makes straightforward and not-so-evident points simply, like a skilled comedian noting everyday occurrences that escape our harried, multi-tasking worldview. Outliers focuses on special people, teams, groups, or ideas that have achieved greatness, and why we do not see how they received certain kinds of support and luck along the way.
For example, when Gladwell begins, he examines the two top teams in the Canadian Hockey League, which he calls, with national pride, “the finest junior hockey league” in the world. In examining the ages of the team players, he first states the obvious according to Canadian thinking: “Canadian hockey is a meritocracy.” Afterwards, however, he pores over the birth dates of the players and looks at other similar samples only to realize that in an elite selection of hockey players, “40 percent will have been born between January and March, 30 percent between April and June, 20 percent between July and September, and 10 percent between October and December.” Why such a strange distribution? The answer, he says, is quite simple: the eligibility cut-off date for age-class hockey is January. The difference in age and maturity between a player born on January 1 and December 31st at a young age can be huge. The ones selected for the better leagues move on to get more practice time and better coaching, so those unfortunate enough to have fewer skills because they have had less practice and are less mature are less likely to make it to a better league in tryouts. The difference between the quality and length of their training stretches further year by year, so that it can make a difference as to who eventually is playing in the NHL and who is watching in the stands.
This example is just one of the many ways Gladwell points out the luck and timing behind some very well-known individuals, such as Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, and Bill Joy, who re-wrote the computer code UNIX so that much of his work is still used today. Bill Gates was bored in public school, so his reasonably affluent parents put him in a private school that, in 1968, had highly unusual access to a computer lab with a time-sharing terminal at his junior high school in Seattle. With his natural brainpower and ability, Gates lived at the lab and learned a great deal about programming and code. After working with an outfit at University of Washington, he and his friends found a group called Information Services Inc., which gave them free time to do their own projects if they worked on software to automate company payrolls. Gates and his highly intelligent crony, Paul Allen, who eventually joined him when Microsoft emerged, were programming eight hours a day, seven days a week in the late 1960s. Had these circumstances not combined, we might have a very different computer landscape today. Gladwell’s point is not that Gates is not brilliant, but that he was in the right place, at the right time, with the right help.
To continue that thought, Gladwell also comes up with the 10,000 hour rule. He believes that anyone who does something extraordinarily well has generally spent at least 10,000 hours of practice and hard work in reaching that point. He cites the Beatles and their highly unusual number of live gigs in Hamburg before they struck it big, saying that the amount of time they spent playing every day for months put them on a different level, musically, than the other bands in Liverpool, England, and elsewhere. Other bands would get together and practice a regular set, and then go on to other everyday interests. In addition, they were great musicians who sparked off each other, but would they have been what they became without that amount of live practice? Would Bill Gates? Bill Gates clocked at least 10,000 hours in computing time before becoming a creative genius who changed the world. Would Bill Joy, who arrived at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor just after computing became a much easier process, have developed into the UNIX computer legend he is now? If he had arrived earlier, when using a computer involved handing in carefully coded cards and waiting for long periods of time, he says he would have gone back to his first goal, engineering. In addition, Bill Joy also believes that he probably put in at least 10,000 hours in creating computer code when the way was made clear for him.
Gladwell supplies many examples like these, and others that are subtly different, throughout Outliers. For one thing, they are very useful in offering an alternative viewpoint to the all-American ideal that we are a meritocracy where anyone can do anything they want if they put in the requisite effort. Yes, part of that is true, but there are other factors that come into play and do not get mentioned within our mythology of the success story. Gladwell exposes them well and lucidly. He also looks at alternative reasons why unusual events occur, and finds convincing evidence that supports his points. He is a joy to read because of his simple prose and well-argued points. You may or may not agree with him, but this book will not be a waste of your time or make you fall asleep in your beach chair. |
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