What if the phrase “practice makes perfect” wasn’t actually true? Malcolm Gladwell claims that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to perfect a skill, however, some people are starting to believe that may not be the case. “Your Genes Don’t Fit. Why 10,000 Hours of Practice, Won’t Make You an Expert”, argues that mastering a skill requires innate abilities along with practice.
Malcom Gladwell is author of Outliers The story of success. Gladwell speaks on success how circumstances may out come your success but that may not be that case. Tony Robbins a motivational speaker, author, and philanthropist. Robbins doesn’t see circumstances as a determined factor. He is a prime example of that.
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell teaches you the understanding of success. Malcolm Gladwell in the book Outliers uses logos, pathos, and ethos to get his argument across. Outliers was written for the purpose to show the audience that success isn’t all on how hard you work, raw talent, intelligence or personality traits. Success comes from your culture, who your parents are, when you were born and the opportunities you have been given. The argument by logic, emotion and character are all put into Outliers to convince the readers that success is what you make of it.
The reading "Hidden Intellectualism" by Gerald Graff reflects views on being "street smart" and "book smart." He explains that society tends to associate people who are intelligent on solely being "book smart" and performing well in academics, rather than being street smart. He goes on to further explain that students perhaps can be intelligent on topics that interest them. Graff opens up the reading by giving his own personal experience on feeling torn between trying to prove that he was smart yet fearing that he was overdoing it. He was trying to prove that he learned just as much about the real world by reading his sports books and magazines as he would have if he had read the classic works of literature like most students in school. Essentially,
Gerald Graff’s “Hidden Intellectualism” goes through many reasons why not being book smart could be a good thing. The sports world is a way of people connecting through the competitive sports that always lead to some sort of debate (268). Graff grew up always liking sports and being “street smart” living in Chicago. He always read sports magazines growing up and realized that reading magazines was a good tactic for schools to teach street smart kids how to write good essays based on their hobbies of reading magazines (265). “What doesn’t occur to us, is that schools and colleges might be at fault for missing the opportunity to tap into such street smarts and channel them into good academic work”(264).
In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell challenges those who assume hard work is the only path to success. “It is not the brightest who succeed. Nor is success simply the sum of decisions and efforts we make on our behalf.” Gladwell states that success can happen through a series of different factors.
My understanding of the “American Dream” is a concept of migrating to the United States, starting from scratch, and becoming rich and successful by working hard. But after reading Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell change my perspective of the “American Dream” by providing the idea of luck and opportunity playing a major factor in one 's success. Almost all the success story of the immigrant in the book was by opportunity because of birth, chance by cultural background and circumstances. Gladwell changed my view of how the “American Dream” is accomplished, not solely by hard work, but luck and opportunity are what factor into someone accomplishing the “American Dream”.
In "Blue-Collar Brilliance" Mike Rose Shares his perspective on how education is not Intelligence. He lets us know how growing up he was around a bunch of Blue-Collar workers himself, and how intelligence is not based on the education you have but what you can Develop on your own from just being open minded. He explains to use how blue-collar jobs take a toll on both body and mind. He believes that you don't need to be taught things to develop intelligence that your intelligence comes from within. He shared the different stories of blue-collar workers life that he experience such as his mother and his uncle to help us see that even if you don't have a high education and a college degree you can still become a successful. He wants use to see that blue-collar jobs take more intelligence then what we think: it's more than just an elementary job.
Malcom Gladwell, the author of The Outliers, analyzes the factors to success based on real-life example. Through statistical facts and logical reasoning, he attempts to prove how success is more than just hard work and being intelligent. He supports his arguments with accurately calculated statistical facts to gain the trust of his audience and to work towards 2proving his points. Gladwell determines the reasons of success by comparing well-known successful people and finding commonalities between those people.
In the story "Outliers", Malcolm Gladwell uses a series of experiments and logical reasoning to clarify that practice determines the success of one's destiny. "In fact, by the age of twenty, the elite performers had each totaled ten thousand hours of practice. By contrast the merely good students had totaled eight thousand hours" (Gladwell 12). The experiment showed that the students that excelled had practiced a lot more than the merely good proving more practice determines success. In addition, the studies found from the experiment reveal that there were no "naturals" with the innate talent to be an elite performer. There is a direct correlation between practice and success, but not between naturally good and success. This shows that even though Thomas was able to succeed mass of success is straight from the amount of practice. Comparatively, Gladwell uses Mozart as another example. "Since he didn’t produce his greatest work until he had been composing for more than twenty years" (Gladwell 13). Mozart wasn’t able to just walk up to a podium and make a magical music. He had to practice and prepare for many years. Lastly, Neurologist Daniel Levitin states, "researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours" (Gladwell 12). Scientist believe that any person has the ability
Ursula Le Guin defines Omelas as a utopia where the citizens’ lives are never wretched. Le Guin captures her readers’ attention by describing the city’s beauty with the colorful scenery, events featuring games and horse riding, and the everlasting happiness. She does a great job of leading her readers into thinking this could be the perfect society, but leaves us with the question of satisfaction. According to Le Guin, “happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive” (p. 2). This quote means that there must be a balance for the society to succeed. The basic needs in life are considered as water, food, and reproduction, and the simple wants are “central heating, subway trains, washing machines, and all kinds of marvelous devices” (p.2). The destruction to society could be one’s remorse for the child’s suffering. If one shows sympathy for the child and it is released from the basement, the city’s beauty and happiness will vanish. The child could represent selfless because its sacrifice is for the prosperity of Omelas. Le Guin explains that the society is a bargain between happiness and
The book “Outliers,” by Malcolm Gladwell takes readers on a momentous adventure of twists and turns through life's most optimistic lessons. The aspiration of the book “Outliers,’ is a reflection of how the author Gladwell would like his readers to view and glide through the journey called life. Examples given within the book help to shed light on positive lifelong learning experiences. The key question in the book “Outliers,” is what makes people who are great achievers different from regular people? ” The term “Outlier,” illustrates phenomena’s that can happen apart from what is considered to be the social norm (Gladwell, 2007). As Gladwell explains what an outlier is, he explains an outlier to be a person who is out of the ordinary. According to Gladwell, successful women and men alike gain specialization, partnership, time, locations, and culture (Locklear, 2016). An outlier’s method for success is not personal beliefs but the synthesis of opportunity and time on task (Locklear, 2016).
In "Outliers: The story of success", Malcom Gladwell explained and gave examples of ways to be successful. There are many ways that Gladwell mentioned, such as luck, practice, background, family, and culture. There are many more of course, but I will save time. There are three of which I think are the most important, these being Intelligence, Social Skills, and Location; and these are explanations as to why I think these are the most important.
Intrinsic factors critically considered when people think about the main components of success. However, Malcolm Gladwell, a famous writer, contradicts this tendency through the book, Outliers. The book, Outliers insists that extrinsic factors define success rather than the intrinsic ones. Nonetheless, Gladwell himself goes against the topic of Outliers in his assertion: “if you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires (Gladwell, 2008).” The assertion implies that individuals could achieve success only with those intrinsic factors. Gladwell’s assertion is wrong because people can’t achieve success without an opportunity of relative age, an opportunity to have practical
There is an important theme in the story Flowers for Algernon By Daniel Keyes. It is a fiction novel about a thirty year old man who has been battling to overcome an intellectual deficit all of his life and has an opportunity to become more intelligent than he ever had imagined through an experimental operation. He takes the opportunity and in a few weeks he becomes a genius for a short time before his itelligence receded as fast as it increased. The author includes many important themes throughout the passage. Daniel Keyes develops the theme that intelligence doesn’t affect who you truly are through Charlie’s experiences both before and after the operation.