Malcolm Gladwell states in Outliers that 10,000 hours of practice in a sport or hobby or career, will propel one person over another. He tries to convince us with his argument by bringing up people like Bill Gates and the Beatles, stating that they spent more than 10,000 hours perfecting their craft. At first his argument seems pretty legit and holds merit, but then you begin to question. What if someone practices for 10,000 hours, but doesn 't put in much work? What if someone, who has spent few hours than 10,000 is excelling? Doesn 't age and intelligence, come into play or does the 10,000 hours rule apply to anyone? Malcolm Gladwell put the 10,000 hours rule back into play with Outliers, but soon followed many scientists, who disproved
In the novel Outliers, Gladwell argues that individuals who are successful are not just talented, but are shaped by their oppurtunities, lives, culture, and personal advantages. To prove his point, Gladwell frequently uses specific examples to demonstrate how success can be attributed to more than just talent. One of the unique advantages that successful individuals possess is when they were born. Gladwell explains that, “For a young would be lawyer, being born in the early 1930s was a magic time, just as being born in 1955 was for a software programmer, or being born in 1835 was for an entrepreneur” (Gladwell 137). Being born in a specific time period is an advantage to certain people due to the fact that each era has specific
Elements like diction and syntax plays an important role in the development of Malcolm Gladwell's thesis. This summary of his thesis is ‚We are so caught in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth. To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and determine success. Gladwell uses diction and syntax to give depth and understanding to the target audience. In Outliers, Gladwell examines several different groups of people or individuals who went from rags to riches. Structure aids and diction help Gladwell describe the amazing chance that shows the outcome of Bill Gates. In chapter two describing these opportunities, Gladwell starts sentences with, "Opportunity number one", "Opportunity number two", and further on. For example Galdwell describes an amount of opportunities that "gave Bill Gates extra time to practice.
In his article, “Thresholds of violence” by Malcolm Gladwell, has effectively proven that the school shootings changed and they’ve became ritualized. From an incident, a group of three officers had arrived to the unit’s door step, and a young man stood in the center. The man became extremely defensive when one of the officers had to pat LaDue down. The officer had over heard that LaDue was making bombs in the storage locker, then had found a SKS assault rifle with sixty rounds of ammunition, a Beretta 9-mm, hand gun, including three ready-made explosive devices hidden in his bedroom. “There are far more things out in that unit than meet the eye” (Gladwell 2), exampling how there’s not only going to be a specific amount of bombs that would have
Ten thousand hours or 10 years is the duration in which someone must be willing to practice in order to achieve world class expertise in any desired skill. Utilizing this much time is the phenomenon known as the 10,000 hour rule. However, time is not the only criteria in need of consideration; in fact, people are gifted in multiple ways, but people do not take the time to pursue their niches. Therefore, the 10,000 hour rule allows people to take the time to evolve their natural gifts.
He describes a true outlier as someone who against all odds manages to be extraordinarily successful and remains a mystery in how that is achieved. In one chapter he talks about “The 10,000 hour rule” and how in order to master something you need to put in 10,000 hours of work to achieve that. While discussing Silicon Valley, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs he says, “The perfect age to be in 1975… old enough to be a part of the coming revolution… twenty or twenty-one, which is to say, born in 1954-1955.” (Gladwell 65) Both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were born in 1955, the perfect year to be right on top of the coming technology revolution. Bill Gates had access to so many different computers in a time when having access to just one was an anomaly, the opportunities he had were extremely rare but occurred because of when and where he was
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.
Success is a concept that is constantly altered and has a different meaning from person to person. The stereotypical definition of success would be someone who has a high-paying job or is in the upper-class. Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Outliers: The Story of Success, approaches the concept of success in a different and unique way. Gladwell discusses how opportunities, cultural legacy, and hard work all coincide with each other to produce real success. He uses mostly logic and multiple unrelated anecdotes to support and provide evidence for his statements. Gladwell 's main argument is that although hard work and talent are essential for success, one’s given opportunities and cultural legacy are what really drive them to the pinnacle of success.
We hear success stories everyday on the news and on television yet, there is no one who explains how these individuals became prosperous. In Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell creates a blueprint for success through a series of short stories. Gladwell dissects the stories and looks at the individual’s background to connect every story with his theories as well as using statistics and facts to show credibility and logic. This method allows the readers to better comprehend his
Some have named Ray Bradbury “the uncrowned king of the science-fiction writers” because of his imagination and beautiful way of making Fahrenheit 451 come to life. The book Fahrenheit 451 is one of the first books to deal with a future society filled with people who have lost their thirst for knowledge and for whom literature is a thing of the past. The author mainly portrays this world from the point of view of Montag, a man who has discovered the power that knowledge contains and is coming to grips with the fact that it is outlawed. However, the reader also gets to see what life is like for one of the people content in living a life lacking in independent thought and imagination through his wife, Millie. Through the characterization of Mildred, and his use of figurative language in Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury warns that technology has the ability to hinder independent thoughts and ideas.
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
behavior, learning and memory of an individual ( 1). While Dr. Noble noted the more affluent children possessed larger hippocampuses than their disadvantaged counterparts (Brain Trust 47), Hanson notes that the lifestyle of less affluent families affect the hippocampus negatively. For instance, maternal separation can negatively impact the hippocampus, I.e. working mother's. The lower the income a household has, the more stress it faces. Outstanding stress can have long-lasting negative effects on the hippocampus (1.). Hanson found that poor children had less gray matter within the hippocampus (5). Hanson concluded that “higher levels of chronic stress” could result in small hippocampal volumes into adulthood and other “early environment” factors, such as
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 "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.
Gladwell argues that our greatest strengths can also become our greatest weaknesses. I find Gladwell’s argument to be false based on the fact that the underdog doesn’t always win. He brings into question whether Goliath was actually a strong giant or an incapable underdog; Was David a dark horse or was he favored to win. Gladwell tells many tales in which the underdog faces obstacles they must overcome to succeed, but the underdog can’t always succeed. This is one of the flaws in Gladwell’s argument.