Outliers: The Story of Success, written by Malcolm Gladwell, is truly a phenomenal book that offers insight on a subject that holds the interest of many people worldwide. Personally, I have been a fan of Gladwell for a while with previously reading his two works The Tipping Point and Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking. As an author, Malcolm Gladwell continuously offers new ideas and theories as to why certain things happen in our world. He analyzes different situations and offers his own intelligible insight on these circumstances. Outliers specifically focuses on the social concept of success and what it takes to be successful. He explains that success is achieved through a compilation of multiple factors in a person's life including culture, family, wealth, intelligence, and childhood opportunities; furthermore, Gladwell expresses that work ethic is a factor in an individual's success but is not the defining element. This book is worth the read. I believe it is because Outliers offers …show more content…
Instead of taking a traditional route in explaining success as something that is your decision and will come because of your own work ethic as we are taught, Malcolm Gladwell explains how success is not one hundred percent in our own control. We, as humans, are differentiated in the world through our culture, gender, age, and race. He explains how all of these factors, as well as wealth and time, affect our chances of being successful in varying fields. Although many of the examples in this book are just theories created by Gladwell, I believe validity can be found behind many of them. Gladwell has found the Outliers in our world today and has explained why they have become who they are. Many of the ideas he presents in his book make sense and are understandable. His thoughts are unique which keep the reader interested and intrigued to find out
Gladwell proves that success involves factors other than luck. Not only is this maturity advantage seen in athletic situations, but Gladwell includes it is present in academics. In the text Gladwell writes, “Recently, two economists — Kelly Bedard and Elizabeth Dhuey—looked at the
The book Outliers, written by Malcolm Gladwell, never defines the word "success," a concept explored in its entirety throughout the book. Rather, the term Outlier is defined as “something that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body,” and “a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample,” which relates to the popular view of success. Conversely, Gladwell’s theory of success is that the outliers could not have achieved success without both the opportunity to achieve success, and the hard work to make use of the opportunity. Following this principle, I have related my own successes to this theory. The first opportunity for success came from my parents wealth
In Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, he proves there are numerous factors that which influences the success of failure. To support his idea, he uses examples to demonstrate there are no outliers when it comes to personal success stories. First example is the cut-off date of the Canadian Hockey League, how Bill Gates and the Beatles spent at least 10,000 hours practicing or working on their expertise. In addition, he uses the stories of Chris Langan, and Robert Oppenheimer to compare how one can succeed and how we can fail whether we have extremely high IQs or not. Furthermore, Gladwell utilizes the story of Joseph Flom to show how he was able to build a successful law firms because he wasn’t able to get hired because of racial discrimination.
In contrast to the above statement, Margaret Mead also reveals the truth about what people really feel about success. Yes, we are raised to admire those who succeed in Hollywood and other places, but do we really rejoice in everyone 's success? Margaret Mead thinks we don 't, and she is absolutely right. She says that "we tend to regard the success of people close at hand, within our own small group, as a threat." From experience, this statement proves very true.
Success: Belief vs. Reality Many people in the U.S. assume that as long as they work tirelessly and strive towards their goal they will achieve it because they were told to have that attitude while growing up. Malcolm Gladwell thinks otherwise. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell is a book that spreads the truth upon success and explains the different variables that can exponentially affect one’s career, and their future decisions. Gladwell touches on the conversation of whether the age of children really matters when enrolling them into school, stating that the older the child is the more likely they will be given greater opportunities.
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.
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.
A Mode of Succes: An analysis of Margaret Mead 's Understanding of Success "The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand." Vince Lombardi 's analysis of success is, in a sense, similar to Margaret Mead 's. Mead claims that success is not necessarily possessed by the most extravagant and rich person, "For many Americans, the concept of success is a source of confusion. As a people, we Americans greatly prize success. We are taught to celebrate and admire the one who gets the highest grades, the one voted most attractive or most likely to succeed.
Success is something that every person looks at differently and in America it is something that is strived for every step of the way by most typical people. The idea of success is planted in our heads at a very early age and is embedded in our culture as a part of the American Dream. Ways that success is approached are different depending on what drives a person, whether it's competitiveness or a strive for greatness. A competitive approach to success is described in Margaret Mead's essay The Egalitarian Error when she writes, "For many Americans, the concept of success is a source of confusion. As a people, we Americans greatly celebrate and admire the one who gets the highest grades, the one voted most attractive or most likely to succeed.
Gladwell’s Argument in Outliers 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.
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.
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
Success is overrated. When people think of success they think of people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, but in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations Miss Havisham and Joe are two of the most successful people in the book. My definition of success is being able to look back on your life and say it been worth living and finding happiness in your life. Throughout Joe’s life, he learns to be content with his life from a young age and always sticks to his morals. Miss Havisham gets her revenge on men but also gets forgiven for it.
Success can come from many different variables, opportunities, and advantages. In Malcolm Gladwell’s novel, Outliers, Gladwell had popularized the theory that ten thousand hours of practice will eventually lead to success. Being the only factor, 10,000 hours of practice will not lead to success. In order to be elite and successful, you need other significant contributors in the equation.
Outliers, written by Malcolm Gladwell, is an informational book regarding the intricacies of success and how it comes to fruition in individuals. Outliers has served to teach students the means of being successful and the importance of seizing opportunities as they come. Personally, Outliers has changed my views of success in numerous ways. Before reading said book, I had always assumed people who were naturally talented or had specific privileges were the only ones who could get far. However, Gladwell’s writing has informed me that anyone, if they are prepared to work hard, can reach their goals.