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What defines success? In a group of fifty people, why are there some professional athletes, bankers, doctors and lawyers that have stellar careers (deemed "outliers") and others can barely put food on the table? If you would have asked me a couple of weeks ago, I would have said hard work and innate talent. Mr. Gladwell says think again. Then he proceeds to blow your mind, chapter after chapter.
Success, it seems, follows a predictable course. Yes, it is a given that one must have a certain amount of drive and passion for what they are doing. But that is not enough. The first rule of success is that in order to achieve mastery of anything, one must practice for 10,000 hours. That is a HUGE amount of practicing! What about the child prodigies? Aren't they just born with the gift? No, apparently not. Child prodigies, Bill Gates, The Beatles, Tiger Woods...they've all done their time. There are no shortcuts. So that means if I blog for 10,000 hours, I will be the best blogger in the world? (Believe me, my husband would attest that I am trying to hit that number...) Well, no, not exactly, but it's a good place to start.
The rest is just pure dumb luck. Being born in the right month or year. Having a certain ancestral heritage. Having random opportunities handed to you at the right time. Gladwell offers explanations to observations that would have been unexplainable before. Why are a majority of professional hockey and soccer players born in the first three months of the year? Why were the geniuses of the computer age all born around 1955? Why are there so many Jewish powerhouses in the legal field? Why are Asians so good at math? Why do airplane crashes happen more with pilots and co-pilots of certain ethnicities over others? Why do poorer kids score lower on tests than kids from wealthy families? I guarantee you, the answers are not what you think.
I've not read any of Gladwell's other hits, like Blink and The Tipping Point, but I knew I was in for a bit of fun with this book just based on the reviews. This type of non-fiction is not even a genre I claim to enjoy much...I like action, twisted plotlines and witty dialogue. (This is the main reason I put this book on my list for the TBR Reading Challenge - I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone.) His prose is very easy to read, though, like he is just chatting with you over coffee. And he keeps you entertained not with dead bodies and torrid affairs, but instance after instance of how success can be explained in the most unorthodox but intuitive ways. Throughout the book, I kept stopping and yacking to my husband about Gladwell's curious findings, but I never could summarize them adequately, and I just got raised eyebrows and noises like "oh..uh huh..mmm". So instead of rambling on any further here, and risking the same reaction from you, I will just end it by saying that you must read it for yourself! Prepare to be dazzled.
Success, it seems, follows a predictable course. Yes, it is a given that one must have a certain amount of drive and passion for what they are doing. But that is not enough. The first rule of success is that in order to achieve mastery of anything, one must practice for 10,000 hours. That is a HUGE amount of practicing! What about the child prodigies? Aren't they just born with the gift? No, apparently not. Child prodigies, Bill Gates, The Beatles, Tiger Woods...they've all done their time. There are no shortcuts. So that means if I blog for 10,000 hours, I will be the best blogger in the world? (Believe me, my husband would attest that I am trying to hit that number...) Well, no, not exactly, but it's a good place to start.
The rest is just pure dumb luck. Being born in the right month or year. Having a certain ancestral heritage. Having random opportunities handed to you at the right time. Gladwell offers explanations to observations that would have been unexplainable before. Why are a majority of professional hockey and soccer players born in the first three months of the year? Why were the geniuses of the computer age all born around 1955? Why are there so many Jewish powerhouses in the legal field? Why are Asians so good at math? Why do airplane crashes happen more with pilots and co-pilots of certain ethnicities over others? Why do poorer kids score lower on tests than kids from wealthy families? I guarantee you, the answers are not what you think.
I've not read any of Gladwell's other hits, like Blink and The Tipping Point, but I knew I was in for a bit of fun with this book just based on the reviews. This type of non-fiction is not even a genre I claim to enjoy much...I like action, twisted plotlines and witty dialogue. (This is the main reason I put this book on my list for the TBR Reading Challenge - I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone.) His prose is very easy to read, though, like he is just chatting with you over coffee. And he keeps you entertained not with dead bodies and torrid affairs, but instance after instance of how success can be explained in the most unorthodox but intuitive ways. Throughout the book, I kept stopping and yacking to my husband about Gladwell's curious findings, but I never could summarize them adequately, and I just got raised eyebrows and noises like "oh..uh huh..mmm". So instead of rambling on any further here, and risking the same reaction from you, I will just end it by saying that you must read it for yourself! Prepare to be dazzled.
