Malcolm Gladwell

The story of success

Outliers

Kate Hornberger 

Timeo Williams

Excellent book. 
I love the amount of research and insights Malcolm provided in this book. 

As someone that wishes to achieve success in my lifetime, this book gave me a tap on the shoulder and told me to relax. A lot of success, or according to Gladwell, every success is largely due to circumstances, timing and luck. 

The examples include:
Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Bill Joy. All born within half of a year of each other. Due to timing, they saw the potential in the computer industry at a time where those who did see it were too young, and those older were content with their stable jobs at IBM, ext. 

Canada's hockey selection process
America's gifted program selection process
The increasing educational difference between rich and poor kids from childhood to adulthood.

Another surprising insight in this book was the discussion of intelligence, the Termites, and the importance of both convergent and divergent thinking. - Nobel Prize winners

Alla Dumnych

З одного боку, ця книга є дещо депресивною — складається враження, що успіх залежить хіба від удачі та хороших родинних зв’язків. Але з іншого розумієш, що без докладання зусиль це ж везіння нічого не значить. 
Нема просто рецепту успіху — потрібно поацювати і, скоріш за все, працювати багато. Чиясь історія успішності може виглядати абсолютно ідеальною ззовні, але тільки після детального вивчення цього успіху можна зрозуміти, що за його досягненням стоїть дуже багато зусиль. 

Книга доволі небанальна, рекомендую до прочитання.

siegs

My favorite so far by Gladwell (have read Blink and Tipping Point). I have an affinity for biographies of great achievers and this book provided an amazingly analytical look into some of histories most successful achievers. Very interesting to learn how many coincidental elements play into the lives of those who have become so uber-successful.

A brilliant new book from the bestselling author of The Tipping Point and Blink Why are people successful? For centuries, humankind has grappled with this question, searching for the secret to accomplishing great things. In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an invigorating intellectual journey to show us what makes an extreme overachiever. He reveals that we pay far too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where successful people are from: their culture, their family, and their generation. Gladwell examines how the careers of Bill Gates and the performance of world-class football players are alike; what top fighter pilots and The Beatles have in common; why so many top lawyers are Jewish; why Asians are good at maths; and why it is correct to say that the mathematician who solved Fermat's Theorem is not a genius. Just as he did in Blink, Gladwell overturns many of our conventional notions and creates an entirely new model for seeing the world. Brilliant and entertaining, this is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.

The Story of Success

Filipa Carvalho

I have two main problems with this book:  One: Feels like capitalist propaganda. It assumes the reader wants to be an outlier while telling them that in the end it doesn’t matter the amount of work they put into it. If one doesn’t have the right connections, the right opportunities, etc. they won’t be able to achieve it. BUT! You should always work as much as you can, to get as close as possible!  Two: The examples are so random?? Some are really interesting to read about, in a here’s-a-fun-story kind of way. But most felt pulled out of nowhere and very drawn out, just to make a point the reader, most likely, got in the first page of each chapter.  <spoiler>(Also, the last chapter made me a little uncomfortable. The author argues the fairly obvious point that children who come from wealthier families get more opportunities to learn, visiting museums, access to more books and information, etc. And so, are more prepared than their peers who come from poorer backgrounds. And the example, as way to prevent it: a school that’s overworking the children from poor backgrounds. With more hours of school, more school days and more school work. The author does acknowledge it, but that was still the example he wrote. Couldn’t he have found instead an example where these children were given better access to libraries, free tutoring, free museum entrances, etc? Read: CAPITALIST PROPAGANDA)</spoiler>

Hannah Yoon

It took me a long time to finish the book, but I think that was because there was a lot of information to process.
This book really challenges the way I looked and thought of success. I wonder if every company, business, school and parent read this book if our world would be different. 

The only downside to this book is that there are a lot of stories and examples, it can be somewhat overwhelming. However, it makes sense that Gladwell would draw from all kinds of examples to drive home the point of what makes someone an outlier in our society.

Compelling argument for how privilege matters in the first third for those allergic to the word “privilege”. After that, not amazing.

★★★★★ // reading this book couldn’t come at a better time. the way it talked about how success takes a lot of hardwork, together with chances that you seize and the enriching environment that the society around you should bring you, motivated me as well to take chances on my own. i love that it gets real with you in that it acknowledges that some success are accelerated by privileges or the condition of the time you were born. nonetheless, it remains optimistic in driving you to do your best, to put in the work — even if it takes 10,000 hours to do so — to master something. truly powerful, and appreciate that it doesn’t pander.

Hooman Rostami

The book is absolutely fantastic! It is incredibly easy to get hooked in the way Malcom writes and the book is such a page turner. Highly recommended!

Benedict Neo

** spoiler alert **
           Great insightful and rich book. I got to learn social psychology, history, culture, the US education and the story if success all in one book.

Carmen Maria

Aamna

Hannah Yang

Outliers are those who have been given opportunities - and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.

Outliers has been on my to-read list for a while, and I finally finished it! Malcolm Gladwell presents his study of success in two parts: Opportunity and Legacy.

In 'Opportunity', Gladwell gives several surprising anecdotes concerning everyone from hockey players, lawyers, people with exceptionally high IQs, and garment manufacturers. The main point was that many of these people had the natural ability to succeed, but were also lucky enough to be given the golden opportunities and time they needed to become outliers. They accumulated their 10,000 hours to become experts in a field at the perfect time frame in which experts in those fields were needed but scarce - these outliers were in the right place, at the right time.

  We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that thirteen-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur. But that's the wrong lesson. Our world only allowed one thirteen-year-old unlimited access to a time-sharing terminal in 1968.

In 'Legacy', we learn about how culture - even culture we aren't even directly exposed to anymore - impacts the way we behave and our chance of success. I particularly liked the chapter on why Asians excel at math (time for me to bring the lessons of the rice paddy to my own life!)

  Working really hard is what successful people do, and the genius of the culture formed in the rice paddies is that hard work gave those in the fields a way to find meaning in the midst of great uncertainty and poverty.

Outliers was a very interesting book, and Gladwell's writing style made it a smooth, easy read. I'm not entirely sure how consistent or reasonable the logic/research was, but I believe the book was more about how we think about success than the quantitative details.*

And this is where Outliers succeeds: it really has changed the way I view other people's success, as well as my own. I think my biggest takeaway was that, if at the end of the day, I have worked my hardest and done everything I can to be successful, I don't need to take my non-successes personally. Sometimes success is affected by factors that are out of my control, and I shouldn't feel discouraged or incapable if that's the case. I definitely have to put the work in, but once I've done that, it's not always up to me. Furthermore, I can appreciate my own successes more because I understand that there's a unique chain of opportunities that lead to that success.

*Of course, it'd be best to get them both right. But hey, it was an enjoyable read and I got something out of it, so Outliers is a win for me.

Patricia Nelson

This book was a great read, and made for a great book club discussion. There was so much in it that I wanted to underline and remember, and I wasn't alone in that.

Asher Black

Superb. He's arguing that while each person is unique, their destines are also deeply influenced by heredity in the form of transmissable and *highly persistent* culture that reaches back to one's ancestors and into one's era, and that many of our suspicions about world-class talent being inherently more intelligent (biologically more intelligent from birth) or having inherently higher skill as a matter of birth are illusory and don't account for the influence of context, era, culture, and other external factors that permit and motivate certain individuals to put in the necessary 10,000+ hours to achieve mastery of something. I've read little in the way of reviews that dispute Gladwell's points without either misunderstanding them or positing a fallacy of accident or composition.

Lord Aragorn

An interesting look at different stories of success. I enjoyed the look into how what might seem like an "obvious" story of success has hidden elements that enabled the success.

Matthew Royal

Exceptional humans are only exceptional because of the accident of their birth-circumstances giving them access to tools, education, and attitudes that make them exceptional. And 10k hours in anything makes you an expert. Therefore, successful people deserve their success because success only happens through the merits of hard work applied for a long time. In fact, success is inevitable given enough time doing something, and the confidence to assert yourself, and the social background of successful parents.

Largely, Gladwell's thesis has low predictive value, so I suspect it's overfitting to his examples. If anything, it's a meditation on the contradictory pre-conditions for success. Gristle for thought with low nutritional value.

Ivy X

Gladwell illustrated success by showing the importance of privilege, luck, environment, culture, and hard work. Well done!

Arturo Hernández

“You are a product of your environment”. El éxito es resultado de estar en el lugar correcto en el momento adecuado y de trabajar arduamente por lograr algo.

Mudita

This was a super fun read for a person like me who has self inflicted pressures to attain success. It takes you through different "successful" people's journeys and highlights all the aspects of it that would largely go unnoticed but actually play a huge role. I finished the book feeling more at peace with myself than I have in a long time.

Sierra Nguyen

This book is truly thought-provoking to me because it does a fascinating analysis on why people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are so successful. Yet passion and tremendous effort surely contribute to the success of these outliers, one key factor that we often miss when telling their stories is the opportunities that were given to these individuals at the right time by their family background and cultural legacy.
“Outliers are those who have been given opportunities — and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.”

Annie

** spoiler alert **
           Outliers are "products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky - but all critical to making them who they are."

This book destroys the" American Dream" while explaining how an outlier really becomes an outlier. I would definitely recommend to read this book!
But as it is really detailed and contains a lot of scientific and anecdotal information, one really needs to take time to read it.

Nelson Zagalo

I've written a long review about this book on my Blog in Portuguese.

Outliers The story of success

Reviews