Jeffrey R. Labrador
Ms. McKilligan
ENG 255
April 3, 2014
Outliers
Analyzing success and applying different theories from being born at the right month, to practicing 10,000 hours, plus demographic luck are some of the key concepts to success. Outliers is a non-fiction book written by Malcolm Gladwell. The first part Outliers explains various methods and theories of success and how certain individuals such as Bill Gates, have become extremely successful. The second part of Outliers expresses cultural legacies and how it affects success. Success is usually overviewed by individuals differently. However, after reading Outliers and the theories that Gladwell explains throughout the book, have provided much more of an understanding in the true meaning of success. Comparing and applying Gladwell’s theories to highly successful individuals such as Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jerry Rice, will be further explained in depth.
In chapter one, Gladwell relates how hockey and being born on the right months correspond to an opportunity at success. Gladwell believes that if you are born during the early stages of the year such as January and February, you have a better chance of being drafted to a professional hockey team. To be born in the early months, gives someone the advantage of being more successful than one who is born during the later stages of the year. In chapter two, he explains how 10,000 hours of practice is another way to achieve success. Gladwell introduces very successful individuals such as Bill Gates, Bill Joy, The Beatles, and how they all relate to each other. These successful and talented individuals practiced their skills for 10,000 hours or more. All the practicing resulted in fame and success. Gates, Joy, and The ...
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...dual that started the social networking website, Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg, who was born on “May 14, 1984”, is the “youngest billionaire on the planet”. (Web). Growing up, “He was the second of four children and the only son in the educated family.” (Web). His parents were both educated just like Larry Page’s parents. However, the father was, “a dentist” and the mother, “a psychiatrist”. (Web). With the potential of success because of the opportunities at such a young age, “Mark got interested in programming during elementary school.” (Web). “The fact that the world is divided between programmers and users, Mark found out when he was 10 years old and got his first PC Quantex 486DX on the Intel 486.” (Web). Receiving a computer at such a young age and with Zuckerberg’s interest in computer programming, had really gave him a head start towards becoming successful.
Throughout the book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell focuses on using the rhetorical technique of pathos to aid his readers in understanding the formula for success. In one particular part of the book, Gladwell uses experiences and human problems as examples to support his idea that plane crashes and ethnicty are related and the greater idea that success is based on opportunity.
In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell expresses his theory of success through the 10,000 hour rule that is used to associate practice with success and achieving certain goals. He strives to influence the audience of his point of view and assumptions of successful people throughout the history of the world. Gladwell relates to various historical figures and people of well known talent and intelligence. As the author, Malcolm Gladwell believes to be very knowledgeable, influential throughout the novel. Although he provides interesting facts and statistics to his piece, Gladwell is unable to establish credibility to this information. During college and high school, he did not attain high grades that altered his decision to engage in advertising. After being rejected numerous times, he was later accepted to a journalism position. His insufficient experience and skills contributes to his low credibility and reliability. Gladwell aims to persuade or influence the audience of the importance of practice to fulfill success by also trying to teach the reader new skills. He reaches out to society to capture his inspiring discoveries including young adults in particular who are aspiring to grasp their desired dreams. He introduces the 10,000 hour rule as a goal to reach around the age of twenty or higher. Gladwell compares the lives of professional hockey players, Bill Gates, the Beatles, and Mozart to display their achievements in their later lives due to the amount of experience and practice they were able to endure. He claims that with exactly 10,000 hours of practice, expert level will be sustained in any given skill. Although Gladwell expresses his knowledge and theories of success through devices that exemplify logos and repetition of the 10,00...
Moreover, most of these successful figures stories are well known, which allows for a reassurance that Gladwell is not fabricating information. Lastly, Gladwell uses multiple examples to prove his key argument points. While discussing how when you were born affects your success, Gladwell mentions, “And if you still think that accidents of time and place and birth don’t matter all that much, here are the birth-days of the three other founders of Sun Microsystems: Scott McNealy: November 13, 1954, Vinod Khosla: January 28, 1955, Andy Bechtolsheim: September 30, 1955” (Gladwell 68). To further reinforce the key points of his argument, Gladwell uses multiple examples. As a result of using numerous examples and references, Gladwell is able to further reinforce as well as validate his argument. By using more than one piece of evidence, Gladwell can prove to his readers that what he is arguing is clearly evident in many instances. Furthermore, multiple examples proves to readers that what Gladwell is referring to is not just a one time occurrence. Ultimately, Gladwell brilliantly chooses his examples to benefit the credibility of his
In “Outliers” Malcolm Gladwell organizes his argument for their being a rule for overall success by showing statistics of people who are defined as being successful such as Bill Gates, Billy Joy, and The Beatles. He also uses a Berlin music academy to help prove his rule. He presents an argument that Bill Gates and The Beatles and the violinist attending the music academy may have been born with innate talent but that is not the sole ...
In the minds of many, intelligence not only excels your experience in education, but is also the key to a successful career. In Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell refutes this thought by expanding on the belief that intelligence can only take you so far, and that creativity and innovation tend to lead to just as much success. This thought process applies to many different levels of life including our interview and acceptance into the ACTION program.
...heir 10,000 hours of practice to become successful in their passion, therefore making his writing effective. Gladwell provides information to his audience that success is achieved by many factors and some of these factors they can control, such as the amount of hours they practice. His writing style provides hope for the future in young generations who may not know how to go about achieving success in their desired area. Gladwell's writing is truly timeless in a sense that in two hundred years from now, younger generations will be able to read his writing about the 10,000 hour rule and it will still have the same effect in giving them hope of becoming future outliers.
What makes a successful person successful? If a person were to explore what it takes to become successful they may come to the conclusion that it takes hard work. In Malcom Gladwell’s novel “Outliers” Gladwell explores this essential question and comes to the conclusion that great success is a product of circumstances and actions “that are out of the ordinary” (Gladwell 17). Gladwell labels successful people as “Outliers” (Gladwell 17) and defines them as “men and women who do things that are out of the ordinary.” (Gladwell 17) In addition, Gladwell goes on to give examples of such people, and begins with hockey players and states that “it is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn’t” (Gladwell 19). Furthermore, Gladwell comes to the conclusion that Hockey players born in the first three months of a year have a much higher percentage chance of playing professional hockey. These are the people which are products of circumstances that were out of the ordinary and out of their control.
Even when one has a rough childhood and upbringing, they are able to take all of these hard times and turn them into motivation to work harder to improve not only their lives, but their family and friends lives. Through this hard work and dedication comes the 10,000 hour rule. Marcus Gladwell is a very well-known author, writer, and speaker from The New York Yorker; his first four books were on the New York Times best seller list and in 2005, Time magazine named Gladwell one of its 100 most influential people. Because of Gladwell’s outstanding achievements and background, it furthers his readers to believe that he is a very credible and knowledgeable resource. Gladwell’s purpose in writing Outliers is to teach and inform the audience about what an outlier really stands for and how some people become an outlier from a young age. Gladwell’s main audience is people around the world that are interested in the statistical studies. Gladwell, through the use of several rhetorical devices and examples is effectively able to express what it takes to be successful through the 10,000 hour rule....
The definition of success varies around the world, but according to Malcolm Gladwell its achievement can be broken down into a few components. Although Gladwell never truly establishes credibility in his book Outliers, he still backs up his proposed theories with reputable studies and sources which intrigue the audience to keep reading.The purpose of Outliers was to enlighten people about the different elements of success while also informing them of real life situations where seemingly less than likely people beat the odds and became the powerful figures that they are today. The intended audience is anyone who is looking to become successful or who is perhaps interested in the idea of success itself and wishes to learn more about it. Understandably, a secondary audience could be high school students who are about to venture out into the world on their own because with this book they will hopefully start paying attention to different factors of their lives and seizing opportunities that they may have otherwise passed up. Malcolm Gladwell talks about the 10,000 Hour Rule and also how I.Q. does not amount to much without creativity. He also speaks of how chance opportunity comes into play and that the distant background of a person still reflects how they handle situations in their present day life. Gladwell’s Outliers successfully informs the reader about the different components that add up to success with probable theories and credible studies to make for an interesting and motivational read.
Outliers-The Story of Success is a sociological, and psychological non-fiction book, which discusses success, and the driving reasons behind why some people are significantly more successful than others. Malcolm Gladwell explains this by dividing the book into two parts, opportunity and legacy. Opportunity discusses how select people are fortunate enough to be born between the months of January through March, and also includes the idea that those who are already successful will have more opportunities to improve and become even more successful. The 10,000-hour rule proves the idea that in order to become successful in a certain skill, one must have practiced that skill for at least 10,000 hours. In addition to the 10,000-hour rule, timing is also a major component that implies being in the right place at the right time, which brings the author to discuss Bill Gates who was born during the time where programming and computer technology was emerging, therefore sparking his interest in computers, later bringing him to create Microsoft. Another point Gladwell brings forth is the notion of one’s upbringing, race, and ethnicity can be a factor behind their success. And lastly, pursuing meaningful work will cause one to continue working with their skill and not give up. Legacy is a collection of examples that support the idea: values are passed down from generation to generation, which may cause a certain group of people to be more persistent in a skill, or occupation.
If people work hard, focus, and are disciplined, they will succeed in the future. This has become a universal idea taught by parents, teachers, and peers. People have passed down this idea to the younger generations and they chose to live by this moral that makes sense. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell debunks the universal idea that working hard will allow people to play hard and get further in life. Gladwell eliminates the traditional ideas of success by showing that opportunities, family background, and being born at the “right” time are actually what lead to success.
In Chapter 8 and 9 of Outliers: The Story of Success, Gladwell exams some of the ways that Asian and American students learn math, arguing that some of the principles in the US education system should be reconsidered. I generally agree with Gladwell’s point of view. I believe in two ways, students ' principal spirit and the length of students’ studying, the US education system leaves much to be desired, though an overhaul is in progress.
Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: the story of success. 2011. Reprint. New York: Back Bay Books / Little, Brown and Co., 2008. Print.
In Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell analyzes numerous success stories in an attempt to understand the circumstances that make certain individuals particularly exceptional. Through his analysis, Gladwell strives to find an explanation for why some people succeed, while others, despite their persistent efforts, do not. He questions the validity of conventional attitudes towards accomplished figures—that these figures simply rise to fame as a result of sheer talent and ambition—and points out that the superficial summaries leave out crucial details. As Gladwell studies the lives of these “outliers,” from piano virtuosos to software moguls, he indicates that their success stemmed from a variety of components, including fortunate
...tions he dealt with. It is the story of how the world’s youngest billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg, created Facebook.