What drives success? Where does it come from? Can you be born into it? These are some common questions when it comes to success. Every one can has their own opinion about what success is, and also what it takes to become successful people in today’s world. That is where Malcolm Gladwell comes into play. After reading “Outliers: The Story of Success”, Gladwell has helped me view the journey to success in ways I have and haven’t heard of before. He helps you understand some complex ideas of why someone may be more successful that someone else. To me success is determined by a lot of things and there is no one thing that can make your success, you have to have multiple things that are not found in one place. There are many things that come to your mind think of when it comes to success, age would be one of the many determining factors. In the book, Gladwell used hockey as an example. Hockey is a sport dominated by Canadians. In Canada, there is a hockey deadline where if a kid is not 10 by January 1st, he has to wait until next year to begin playing. This gives a kid with a birthday before the deadline an advantage over his opponents who could only be a few months’ young than him, because he had a year more of experience. Americans’ understand this in a different way. In the United States school system you have to be 6 before a certain time of the year before you can enter kindergarten. This could be different because those who enter earlier could graduate at a younger age, those who have to wait could be more prepared for school. It depends how you look at each situation, because they all can be different. If you have every played a sport, instrument, or simply attended school then you have heard the quote “Practice makes perfect.... ... middle of paper ... ...l believes that’s why we are behind educationally. I believe this is a true statement, our kids in united stated should spend more time learning than playing video games, texting, and on social media which seems to be the most popular thing these days. Success can be defined by a lot of different things, whether you are tall or short, rich or poor, your definition may be different than one of your peers. I believe there is not a “right” answer to the questions “what is success?” or “how you do you become successful?” This book really gave me a few more ways of thinking about how success comes along. Some of the things Malcolm Gladwell comes up with are extreme but there is no right or wrong answer. To me success is determined by a lot of things and there is no one thing that can make you successful, you have to have multiple things that are not found in one place.
In the second chapter of his book “Outliers: The Story of Success,” Malcolm Gladwell introduces what he believes to be a key ingredient in the recipe for success: practice. The number of hours he says one must practice to obtain expert-level proficiency in a particular skill is ten thousand hours. He goes on to list several examples of successful individuals and makes the correlation between the amount of hours they practiced their skill and when they achieved expert-level proficiency (almost always around ten thousand hours of practice). While the magic number appears to be the main focus of the chapter when it comes to success, Gladwell seems to put more emphasis on the advantage and opportunities each individual experienced. However, I believe the determining factor that distinguished their successful careers was their drive, passion and dedication to put in the hours necessary to turn those unique opportunities into success.
In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell argues that there is no such thing as a self-made man, and that success is only the result of a person’s circumstances. However, throughout the novel Gladwell points out that your circumstances and opportunities only help you become successful if you are willing to take advantage of them and work hard. From a twelve year old living in the Bronx, to those who were born at just the right time to become millionaires, one thing is the same throughout; these people because successful because they seized the opportunities they were given. The advantages and opportunities that came from their circumstances would not be important if they had not grasped them. Every successful man is self made, because he has seized the
Malcolm Gladwell is a canadian-english journalist, speaker, and bestselling author. In his bestselling book “Outliers”, Malcolm Gladwell discusses success and what patterns correlate with it. He states that how much time you put into a certain activity, specifically 10,000 hours, can put you in a elite level of proficiency. This in turn can give someone the tools to allow them the ability to be successful. Using historical citations, patterns, and real life examples, Gladwell forms his 10,000 hour rule. Due to his knowledgeable yet calm tone Gladwell seems to show credibility. His intended audience could be people who enjoy statistics or people who want to be successful and find possible ways to do so. Gladwell uses a logical appeal to show the patterns he has found through his studies of success. He supports his claim with overwhelming statistics which back it. He also uses similes to help better understand how he can relate the patterns he has found for the elite in a certain activity to other things. Foil is probably Gladwell's best means of convincing the reader to his thesis of the 10,000 hour rule. He uses Foil to compare success and we define to legends such as Bill Gates The Beatles and Bill Joy. Overall Gladwell uses Logos, similes, and foils to support his claim of the 10,000 hour rule.
Imagine a book that offers the reader a key; a key that enables them to ride down the highway to success and see all of the stops along the way that are instrumental in achieving success. Malcolm Gladwell does precisely this in his novel Outliers, which examines some of history’s most successful people and then attempts to explain why they specifically became successful beyond their wildest dreams. Gladwell is a reporter for The New Yorker and an accomplished author in the areas of psychology, sociology, and social psychology. In Outliers, he presents his reasoning as to why some people become successful and some do not. One of his major points in this regard is the ten thousand hour rule, meaning that to master a topic and become extremely successful in that area, one must accumulate at least ten thousand hours of practice in that area. He closely examines the early lives and careers of some of history’s greatest success stories to make a fine argument for his case. However, his strong arguments in support of his theories on success are not as strong when they come to countering the “typical view”, as Gladwell sees it. Outliers is different than most persuasive novels in that by proving his point, Gladwell does not necessarily disprove other people’s view on success. He effortlessly utilizes logos, along with numerous examples and parallelisms to support his theories. However, his lack of ethos and strong counter-argument allows for the audience to understand his ten thousand hour rule without necessarily supporting it wholeheartedly. After proposing something unthinkable to the average mind, Gladwell goes on to explain his ten thousand hour rule theory using two, very descriptive, very in-depth anecdotes. He shows how multi-bil...
Success has a different meaning for every person on Earth. The majority of people define success as an individual’s “attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence” (Success). In accordance with the rest of society, Malcolm Gladwell defines success as an individual’s accumulation of “a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities” given by the environment to help a person succeed in the business world (Gladwell 155). Advantages come in the forms of birth dates, learning styles, work ethics, demographic luck, and job needs. Similarly, opportunities given by the environment circulate around a person’s ability to complete “ten thousand hours… of greatness” (41). Before reading Gladwell’s book “Outliers: The Story of Success”, I would have complied with society’s and Gladwell’s
1. Malcolm Gladwell’s primary objective in Outliers is to examine achievement and failure as cultural phenomena in order to determine the factors that typically promote success. His main argument that success results from a complicated mix of factors, requires taking a closer look at why certain people, and even entire groups of people, thrive while others fail. In the chapter “The Three lessons of Joe Flom” it describes another success story for the reader to inspect. The chapter is mostly about success and failure as we look into the life of a man who, against everyone he knew, succeeded in an occupation in which he had not been accepted in so he decide that he was going to make a name for himself anyway. Gladwell begins to describe Joe Flom's origins by revealing to the reader that his family was in poverty, “His parents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. His father, Isadore, was a union organizer in the garment industry
For generations, only certain people have achieved success - they are known as geniuses or outliers; however, they did not obtain it on high IQs and innate talents alone. In the book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell, #1 bestselling author of The Tipping Point and Blink, reveals the transparent secret of success behind every genius that made it big. Intertwined with that, Gladwell builds a convincing implication that the story behind the success of all geniuses is that they were born at the right place, at the right time and took advantage of it. To convey the importance of the outlier’s fortunate circumstances to his readers, he expresses a respective, colloquial tone when examining their lives.
In the book “Outliers: The Story of Success” authored by Malcolm Gladwell, he explains what an outlier is and what it means to be “successful”. Throughout the novel, Gladwell provides examples by writing different stories in nine various chapters to support his claim. Gladwell believes that success isn’t gained by natural talent, but by the effects of other circumstances and that these people are called outliers. It’s the argument of nature vs. nurture that Gladwell wants to address in his book. Many people in society would think that a particular person is successful due to the individual’s natural talents, although that can be true to a certain extent, Gladwell wants to disapprove that idea in people’s mind and wants the public to look at
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.
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. Although the author, Malcolm Gladwell did not major in sociology or psychology in college, his credibility for Outliers comes from his background in journalism.
We all understand what success is, but what allows for a person to become successful? Malcolm Gladwell wrote his book Outliers to study this topic and settle once and for all why some people are more successful than others. Gladwell uses the success stories of people throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to discover just exactly what it is that allows for one to be successful. He explains that there is much more to becoming successful than just natural talent and skill. Gladwell states in Outliers that success is the product of the time we were born, our dedication, and most of all where we come from.
“A statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample” (Gladwell 3) or in other words an outlier. In the novel Outliers: The Story of Success, author Malcolm Gladwell holds one of the many secrets to life, the secret to success. Gladwell takes one’s thoughts on an astonishing journey to reveal the keys to success, their patterns, and how to achieve it.
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.
Success is a very personalized term. It can be defined in many different ways and like itself there are also many ways to achieve it. Success is a term that everyone has a different opinion on but one thing remains the same: we all want to be successful. We all want to be good at the things we desire most. Two great activists for the cause of success are Arnold Schwarzenegger and Greg Plitt. Both are men who demand great respect. Not only for being at the top of their classes but for also going beyond that and topping many of the ranks for things they are passionate about. Their success not only was noticed but radiated into the minds of people and children everywhere inspiring them to be great. Though they may have their differences both men
Success is within the mind of the individual. A large portion of ones life is spent working to become successful. People are told throughout childhood to work hard so they can grow up and make lots of money. But success takes many different forms. Different people have different interpretations of what success means to them. For some, success is measured by social status and wealth; for others success is determined only by the amount of happiness one feels.