by Richard Raizes

Why do some people achieve much more than others? Malcolm Gladwell’s third and most recent bestseller, Outliers, explores this question and comes up with a variety of answers. According to Mr. Gladwell, and contrary to the thoughts of many high school students (including myself before reading the book), success is not merely a function of an individual’s hard work, motivation, ambition, and intelligence. Not everything that happens to a person is up to that person. Instead, our culture, family, and friends also play a great role.
One particular example of outside forces affecting success is that a person’s birthday can affect their later success in life. When examining the birthdays of Professional Canadian Hockey Players a striking discovery is made: a disproportionate number are born during January, February, and March of each year. Since youth hockey leagues determine eligibility by calendar year (a person born January 1^st is placed in the same level as someone born December 31^st of the same year), adolescents born in the beginning of the year are more developed and are thus identified as better athletes, leading to better coaching and eventual placement into the Professional league.

The part of the book I found most interesting was the “10,000 hour rule”, being that an individual needs to spend 10,000 hours on a single skill (such as computer programming or dancing) to become truly great at it. In the case of Bill Gates, he was able to spend 10,000 hours on a computer programming before he even attended college. This may not seem like too much to you, but even Bill Gates acknowledges that there were probably less than 50 people in the entire world that were fortunate enough to spend that much time on a computer in high school at his age, let alone to use one at all.

Gladwell argues that in the state of today’s economy, it is the perfect time to invest in talent. He says, “When it’s easy to make money, you have no incentive to think about development of talent. Now, you’re forced to.” He continues to assert that talent should not be thought of as something you acquire. Rather, it should be seen as something that you can continue to develop.

Outliers, is an extremely well written, clear and concise, fascinating, and well-documented book. I highly recommend it to all students, especially those interested in a prosperous future. READ IT!

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photo courtesy of bestlittlebookshelf.wordpress.com

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