Outliers: The Story of Success
July 6th, 2009
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Everyone is talking about Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers: The Story of Success
It’s filled with amazing insights into success. It took me a long time to read it because I found that reading just a few pages sometimes gave me enough to hold me over all week.
You can read the prologue here and some excerpts here. (See “The 10,000 Hour Rule,” “Harlan Kentucky,” and “Rice Paddies and Math Tests” in the sidebar. The last one was enough to make me start learning to count in Cantonese.)
Just be aware that it’s not a how-to guide with a list of steps to take. In fact, his idea that successful people are merely a product of their environment might make you go all fatalistic like the Merovingian. It’s meant to be more intriguing than practical.
My only disappointment is that I was hoping for a lot more detail about the 10,000 hour rule that he’s so well known for. It says that pretty much anyone can become successful in pretty much anything if and only if they put in 10,000 hours of practice.
But what level of granularity does that apply to? Does 10,000 hours of being creative make you successful at being creative, or is that too broad? Does it really take 10,000 hours of practice to be successful at reciting the alphabet, or is that too narrow?
In Success Is For Suckers, I wrote about whether success is worth it, in response to Glen Allsopp’s post What Malcolm Gladwell Should Have Told You In ‘Outliers’. Now having finished the book, I can better see what Glen was talking about.
Compare these two examples from the book of people who sacrificed their childhood in the name of success. One was Bill Gates. He sacrificed his childhood to become the richest man in the world doing what he loved. That’s way more than a fair tradeoff.
Another was a poor girl named Marita. She sacrificed her childhood for an 84% chance of catching up to her grade level in mathematics. It’s not mentioned whether she got there, and if she did, we’re only talking about mediocre math ability by the standards of a country that’s notoriously bad at it. The link between that and success is far from clear.
Of course, Bill Gates didn’t know things were going to work out so well for him. But he would have gladly made the sacrifice regardless, just because it was more appealing to him than anything else he could be doing. Maybe Marita feels the same way. I hope she does.
But not knowing the outcome in advance can make the decision very difficult. In eighth grade, I had to decide what high school I wanted to go to. I could have gone to my local high school, which was a perfectly good one. Or I could have applied to the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, which has been ranked the #1 public high school in the country by U.S. News and World Report.
Although TJ would have been an incredible experience, there was a price to be paid. If I remember correctly, I would not only be leaving for school earlier in the morning, but I’d be getting home at 7 or 8 every night instead of 3 in the afternoon like a normal kid. And that’s to say nothing of homework, or how stressful it would be during the day.
My dad made it very clear to me what the tradeoff was. He said, “If you want to learn everything you possibly can about math and science, then this would be the best thing in the world for you. But if you don’t, you would absolutely hate it.”
I went to the regular school, and to this day I’m still pretty sure I made the right choice. I think I learned plenty, and I probably would have gone to the same college anyway (the University of Virginia). And remember that there are some advantages to, you know, not sacrificing your childhood.
On the other hand, say my future self had come to me in eighth grade and said, “If you go to TJ, you’ll become interested in robotics. Because of that, you’ll go to MIT. There, you’ll meet a professor who will steer you towards nanotechnology. You’ll go on to invent a race of nanobots that can be injected into the blood stream and safely kill cancer cells. You’ll be an outlier. But if you don’t go to TJ, then none of this will happen.”
In that case, then yes, of course I’ll make the sacrifice, knowing that the payoff is coming. But no one wants to make a sacrifice when your best prediction is that it’s not worth it. And not knowing the future is what makes it so hard to make the right decision.
July 7th, 2009 at 6:56 am
“The last one was enough to make me start learning to count in Cantonese.”
Ha… Hunter, if you ever want to learn, you can pop me an email whenever you have questions. I’m pretty fluent in both Mandarin (the official Chinese language) and Cantonese.
Cheers~
Mark
July 7th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Not knowing the outcome of a decision is what hangs most people up. That’s why I think it’s best to follow your heart or as Joseph Campbell says “follow your bliss.” The 10,000 hours (and more) you have to put in to be relatively successful end up being enjoyable hours, rather than hours filled with stress and pressure.
July 7th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Hi Hunter.
I enjoyed reading Outliers. I will likely read any new book Mr. Gladwell puts out. The point about the trade-off is one I am glad you brought to light. We usually don’t point out much about the decisions we make, but they are the difference between being in one circumstance or a completely different one, like in your academic example.
Also, I think knowing too much of what will happen is somewhat demotivating, as we look to have at least some sense of surprise along the way, so we don’t normally think in detail about the path we are heading through.
Sacrificing childhood experiences to become an outlier is probably the way to go for those who don’t see themselves benefiting from childhood experiences, whether or not they are right at that point.
July 7th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
@ Mark, thanks, but I already know a native Cantonese speaker!
@ Natalie, I’m sure that 10,000 hours of stress and pressure can’t do much for you, so yeah, you might as well “follow your bliss.”
@ Armen, I’ve heard some people say that his other books were even better, so I’m going to look into them. Surprise is good, but I think we always have that no matter what.
July 8th, 2009 at 7:07 am
Hey Hunter!!
malcolm gladwell = legend status.
i kinda like that it’s not a how to. well, it kinda is. it’s more a how-to-think than the conventional how-to-do
haha. i think everyone wanted more detail on the 10000 hour rule. but thing is: you need to actually put in the 10000hours. more detail is just an excuse to delay. get stuck in. research and throw yourself at it. if you’re still stuck at the 1000 hour mark, send him an email.
awwwsome site all round.
keep well and in touch
alex – unleash reality
July 9th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
@ Alex, I doubt there are many people sitting around doing nothing and wondering what to put their 10,000 hours towards, but if there are, those people have certainly missed the point! I wonder how many emails he gets from people who have reached 10,000 hours in something.
July 13th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
My son goes to TJHSST and his work load is not that much worse than other schools. He is generally home before 5:00 PM (in fairness, students who live farther away have longer bus rides than he).
I would have recommended you apply, because you could have always chosen to back out and go to your home school if you didn’t like it (also, only about 20% of applicants get in anyway, so it’s likely you wouldn’t have even had the option). However, by not applying you closed that door. That was the choice we gave him: apply; if you get in, give it a semester; if it’s not working, then you can leave and go back to your home school. Low risk choice with a potential high payoff and a safety valve. Although he had a tough first couple of months, he is very happy now with his decision.
In general it is often prudent to start down a path that has a great reward at the end and that is easy to abandon than to not start down the path at all. You cannot reverse the decision if you make the choice to not even start.
Congrats on getting into UVA, and good luck to you.
July 13th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
@ A Dad, good point, although since you can only attend one school at a time, it’s hard to compare them. After one semester of TJHSST, how would you know if the local school is any better or worse? Switching schools isn’t so easy on a kid either. Maybe you had a feeling your son was well suited for TJ, thus being fairly certain it would work out, and making it a good risk.
I actually worked at a small company where most of the employees were TJHSST graduates. I didn’t fit in, and decided to leave after 4 months, because I was the non-workaholic of the bunch. Does TJ cause workaholism, or does an affinity for workaholism draw one to TJ? I don’t know, but it wasn’t me.
Just like WWII, this is a case where I sometimes think about how things would have turned out if events had unfolded differently. Still, no regrets.