Outliers

Canadian author Malcolm Gladwell is a contemporary author who has revolutionized our perspective on life and turned our focus onto the small things, the details that shape the world, most notably in his non-fiction novels "The Tipping Point" and "Outliers".



"Outliers" is intriguing in the way it underlines the subtle yet important nuances that made the world's most successful people who they are. Gladwell looks to discard the image of the rags to riches celebrity, sports star, billionaire, and replace with a meticulous individual who did the right things at the right time and seized every relevant opportunity.



I will discuss two examples which outline his perspective. The first is the birth date rule.



The thing about dates and months is that they are indeed very indicative of what how a child will develop. The example of junior all-star hockey players shows that the rosters are dominated by teens who barely made the cut off date. For hockey, a December 31st cutoff would mean that all the January, February and March babies will be older by just a little bit. Although the age differential is less than a year, these older players will be selected to all-star teams from an early age. Subsequently, the all star experience will give the same players more opportunities to play at higher levels. This is compounded all through childhood into adolescence and results in a skewing of birth months.



This same principle is applicable in the classroom, where the slightly more mature January, February, March children will get more opportunities with challenge/honours classes than their October, November, December counterparts. Of course, there are always exceptions but this is certainly a point to consider.

Gladwell extends this to the birth year of individuals, which dictates further down the road what technological and political context the individual will be in. For example, Bill Gates did not just happen to be lucky, he grew up spending thousands of hours programming on some of the first computers.




This gets me to the second topic of interest in the book, the 10 000 hour rule. It states that in order to be an expert/virtuoso/master at anything, it requires 10 000 hours of practice. This principle is so very relevant and can be applied to a large range of fields.

This is obvious in music, where practice makes perfect.


The common pattern among sports stars is that they start at a very early age. Spending hours in their respective courts/playing fields.


The 10 000 hours applies to any other professional who is proficient in their work. 10 000 hours is just the right amount of time for the body to internalize and automize the details and complexities in movement, problem solving and processing.

I hear it far too often with regards to supposed super human individuals - they are prodigies, with talent that you only see once a century. Moreover, the same people give too much credit to the expert's genetics, from which the talent was expressed. I am not planning on disregarding genetics and talent altogether, however, I do want to give more credit to hard work and dedication.

10 000 hours simply means you have seized 10 000 opportunities and did not back down to the challenge.

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent." - Calvin Coolidge