Analysis Of Outliers By Malcolm Gladwell

Some of you may have heard of the four-time Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles. She blew us all way at the 2016 Rio Olympics, performing breathtaking skills no one has ever done before-one of them even named after her. She has dedicated her whole life for these very Games. As of today, she is the best gymnast to ever live. Simone obviously has a large amount of raw talent. However, her triumphs are because of much more than that; over the course of her life, she has practiced at least, if not more, than 10,000 hours. In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell proposes the idea that an individual must practice at least 10,000 hours in order to be considered successful. I agree with Gladwell’s claim that through excessive amounts of practice, in

After reading through the various examples given to support his beliefs, his denotation of success finally became clear. It appears that Gladwell believes success is based off how much work and practice someone puts forth to accomplish their goals. Gladwell even gives a specific amount of time one must sacrifice to fulfill their aspirations.Gladwell states, “ In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours” (Gladwell 40). Mozart’s devotion is used for support while mentioning the young age he had started practicing. Although Malcolm Gladwell's personal definition of success is legitimate, it still faces scrutiny from other

How many hours of someone’s life are necessary to perfect a skill? 300? 5000? Perhaps try 10,000 hours. In this chapter from Outliers, “The 10,000-Hour Rule”, Malcolm Gladwell argues that talent isn’t innate, but takes 10,000 hours to perfect a skill based on opportunity, talent, and practice. Throughout the chapter “The 10,000-Hour Rule”, Malcolm Gladwell effectively relies on logos--evidence from well-known figures and charts that show age similarities--to support his theory that it takes a particular window of time to offer someone the opportunity to practice for 10,000 hours to succeed at a skill. However, Gladwell ineffectively relies on repetition of evidence and failure to

Gladwell’s 10,000 Hour Rule is also an important element in a success story. Bill Gates, the Beatles, and Joe Flom all spent years practicing their trades. Correspondingly, the 10,000 Hour Rule says that expertise in a subject is a product of 10,000 hours of practice. In order to do well in something one must take one’s time to master it. Essentially, practice makes perfect.

Furthermore, Gladwell’s tone and style of writing throughout Outliers contributes to his arguments’ effectiveness. The manner in which Gladwell tells the stories in relation to each individual claim is brilliant. Not only is the writing tone of the author informative, thoughtful, and compelling, but it is also frequently conversational. Many times in Outliers, Gladwell seems to be speaking directly to his readers. The author achieves this conversational tone primarily by asking questions within his arguments. In The 10,000-Hour Rule chapter, Gladwell applies this tone when he asks, “What’s ten years?” The author is challenging the reader to determine what significance ten years has in relation to success. Unknowingly challenged, the reader searches for an explanation within his or her own thoughts before continuing reading. The author answers his own question, “It [ten years] is roughly how long it takes to put in ten thousand hours of hard practice” (41). Gladwell also uses a conversational style of writing by including a personal touch within the epilogue, A Jamaican Story. “That is the story of my mother’s path to success,” writes the author (272). With this statement, Gladwell is opening up a personal revelation to the reader in a way

To work until reaching the level of mastery of anything is a massive achievement in a person’s life. What if someone told that person that if they haven’t had reached the level of mastery if they haven’t practiced a certain amount of hours. How would that make them feel? Enraged. Depressed. Speechless. Talentless. In the Chapter “The 10,000-Hour Rule” by Malcolm Gladwell, he argues that the amount of practice required for the mastery of anything is 10,000 hours. He uses examples of famous people or groups of people that the audience might know to try and dispel the myth that to be able to master something, it takes more than innate talent. Malcolm Gladwell's use of logos and imagery fail to prove his point to the author due to the statistics he uses, and the sentences he uses to prove his point that the amount of hours required for mastery is 10,000 hours.

Time or Talent: Can someone be born gifted or do they have to ‘earn’ their talent? In order to be successful, 10,000 hours is required to become professional; however, in order to be successful one must be born in the right time and place. Malcolm Gladwell makes this argument by providing evidence that Bill Joy, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs were all born from 1952 and 1958 and now became some of the most successful people in the world by their twenties. In the chapter “The 10,000-Hour Rule”, Malcolm Gladwell uses tables and anecdotes of famous people in order to create a logical argument and effectively boost his reliability (ethos). However, in the process of using charts and anecdotal evidence, Gladwell creates many logical fallacies, which makes both his logos- and ethos-based arguments ineffective.

Vince Lombardi, a great American football coach, and player, once stated that the “dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success”. According to Lombardi, hard work will get you to where you want to go, and many people would agree. In Malcolm Gladwell’s novel, “Outliers: The Story of Success,” secrets and misconceptions about success are exposed and explained. Gladwell was right in saying that “if you work hard enough and assert yourself...you can shape the world to your desires”, as evidenced by examples from the book itself, the successful career of Serena Williams, and my own personal story (Gladwell 151).

Gladwell backs up his theory with examples of many people who are considered experts. Bill Joy, an expert computer programmer and creator of Sun Microsystems, achieved this status through years spent at the computer. Mozart was not considered an expert until he had been composing for ten years. Bill gates, a master of computer programming and inventor of Microsoft, programmed computers as much as possible in the seven years before starting his company. To achieve 10,000 hours, one must work for five hours a day for five years. Gates was well over that by this time. Gladwell brings additional examples in the chapter, and one thing is clear – it takes time to become an expert. It does not happen by coincidence.

To begin, Gladwell provides solid evidence to prove that the more a person practices, the better they become at that activity. He provides readers with a study of violinists conducted by scientists. This experiment shows that the more the student practices the better they become. The student who practiced the most became an expert. Comparatively, the study showed the number of hours in which a student practices and how that number indicates a certain level of mastery. The key number in the study was ten thousand hours. Practice is directly related to how great a person becomes at something. Gladwell, explains these things in detail and with specific evidence to back it up. To add on, Gladwell states, "And what's more, the people at the top don't work harder, they work much, much harder"(Gladwell,11). This quote tells readers that to become great at something one must work at it, therefore proving that people have their own control over their fate. The author uses Motzart as another example in the story. He explains that Motzart worked hard since he was a child. He did not become great until the later years, indicating he practiced and practiced until he achieved greatness. Altogether, the more effort a person puts in determines how successful they are. Malcolm Gladwell conveys to his readers that humans have control over their own destiny due to

While the author, Malcolm Gladwell, does not dispute that hard work in a necessary component, we learn that many factors, lucky breaks, and some coincidences all occur in making high achievers into true outliers. We also learn that many of the richest, most famous, and most successful people in

He endorses the belief that “[a]chievement is talent plus preparation” (Gladwell 1) or that anyone can be talented but only through an accumulation of at least 10,000 hours of practice may they be considered an expert. The crux of the excerpt was that people wrote their own destinies, not the other way around. The reader found that there were four different sources provided in Outlier that all pointed towards the thought that it’s not endowment alone that allows people to succeed. The first source was a study done in the early 1990s by psychologist K Anders Ericsson and two colleagues at Berlin’s elite Academy of Music. It consisted of an experiment that involved three different groups of student violinists at the college: the stars, the “good”, and the unlikely to go professional.

Using tables and statistical evidences helped Gladwell to support his claims because throughout the essay, he has been trying to convince people with different mentalities by providing studies, tables, and other statistical evidences. He also added anecdotes from the story of Marita to add emotional appeal. As mentioned in the selection “The student's name is Marita. She's an only child who lives in a single-parent home. Her mother never went to college..….”. One can vividly cite the author’s use of various modes of persuasion as Pathos and Logos.

Malcolm Gladwell supports his claim that in cognitively demanding fields there are no naturals, by writing interesting anecdotes that show examples. For example, the article contains an anecdote in talking about how Mozart’s earliest works were not outstanding; his earliest masterwork was created when he was twenty one years old, showing he had already been practicing for ten years and he had to practice to create his masterwork. Gladwell argues that even Mozart was not a natural. According to Gladwell’s article, he shares a story about the Beatles and how they played eight hours every day for two hundred seventy nights over the course of a year and a half. This evidence shows that they practiced long hours, and when they got to the United States they

The rule quoting a practice time equivalent to 10,000 hours to attain virtuosity belongs to Malcolm Gladwell (Gladwell 2008). The 10,000 hours rule is extremely well-known and often quoted during discussions about the dichotomy between needing talent and needing work. This myth has been recently debunked by a Princeton study (Macnamara et al. 2014). The study showed that practice accounts for a difference of only 26% in games, 21% in music, 18% in sports and under 5% in education and professions. This study goes to show that hard work is not enough to bridge the gap between talent and the lack thereof. However it can be argued that talent requires practice to reach its full peak. As a working hypothesis, this must be especially true in areas