Being Successful In Malcolm Gladwell's 'Outliers'

Prompt: Write an essay that defends or challenges or qualifies Gladwell’s assertion that “if you work hard enough and assert yourself, and you use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires” (Gladwell 151).

What exactly is an Outlier? Malcolm Gladwell explains to his readers in "Outliers" that an Outlier are "men and women who do things out of the ordinary." Gladwell explains to us that an in order to become successful, there are many factors that can lead to it including birth dates, community and culture, and legacy. He doesn't entirely believe that you can achieve success just from individual merit and hard work but that it takes the environment around you and opportunity to become successful. In the contrary, Gladwell writes a whole chapter titled, "The 10,000-Hour Rule" which he explains that it takes ten thousand hours of practice to become successful in something. Then he mentions that it opportunity plays a part in this success, when speaking about The Beetles, and how they were giving an opportunity to play at a club for about ten thousand hours. If it wasn't for this opportunity that was given to The Beetles, Gladwell believes that they wouldn't be as who they are now and would have never been as successful and wealthy as they are now. Gladwell claims that social and economic background can determine whether or not a individual will succeed. This claim is false becaus a person who is wealthy can not be as successful as one who is not wealthy.

In chapter six of Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell persuades that cultural legacies remain for generations and ought to affect how one behaves in certain circumstances. To validate his statement, Gladwell began telling a story of Harlan, Kentucky, a town in a mountainous region where there resides two bickering families; Howard and Turner. The “county was in an uproar” (pg.164) and the families were finishing each other off. Gladwell then began claiming the factor that drove the uproar was the “culture of honor” (pg.166), meaning the culture around highlands are aggressive due to the need to protect their livelihoods. This reveals that future generation in the highlands will be trained similar to their ancestors in order to maintain survival. Also,

In the prevalent view today, a great number of people believe that the building blocks of success are within the personality and quality of the person. Malcolm Gladwell asserts a totally different nature in his bestselling non-fiction book Outliers, he indicates that majority of success comes from external forces in which few people are granted particular opportunities and advantages that not everybody is broken by destiny (i.e. Date of birth, family background, money, etc.). Although he poses strong evidence to back up his arguments, Gladwell, somewhat neglected the value of hard-work, knowledge and determination in his book. Gladwell’s theory of success holds some legitimacy; even so his record is ultimately depressing about the possibility of success. The

Malcolm Gladwell points out that being considered an outlier is a matter of opportunities. He states that to be a great achiever, one must have been born into the right home, at the right time; and in the right place. Provided, money does not necessarily signify future success, nor does intelligence. Hard work can only take one so far, while the rest is already set in motion. Here’s how Gladwell portrays this in his book Outliers: The Story of Success.

In chapter three of Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell discourses about IQ (Intelligence Quotient) and evidently convinced that IQs are merely digits measuring one’s intelligence that does not determine one’s chance of success. Gladwell describes the Termites, an experimental group created by Professor Lewis Terman, as having phenomenal intelligence, who unfortunately ended up earning incomes that are “not that good” (pg.89). Description-less for a minority of lines about their incomes, the short sentence served a purpose for creating an important point across readers. The important point is that no matter how brilliant a person may be, he/she might not end up successful and earning great sums. By this, Gladwell is offering readers advice that one

Outliers-The Story of Success is a sociological, and psychological non-fiction book, which discusses success, and the driving reasons behind why some people are significantly more successful than others. Malcolm Gladwell explains this by dividing the book into two parts, opportunity and legacy. Opportunity discusses how select people are fortunate enough to be born between the months of January through March, and also includes the idea that those who are already successful will have more opportunities to improve and become even more successful. The 10,000-hour rule proves the idea that in order to become successful in a certain skill, one must have practiced that skill for at least 10,000 hours. In addition to the 10,000-hour rule, timing

In his book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell examines the reason why some people are anomalously more successful than others. One would normally think that success is achieved through intelligence, however Gladwell squashes that notion. Throughout his book, one sees that relying on only intelligence can sometimes be detrimental to one’s success, especially in chapters three and four, where one man (who possessed an extremely high IQ) was forced to drop out of college due to a lack of money and social skills. Gladwell argues that, while these outliers can seem to be more successful due to mere intelligence and skill, in reality, they have achieved it through a highly interlinked mix of background, practice habits, and legacy.

In chapter seven and chapter eight of Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell effectively claims that acknowledging cultural legacies betters the chance of success. In chapter seven of Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell entices readers on the topic of plane crashes in the aviation world, while commendably and credibly synthesizing the controversy around the question of how and why plane crashes occur.  When illustrating the terrible crash of Korean Airlines Flight 801 in 1997, Gladwell intricately describes the language, words, actions, and psychology of the pilots and crew members associated with the plane crash to better the authenticity of his claim.  Combining these ideas, Gladwell forms a theory that arguably proves to be true

Most of us have similar opinion about the term of success. Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Outlier, have different assumption than most us, such as the link to success, what people overvalue, and what we undervalue. First, what links to success? There are many circumstance that effect you chance to success. To begin with, talent is one of the conditions that leads you to the success. For example, having better trait compare to other individual will make yourself outstanding, so you have the better chance being hire. Additionally, without effort, you chance become success for will likely to decrease. For instance, even if you were born talented, without the effort, you will not be able to make use of it. In the end, you basically wasted your

During the Kennedy era, many Americans saw Jacqueline Kennedy only as the wife of the president who did not know much; however, not only was she a faithful wife and First Lady, but she was also a very intelligent magazine editor with a very interesting life. In the New York Times bestselling novel called The Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell challenges the way that success is typically viewed by introducing the idea of an “outlier.” Gladwell defines an outlier as “something that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body (Gladwell 1).” Throughout the book, he goes on to explain that success is much more than hard work; it also has to do with what he calls “The 10,000-Hour Rule” or “The Matthew Effect.”

Malcolm Gladwell’s book examines the contributing factors of high leveled success by looking beyond common beliefs. First of all, viewing the key element of an opportunity making way for success like the good nutrition the tallest tree receives from the sun and good soil. For example, Roger Barnesly, a psychologist, suggested good player are born in January, February, and March. However, Gladwell views this phenomenon as a difference in strength due to age as an almost eleven year old is stronger than a nearly ten year old. In most success stories an innate talent needs to be practiced and encouraged. Gladwell refers to this need of practice as the ten thousand hour rule done by Bill Jay,

How much of our lives do we actually control? Gladwell and Epstein have different opinions on how much we can control. Gladwell believes preparation and practice are more important than innate talent. Epstein disagrees he believes destiny for success is predetermined by natural abilities. Meaning success is determined by genes in easier terms. However, Gladwell better explains the idea that practice can lead to success rather than natural talent. In order to support Gladwell's side, the information in the story the outliers will be most supportive. The story mostly explains that it takes time to be successful and reach goals and a person doesn't need natural talent to be a hardworking athlete. On the other hand, Epstein's side is supported in the story the sports gene. In this story Epstein explains that most of the successful athlete's today are born with natural talents.

In his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell observes that professional hockey players are likely to have birth dates closer to January, because leagues follow the calendar year. Gladwell theorizes that for children’s hockey teams, coaches tend to select the largest players to be on the better team. The largest players are often the oldest children and thus, those children with birthdates near January. These children receive better coaching, face stronger competition, and ultimately, have a better chance at becoming elite athletes. Gladwell recognizes how early childhood experiences can have a domino effect on future life outcomes.

There may be no topic that more easily divides two set of people more than when they talk about success and luck. Some of them find it easy to associate success with luck rather than hard work and talent. Many conservatives would be the one to celebrate success as an almost imminent result of talent, effort, and hard work. Liberals, on the other hand, believe that even when people who work hard and are talented could sometimes fall when hard times are presented and associate that with luck. Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success, argues that factors and circumstances are those that will determine the person’s success rather than then hard work and effort. Many people would disagree with Malcolm Gladwell. The way that Gladwell portrays luck throughout his entire book makes success look like it is solely based on just pure luck; success has much more to it than just luck. It is true that luck can bring up opportunities but hard work can guarantee you to succeed in those opportunities. To be able to critique Gladwell on his argument on how luck will make you be successful, his words need to be carefully analyzed. The position many are standing in when it comes to actually critiquing Gladwell, is that luck can only take you so far but hard work and talent will cover the voids when luck is something that happens by chance. With hard work and talent, you actually create that