Comparative Rhetorical Analysis Of 'Outliers The 10, 000 Hour Rule'

Think of something you are passionate about. Is it a skill that you are able to push yourself in? People are always told that with enough hard work you could become a master of that skill. Even without natural talent, enough hard work at a skill will eventually build up the ability. By constantly pushing oneself past their limits during practice, they can improve quicker than someone who has the natural ability and doesn’t try. However, skill doesn’t always equal success. As Malcolm Gladwell states in his book The Outliers, luck plays a large role in the ability to obtain the 10,000 hours required to become an expert in a subject. However, many studies and even the researchers of the 10,000 hour study have rejected the rule outright. I disagree with Gladwell that 10,000 hours is required to become a master, and that luck plays a much larger role than he states.

A man most people know for his incredible but challenging basketball career, Michael Jordan, once said when giving tips on how to be successful like himself, “You can practice shooting eight hours a day, but if your technique is wrong, then all you become is very good at shooting the wrong way. Get the fundamentals down and the levels of everything you do will rise. I’m not out there sweating for three hours every day just to find out what it feels like to sweat.” Although some may disagree and say that quality practices do not go hand in hand with quantity practice for successful people, I disagree. Successful people practice with a purpose: to be successful. Bill Gates had intentions of becoming successful when spending endless hours in the computer lab. The Beatles always had it in their plans to become better each performance when they would play eight hours a day in Germany. Based on evidence, it seems to be a pattern that a successful individual does have both a practice of quality and quantity in their vocabulary to mean the same thing. These individuals have therefore taught themselves hard work, because this idea of 10,000 hours of practice has allowed them to learn how to work for what they

Building upon the previous chapter, we begin to understand how all the right ingredients for achievement and success can be present, and yet they may never happen without a stroke of luck. Becoming an expert at some skill is earned by putting in hard work across several hours, approximately 10,000 hours. Being born in the right year, or time

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

In the book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcom Gladwell intended to teach the readers about the many different rules that he discussed in his book, to help with the understanding people have of success. Gladwell defines outliers as “men and women who do things that are out of the ordinary” (Gladwell 17). Gladwell accurately applies the rhetorical techniques of logos, exemplification, and repetition to effectively employ how highly successful people are outliers.

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.

Lastly, Gladwell incorporates the audience’s interests to appeal to them in an emotional and engaging method in the subject of the argument, success. The goal for many is to be successful in their specific craft, and even from the title Outliers: The Story of Success Gladwell advertises his own story of success, and the audience believes if they follow the methods that successful people use then they will be successful too. Gladwell gives testimonies of people that would be predictably successful but never made it far due to not having a community to support them to open opportunities. He describes Chris Langan’s lack of credibility and success despite having a higher IQ than Albert Einstein and before he lets Langan describe a typical day

In the book Outliers, the author Malcolm Gladwell elucidates that people have to practice for more than 10,000 hours or 10 years in order to fully become successful. People can achieve more regardless of not being financially wealthy. Even though some people that have practiced for less than 10,000 hours did achieve their goals, the majority of the successful people have practiced for more than 10,000 hours. Gladwell states that, “they work much, much harder” (39). and that they have to want to stand out from everyone else. I believe that very successful people are lucky, and have talent, and are willing to work harder than everyone else.

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.

An outlier is a person or thing situated away or detached from the main body or system. In other words, an outlier is somebody who goes out of his or her way and does something extraordinary in order to accomplish their goal. Martin Luther King Jr. is a true example of an outlier. In the early 1900s, segregation was strongly recognized in the United States, until Martin Luther King Jr. stood up for what he believed in and made a change. Although he made a difference to the United States, he was assassinated in the making of this process. This assassination is an example to why Martin Luther King Jr. is considered to be an outlier. The novel Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell is a detailed explanation

10,000 hours is equivalent to 14 months, 60 weeks, 417 days, and success. Bill Joy, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, is an example of this, as he began programming his sophomore year of high school and continued in the “summers then the day and nights at his first year at Berkeley,” totaling about ten thousand hours (Gladwell 47). Bill Joy played an integral part in the creation of multiple computer programs still used today, and to get to that point he practiced programming. BIll Joy’s dedication to mastering his craft led him to work hard,

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.

Essentially, the topics Gladwell covered in this book include are, being at the right place at the right time, the 10,000-hour rule, timing, upbringing, and pursuing a meaningful career. Although all of these have been proven by Gladwell to be a major component of success, I do not agree with the idea of a particular upbringing will determine success. With this idea, Malcolm also includes that

In both articles, they hone in on a particular concept which is exposure. The article You Can Grow Your Brain demonstrates this concept through the use of juggling. They took two groups of people who do not know how to perform this skill and taught one group to juggle and the other not. The group who were taught and practiced got better. This group was exposed to a new stimulus and therefore their brains grew and they discovered a new skill. In Dr. Atual Gawande’s article Personal Best his account of coaching is all about the concept of exposure. This was the only was he was going to learn and improve himself as a surgeon. He describes that the only way for him make smarter decisions in the operating room comes at a price stating“ I knew that he could drive me to make smarter decisions, but….the price:

There are many personal characteristics that can affect a person as an individual and his professional success, namely openness, ability to learn and adapt etc. These personal characteristics can sometimes make a person successful and sometimes doesn’t. As I spend more and more time as a professional, I perceive that there are few characteristics that are essential for professional success: namely ambitious, creative and adaptable. These characteristics come out in many different ways. Have you set your goals? Have you decided the path you have to take to pursue your goal? What are the sacrifices you can do to achieve your ambition? How much can you think out of the box to resolve a particular issue or bring new idea to the table? How