Identity In Outliers By Malcolm Gladwell

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.

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.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell is a book with very insightful and intriguing information that is important for all people with professional careers to understand. It allowed me to understand the importance of success and how that success will be achieved. Success will never be achieved by taking short cuts or beating around the bush. It is accomplished through hard work and many hours, just as Gladwell explains in his book.

Outliers is a book that studies the factors that contribute to high levels of success. Gladwell examines several success stories ranging from Bill Gates to the Beatles. The book also looks at how cultural differences play a large part in perceived intelligence and rational decision making. Throughout the publication, Gladwell repeatedly mentions the "10,000-Hour Rule." This rules claimes that the key to achieving world class expertise in any skill is a matter of practicing the correct way, for a total of around 10,000

Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers, talks about the different ways to obtain success and what to attribute it to. In his 10,000 hour rule chapter he argues that a person must but in at least 10,000 hours of work with their interest in order to be successful. In the chapter, Marita’s Bargain he argues that there has to be opportunities and one has to work hard to take advantage of them. Gladwell uses the example of Bill Gates to exemplify his 10,000 hour rule. Gladwell uses the example of a girl in a rigorous charter school

In Outliers, Gladwell describes the “10,000” hour rule, stating that it takes approximately 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at something. Jeanette Walls becomes successful largely through her writing. First, she worked on her high school’s newspaper for 5 years, first as editor and eventually as the main reporter and editor-in-chief. This provided her with the basis of her many hours of practice. When she moves to New York, she gets to do an internship at a small news outpost during her senior year of high school. After graduating, she lands a job there. She spends countless hours writing to add to her preexisting experience with her high school newspaper. By the time she reaches college, she has been writing for thousands of hours, gaining the priceless experience that Gladwell would say helped her towards her success.

Chapter 6 of Matthew Gladwell’s book Outliers, there are illustrations of many family feuds. While the feuds were horrific, they were indicative of pattern which existed within the Appalachian Mountains and surrounding areas. The region was seemingly plagued by a “culture of honor” (p. 167). Because of the ancestral heritage of the “Scotch Irish”, these mountaineers were willing to fight at the slightest challenge to their reputation (p. 167). This behavior results from the need to survive, and is strengthened by the clannish ways of the people. This inevitable violent way of life is correlated to the number of murders in the South, and the implication is these murders are personal, in the same way family feuds were in previous years. Moreover

In Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers he argues that outliers, people who have achieved success almost entirely by their own means through perseverance and hard work, are not possible. Gladwell claims instead that people achieve success primarily through the opportunities they are born with or are presented with throughout their life.

Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success. 1st ed. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008. Print

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Outliers, believes that working at something for 10,000 hours is required to achieve mastery and become a world class expert at anything. While this is a nice way of making it seem like anyone can be successful, it is simply not true. Some people will never achieve proficiency in a domain, no matter how much practice they put into it. There are a variety of factors that play into expertise besides practice and certain domains require much less practice than the magical 10,000 hour threshold that Gladwell established.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his novel entitled, “Outliers,” explores the landscape of success and shows us that success comes from the culture that surrounds the successful , not their intelligence and ambition. Gladwell explains this through a series of situations and studies. In Part One, he discusses success as a result of timing, such as the month or year you were born. In Part Two, he focuses on cultural legacies and how they play a role in helping someone become successful. He unfolds the reasons why hockey players are not born in the latter part of the year, why the Beatles and Bill Gates were able to become so successful, and why Jewish immigrants were able to become successful lawyers and doctors. Gladwell disproves many beliefs by discovering

Typically used for college sports, redshirting is now being applied to the American education system to kindergartners. In the book “Outliers: The Story of Success” by Malcolm Gladwell, redshirting (being held back a year to have some sort of advantage) happens when Gladwell goes into the sport of Canada: hockey. Gladwell continued on about redshirting by comparing all the players on the team and how all/most of their birthdays were in January, February, and March. He went on to explain that players with “cutoff” birthdays were going to be “ahead of the curve” because the will have the advantage if they are redshirted. This is not fair to the younger and maybe more talented kids for team selection.

The novel Outliers, aims to investigate the very thing we want for our family, our students, and ourselves. For most of our lives we have believed that with hard work, anyone can achieve success. That had to be the reason that poor immigrants like Andrew Carnegie and college dropouts like Bill Gates achieved unimaginable wealth. Most of us were taught that working harder than anyone else would lead to ultimate success.

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

Visualize a ball of clay, perfectly round, cold, and anxiously waiting for its potter to form it into a masterpiece. The ball is prepared for molding and the process begins. The strong hands of the potter pull the ball, squish the ball, and rubs out any imperfections. The potter brushes the newly shaped clay with glaze that seems to be dull and lacks beauty at every angle, but little does the viewer know that this pot holds secrets because their eye deceives them and doesn’t allow them to see the lively color lying beneath the surface. The potter makes yet another examination of the pot to be sure that he has erased any blemish or imperfection before gently placing it into the kiln. The kiln fires the pot allowing the pot’s colors to come through