Malcolm Gladwell Complexity And The Ten Thousand Hour Rule Summary

Rhetorical Analysis After reading “10,000 Hours”, by Malcolm Gladwell, I see some flaws in the writing of his argument. At the beginning, he talks about it being obvious that there is such a thing as innate talent but by the end he disagrees with that. There is a difference between practicing and being born with talent and all he really covers is practicing and being great from the practicing. I believe there are two ways to be successful: practice and being born with talent.

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

For example, Gladwell states that there is a thing called innate talent. "Not every hockey player born in January ends up playing at the professional level. Only some do- the innately talented ones. Achievement is talent plus preparation" (Gladwell 2). Later, Gladwell describes that " the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play"(Gladwell 2). Gladwell goes on to relate to three different groups of school violinists. The first group of students were the ones with the potential to be a world-class violinist. The second group was the group that were pretty good. The third group of students were the ones that were considered unlikely to ever play professionally (Gladwell 2). Gladwell states in the next sentence "… how many hours have you practiced?" (Gladwell 2). All the students started playing at about the same time. The first couple of years, they practiced the same amount of hours. When the students got older, the students that were the best started to practice more than the others. Gladwell states that " … six hours a week by age nine, eight hours a week by age twelve, sixteen hours a week by age fourteen, and up and up, until by the age of twenty..." (Gladwell 2). Gladwell informs readers that each elite player practiced a total of ten thousand

Q1. What is the general focus of Part 2? Answer: The general focus of Part 2 is ‘legacy’.

That’s simply not true. According to Anders Ericsson, the very person who performed the study Gladwell based his 10,000 hour claim on, this is not what the study showed. Many people achieved expert status in much less than 10,000 hours in the study, and many people achieved expert status in a much greater amount of time. 10,000 hours was simply the average of the time spent practicing by each of the people in the study. Therefore, Gladwell’s whole point that 10,000 hours is when mastery is achieved is put into question. It seems like Gladwell purposely misinterpreted the information so that he could come up with a magic number that people could relate too. In reality, the number has no merit. Some people with superior natural talent need far less than 10,000 hours of practice and some people with less need far more, as shown in the real study before Gladwell misinterpreted this. Furthermore, Gladwell stated in Outliers that the study done by Ericsson couldn’t find any “naturals”, or people that practiced for a fraction of the time as their peers. According to Ericsson himself, many people in the study that practice far less

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

While movies and books provide society with examples of heroes rising from nothing, Malcolm Gladwell argues that heroes in the real world are successful because of their circumstances, their families, and their appetite for hard work, and through an analysis of his book Outliers and various other sources, it is made clear that this is correct. Gladwell starts his book by introducing how an individual’s appetite for hard work is influential to their success. In an article for the New Yorkers, Gladwell states that “the psychologist John Hayes looked at seventy-six famous classical composers and found that, in almost every case, those composers did not create their greatest work until they had been composing for at least ten years” (Gladwell). In his book, Gladwell explains that ten years of hard practice equals about 10,000

Malcolm Gladwell argues that hard work and practice has more value than “innate talent” (Gladwell 1) in an excerpt from Chapter 2 “The 10,000-Hour Rule” of his novel Outliers: The Story of Success. Although he acknowledges that talent can be a factor in success, Gladwell believes that a person’s choice to work hard is what ultimately determines their achievements. To support this claim, he alludes to famous musicians and cites psychologists and other scientists to establish credibility, with the attempt to convince the audience that hard work overrules talent. His passage has a very clear and academic tone, making it easy for the audience to understand and not get confused.

This quote shows a professional coming to a conclusion about his studies,“The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert in anything”(Gladwell, 7). This statement from the text shows us how a studies have shown that if a person practices ten thousand hours of whatever they find interesting they can become world-class. Becoming a professional baseball player does happen with luck, you need to be devoted and put in the effort needed to get good. Another quote is,“the striking thing about Ericsson’s studies is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any naturals, musician who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did”(Gladwell, 5). The quote helps support the previous quote by stating that a person needs ten thousand hours of practice to be world-class because they haven’t found a person that has been the best without training as

In Chapter Two “The 10,000-Hour Rule” from the book the Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, Gladwell explains the idea of people with an innate talent, which is the natural ability to do something. The author describes that yes, many are born with the natural ability to do well at their skill like playing a sport, or playing an instrument. However, Gladwell states that natural ability can only take you so far in life because, “achievement is talent plus preparation.” (38)

In “Malcolm Gladwell Explains What Everyone Gets Wrong About His Famous 10,000 Hour Rule”, a quote by Gladwell is stated, saying, “And practice isn't a SUFFICIENT condition for success...The point is simply that natural ability requires a huge investment of time in order to be made manifest.” Here he begins to find a more middle ground, no longer entirely dedicating personal success to the 10,000 hour rule. When observing his diction, though, it is evident how he still largely believes in his idea through words like ‘SUFFICIENT’ and ‘huge’. Thus, the original intent of his thesis is what he concludes to be mainly true. This denounces the significance of inherent personal proficiency and prowess a human possesses at birth, and while Gladwell includes good description of how practice does shape certain aspects of individual accomplishment, he is incorrect in his extent of this assessment and fails to understand the role of natural ability in the overall idea of

Nearly everybody has thought about writing as a career or a hobby, and it’s simple when you really put the time into it because these skills, like creativity are easy improving skills. Most successful journalists have great creativity and writing skills, especially in the current age when journalists are actually writing award-winning novels, like John Sandford, my father’s favorite author and more famously Mark Twain.

Gladwell introduces the smaller the role innate talent plays the bigger role preparation plays. Gladwell quotes "achievement is talent plus preparation," (Gladwell 11) and explains that the more you prepare work for what you want, the more likely you are to go to the top. An example would be K. Anders Ericsson's study at Berlins elite Acadamy of Music. At the academy, the school's violinists were divided into three groups, the potentially world class solo performers, the merely good, and the ones that were predicted to become music teachers (Gladwell 11). Although they were divided up by a "ranking," the thing that distinguishes them is how much work they put into being violinists. The study showed that the potentially world class solo performers were considered elite because of how much they prepare. Gladwell then explains that the elite were better because of the number of hours practiced since childhood. The elite had ten thousand hours, the merely good had eight thousand and the future music teachers totaled in four thousand. Gladwell further describes that once you get into your top school the only thing that differentiates you and other students is how hard you work. Ericsson's study shows that some students work much, much harder than other students. These students changed the way their life at the academy played out because of the number of hours they worked. To support this, Gladwell analyzes famous composer Wolfgang Mozart, and quotes that he "famously started writing music at six," but "didn’t produce his greatest work until he had been composing for more than twenty years" (Gladwell 12 & 13). This evidence proves that we can forge our own destiny and take control of our own

The road to greatness is a long path filled with struggle and time. Based on research by the best-selling author Malcom Gladwell inside his book Outliers popularized the idea of 10,000 hours of guided practice “the magic number of greatness”(Gladwell, 47). With enough practice he said anyone could achieve any work that of a professional. While some say the 10,000 hour rule is the key to success I believe that success is based on genetics, talent, and time period. It is whether one was born with the talent, achieved it later within life or was born during the wrong time period is what makes a master out of someone. Where the 10,000 hour rule is not a truth.

     From a very young age, writing has been a passion of mine. Through writing I have developed an