Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story Of Success

According to Gladwell, “The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all” (Gladwell 285). Successful people such as Bill Gates, the Beatles, and Joe Flom are considered Outliers because they have achieved outstanding prosperity and fame. According to the traditional concept of success, they rose to the top against all odds because they were more talented than their competitors. The notion that innate talent is the root of success, however, is a fallacy. All outliers have had help getting to the top.

Malcolm Gladwell insists throughout his book, Outliers: The Story of Success, that the recipe for achievement is not simply based on personal talents or innate abilities alone. Gladwell offers the uncommon idea that outliers largely depend upon “extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies” (Gladwell19). According to Gladwell, successful men and women are beneficiaries of relationships, occasions, places, and cultures. The author draws on a different case study in each chapter to support a particular argument concerning success. Despite his indifference and suppression in regards to counterarguments, Gladwell’s claims are effective for many reasons, including through the accounts of experts, tone and style of writing, and the

All children are not raised the same exact way. There are many different parenting styles, ranging from authoritative to neglectful parenting. Along with those many different styles also come many different opinions on which ones are better or worse for children. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell is a book that essentially looks into many factors that contribute to people's successes. In chapter four, Gladwell writes about how different parenting philosophies impact how successful the children will be when they are older. Gladwell claims that there are essentially only two main parenting philosophies, “concerted cultivation” and “accomplishment of natural growth” (Gladwell 104). Gladwell goes on to also claim that between those two parenting philosophies, children raised from concerted

Luck is many times considered silly or just part of someone’s imagination, but it can really play a big role in what becomes of an individual. In the first chapter, titled “The Matthew Effect”, we

In many instances, those who are successful are made out to be some sort of separate breed, those who were innately able to perform remarkable feats that others, no matter how hard they tried, simply could not. Through this exhibition, many people view success as an elusive feature that only a select few can obtain. This theory is the main inspiration for Malcolm Gladwell’s exploration of success in Outliers: The Story of Success. In the book, Gladwell analyzes not only those who are successful, such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, J.R. Oppenheimer, and Joe Flom, but what path led them towards becoming exceptionally skilled. This extremely in-depth analysis of successfulness forms Gladwell’s layered theory of what creates success, and his attempt

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.

In the Outliers Malcolm Gladwell makes an imperative point about outliers, they don’t start out as an outlier. They start out only a litter better than their peers, and then patterns of advantage elevate and qualify them to attain outlier status. For example like Bill Gates one of the richest men in world, who built the worlds largest software business, Microsoft and one of

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).

Purpose: The purpose of Outliers, was to show that success doesn’t just come from hard work and dedication. Gladwell shows that there are special advantages and opportunities for certain people that few others have. This book shows it’s readers many prime examples and statistics of distinct advantages originating from of birth date, family legacies, and many other

Malcolm Gladwell defines an outlier as an individual who has accomplished so much in extraordinary circumstances compared to people with normal circumstance. Outliers are individuals that succeed in life despite the odds that are placed against them. However, Gladwell states in his nonfiction book Outliers: The Story of Success that the success of an outlier “is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky- but all critical to making them who they are. The outlier in the end is not an outlier at all,” (299).

“Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.” As seen above, Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers revolves around success and the constituents influencing it. His quote above wraps up the overall theme that drives this book; success and the things that make success happen the most. Gladwell argues in Outliers, that success can be derived mainly from opportunities that the everyday person does not encounter. For example, bill gates creating microsoft, athletes becoming famous because of the month they were born in so on and so forth. To me, success does not rely on one’s opportunities. Instead it comes directly from individual merit.

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

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

I am a very determined person and I am so competitive it's almost unhealthy. I have always been determined to be the strongest, be the best, be someone people won’t forget. I haven’t ever been the best until I was determined to be better than everyone else. Everything to be in a competition, I try to lift more than people, be faster than people, get better test scores than people; no matter what it is, I want to be the best. According to the book “Outliers: The Story of Success” by Malcolm Gladwell, “it takes roughly ten thousand hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field”

According to the Oxford Dictionary, the word outlier is a noun. It means “a person whose abilities, achievements, etc., lie outside the range of statistical probability”. In this novel, Gladwell identifies the qualities which someone must possess in order to be an outlier. He opens the novel with an explanation of what an outlier is, and what defines someone who could potentially fall under that particular category, by providing the