Malcom Gladwell's Outliers: The Story Of Success

Furthermore, Gladwell’s tone and style of writing throughout Outliers contributes to his arguments’ effectiveness. The manner in which Gladwell tells the stories in relation to each individual claim is brilliant. Not only is the writing tone of the author informative, thoughtful, and compelling, but it is also frequently conversational. Many times in Outliers, Gladwell seems to be speaking directly to his readers. The author achieves this conversational tone primarily by asking questions within his arguments. In The 10,000-Hour Rule chapter, Gladwell applies this tone when he asks, “What’s ten years?” The author is challenging the reader to determine what significance ten years has in relation to success. Unknowingly challenged, the reader searches for an explanation within his or her own thoughts before continuing reading. The author answers his own question, “It [ten years] is roughly how long it takes to put in ten thousand hours of hard practice” (41). Gladwell also uses a conversational style of writing by including a personal touch within the epilogue, A Jamaican Story. “That is the story of my mother’s path to success,” writes the author (272). With this statement, Gladwell is opening up a personal revelation to the reader in a way

The first rhetorical device Gladwell uses in “The 10,000 Hour Rule” is imagery. His attempts at using imagery are not successful because what he proves is “The Matthew Effect,” instead of proving that it takes 10,000 hours, and more than just talent to reach mastery. Gladwell mentions the 75 richest people in the world and points out that 15 of the 75 were born in the same country around the same time. “Almost 20 percent of the names” “come from a single generation in a single country.” These people were able to achieve massive wealth, because “In the 1860s and 1870s, the American economy went through perhaps the greatest transformation in its history. This was when wall street was being built and when Wall Street emerged.”(Pg. 62) Gladwell uses no language to infer that these people practiced for 10,000 hours to achieve mastery of their jobs. Rather he proved that it is the timing, opportunities, and advantages make people successful, and not the amount of time they put in. In the 21st century world, Bill Gates is known as a pioneer in coding, and as a man who has made a lot of money off his career. Gladwell chose Bill Gates to prove his point that he was successful, because he has spent more than 10,000 hours coding, but yet again as the reader, it is quite obvious that the advantages Bill Gates had as a teenager led to his success. “Gates's father

“There is something profoundly wrong with the way we make sense of success” (Gladwell 18). In Outliers Malcolm Gladwell is trying to convince his audience that they misunderstand how people become successful. Many believe one only needs hard work and determination in order to achieve success. However, Gladwell complicates this idea by explaining that hard work and determination is not how people become successful and instead, it is all about the opportunities one is given that decides if he or she is successful or not. Gladwell uses the rhetorical appeals of pathos and ethos in order to persuade his audience to accept his idea of the process of becoming successful.

Many people view success as merely hard work; dedicating oneself to something completely. Although the recipe for success involves this type of commitment, Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, opened up a new perspective. Although Gladwell states, “....If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires” (Gladwell 151), he adds that many other things affect one’s ability to succeed. In society today, individuals tend to look at the big prize instead of the path that led them to it. It was very interesting because many stories about success involve time and perseverance, but rarely luck. Outliers gave a refreshing and unique way of looking at how goals are really reached. While the book was in the 3rd person point of view, it was very entertaining because with every chapter came another story that contributed to Gladwell’s overall idea. Throughout the book, Gladwell purposely went into explicit detail to push readers to further visualize and picture themselves in the shoes of the “outliers”. His friendly tone and his narration of anecdotes help captivate the reader. Although his style of writing feels slightly informal, Gladwell is very sincere and wants the readers to understand the misperception of success. In doing so, Gladwell separated the book into two parts; Opportunity and Legacy. By dividing the book into two parts he gives the readers two viewpoints to the overall idea of success and links them

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

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.

Not only does he uses the work of various other people to enhance his point, he adds multiple examples. He addresses the success of people such as Bill Gates and the Beatles and talks about how they became outliers while also using other examples to solidify his argument. While talking about Bill Gates and the Beatles, Gladwell emphasizes that they got the opportunity to get better, that “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” (42) Adding points such as that are what give him that

Success is measured differently by every person and each and every culture. The journey to success in most cultures, however, is generally idealized in the same way: one person working harder than everyone else to achieve his or her goal with their own merits as their only advantage. In Outliers: The Story of Success, the author, Malcolm Gladwell, argues about how wrong that ideology is and the truth behind successful people. Throughout his guide, Gladwell employs the help of many argumentative techniques to convince the reader of his message.

Vince Lombardi, a great American football coach, and player, once stated that the “dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success”. According to Lombardi, hard work will get you to where you want to go, and many people would agree. In Malcolm Gladwell’s novel, “Outliers: The Story of Success,” secrets and misconceptions about success are exposed and explained. Gladwell was right in saying that “if you work hard enough and assert yourself...you can shape the world to your desires”, as evidenced by examples from the book itself, the successful career of Serena Williams, and my own personal story (Gladwell 151).

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

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

Another reason that I feel Gladwell is a credible author for Outliers is because of his mother’s occupation as a psychotherapist. There is a possibility that his mother’s findings influenced his ideas, or perhaps her occupation influenced him all together to research such sociological and psychological topics.

n this psychological non-fiction book, Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell, he explains several different strategies and methods to achieve success. He is a firm believer in potential and opportunities; and that making the most of those opportunities is what ensures results. He focuses on time and opportunity as being significant in realizing potential, and believes in the motto “practice makes perfect” and refers to the “10,000-Hr Rule," in ensuring mastery of a skill. Gladwell discusses success, and the driving reasons behind why some people are significantly more successful than others. He also 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 is also a major component that implies being in the right place at the right time, which brings the author to discuss Bill Gates who was born during the time where programming and computer technology was emerging, therefore sparking his interest in computers, later bringing him to create Microsoft. Another point Gladwell brings forth is the notion

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, he says the pillars of success are hard work, location, and opportunity. Gladwell defines hard work as his 10,000 hour rule. I think his 10,000 hour rule has flaws. I found others that also argue about the 10,000 hour rule. Although Malcolm Gladwell’s formula offers many examples of successful people who put in 10,000 hours of hard work, he eliminates child prodigies or other people who are successful and quick to learn in under 10,000 hours.

In the second chapter of his book “Outliers: The Story of Success,” Malcolm Gladwell introduces what he believes to be a key ingredient in the recipe for success: practice. The number of hours he says one must practice to obtain expert-level proficiency in a particular skill is ten thousand hours. He goes on to list several examples of successful individuals and makes the correlation between the amount of hours they practiced their skill and when they achieved expert-level proficiency (almost always around ten thousand hours of practice). While the magic number appears to be the main focus of the chapter when it comes to success, Gladwell seems to put more emphasis on the advantage and opportunities each individual experienced. However, I