he subject of this chapter was that perfection can only be found after 10,000 hours of intense practice. There is no other way around it; this chapter really worked around the saying “practice makes perfect.” Gladwell made this clear to the reader by pulling examples from all different sorts of trade professionals: computer programmers, composers, chess player, musicians and billionaires. These people were fortunate enough to get life-changing opportunities that acted as the perfect platforms of practice that lead to the path of success. In my opinion, Gladwell was reaching out to young adults that are figuring out their futures. This chapter was very motivating and could change the perspective of people that are stepping towards their future careers. Gladwell explains how that all experts only reach that level of expertise by having practiced this many hours. This opens the eyes of young adults that are about to move forward in their careers, …show more content…
Alluding to well-known people like the Beatles, he achieves the message he is trying to portray. His usage of allusions intensifies the claim he is making in this chapter. Gladwell states, “Achievement is talent plus preparation”(38). He incorporated this throughout the chapter, especially through the life of Bill Joy. Gladwell also lists the top seventy-five billionaires; these are also allusions the reader can personally connect with. When looking at the Americans on that list, the reader sees that they were born between the years 1831 and 1840. During that nine year span, we see that the wealthiest people from our own country rose to their respectable ranks. This piece of evidence ties in with the first chapter. Talent isn’t the only thing that defines success. How one acts upon it, their passion, the work they put in and the opportunities they receive all come into play when concerning their chances of becoming
This aids the audience’s understanding because of the Beatles’ prominent background and appearances in the media. “Let’s test the idea with two examples” and “Bill Gates, one of the world’s richest men” is another example of Gladwell alluding to famous figures because he explains that Bill Gates is the one of richest men in the world. By providing statements from those famous figures, the audience can envision what and how long it took for those people to get where they are today. “Here is John Lennon… talking about the band’s performances”, “the experience playing all night long”, “Here is Pete Best, the Beatles’ drummer”, and “we played almost nonstop” shows that the audience has become presented with multiple points of view, which is the rhetorical device of repetition. These points will compel the audience to remember how efficient working for 10,000 hours is for mastering a skill.
Right away the readers get interested in learning what the then thousand hour rule is about. Gladwell reviews the lives of extremely successful people and how they have had success. There are many ways in which logos are used in Outliers. Gladwell viewed children in Berlin playing the violin and saw that kids having ten thousand hours of practice, were proven to be better at playing the violin, than kids with less than ten thousand hours of practice. He also took a look at Bill gates, which dropped out of college and started a very successful company, called Microsoft. Bill Gates had thousands of hours of practice in programming and other abilities learned through his short years at college. There are no shortcuts at becoming great; everything can only be achieved with lots of practice and hard work.
In this Chapter Gladwell highlights how the common picture of success is achieved is not the one which many individuals think of when they consider the cause of success and shows this with evidence from very successful people. Gladwell employs logos in order to create a logical as well as the factual base for the story. This use is extremely obvious as almost the entire chapter is made up of example that supports his theory on the 10'000 hour rule. In order to concrete his argument, he uses Ethos by constantly employing well-known names in order to build a sense of credibility and citing people who have authority on the scene. He does a good job of using this for its desired purpose. Gladwell redirects his argument with phrases like "Let's
The author explains exactly what the professional asserts and how particular pieces of evidence relate to Gladwell’s unconventional idea of success.
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.
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 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
Audience: Outliers answers the unanimous question about those who become successful and “what they’re like”, “what makes someone successful?” or “what are successful people like?”. Gladwell directs his book towards an extremely broad audience. He talks about financial success, musical success, athletic fame, and everything in between, interesting everyone because who does not want to be successful? Outliers teaches lessons that are beneficial to people of all ages, and shows the readers what it takes to make it to the top.
Gladwell’s overall writing style in Outliers managed to convey his message using formal yet simple diction and mostly uncomplicated syntax. His writing was symbolic at times, but also quite literal at others. The book was relatable, memorable, and easy to understand. He uses some rhetorical devices, such as this polysyndeton: “he’s tall and gawky and sixteen years old” (Gladwell 42). He also used other literary devices, such as dialogue: “‘it came out of the blue’” (Gladwell 248). These devices added complexity and depth and also caught my attention. They are key to writing a book that keeps the reader interested and helps them pay attention to and remember key details. The impact of organizing the book into “Part 1: Opportunity” and “Part 2: Legacy” was that it showed there was a clear division between the two parts of achieving success. Having this distinction helps the reader to learn each concept and in the end, be able to understand the overall theme. For opportunity, he describes how opportunities need to emerge in order for success to be reached, such as how “[t]heir world—their culture and generation and family history—gave them the greatest of opportunities” (Gladwell 158) in the case of many people. Gladwell distinguishes the two parts of the book in part two, saying that so far, we have seen that “success arises out of the steady accumulation of advantages… [that] all make a significant difference in how well you do in the world. The question for the second part
"The biggest misconception about success is that we do it solely on our smarts, ambition, hustle and hard work” (Gladwell, 42). Outliers is a book that praises the success of great men, then cuts them down to size by explaining how it wasn’t pure hard work and sweat. Gladwell studies those who have already achieved society’s idea of “success.” Every chapter is filled with detailed examinations of cultural heritage and environment in relation to the idea of “success”.The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore is a detailed analysis that undergoes a comparison between two characters with outwardly similar beginnings but entirely different destinies due to personal choices, self-determination, and effort. The book values the importance of discipline and
Chapter 1 refers to the Bible that states that those who have will be given more while those who have not will lose that which they had. During chapter 1 Gladwell talks about the certain leverage children and sports players have in school just because they were born in a beneficial section of the year. That led them to have a positive influence for their life that only helped the more though ought there life from there. Gladwell had analyzed a comparatively unique statistic about the Canadian professional hockey leagues: 10% were born between October and December, 20% between July and September, 30% between April and June and 40% between January and March. His interpretation for this bizarre statistic is elementary: the cut-off birth date for trying out for hockey in Canada is January 1st. remarkably, from his statistics if you turn ten on January
Throughout the book, Gladwell talks about how culture family and ones’ upbringing can determine ones’ success in the future. In the introduction of the book, Gladwell states, "It's not enough to ask what successful people are like. It is only by asking where they
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
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