Outliers

“In Outliers, I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don’t work. People don’t rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot. It makes a difference where and when we grew up. The culture we belong to and the legacies passed down by our forebears shape the patterns of our achievement in ways we cannot begin to imagine. It’s not enough to ask what successful people are like, in other words. It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn’t.”

Gladwell’s overall thesis in Outliers is that we think about success incorrectly, focusing on individuals as if a single person is responsible for his or her success. Instead, Gladwell argues, success results from family and cultural background as well as intangible circumstances that arise as opportunities.

“The striking thing about Ericsson’s study is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any ‘naturals,’ musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did. Nor could they find any ‘grinds,’ people who worked harder than everyone else, yet just didn’t have what it takes to break the top ranks. Their research suggests that once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.” 

At the heart of success is hard work. The research presented in this quotation belies our romantic notion of people born with genius; instead, there’s a straight line from hard work to success. The amount of practice to reach the elite level in any field, Ericsson found, was about 10,000 hours.

“The other interesting thing about that ten thousand hours, of course, is that ten thousand hours is an enormous amount of time. It’s all but impossible to reach that number all by yourself by the time you’re a young adult. You have to have parents who encourage and support you. You can’t be poor, because if you have to hold down a part-time job on the side to help make ends meet, there won’t be time left in the day to practice enough. In fact, most people can reach that number only if they get into some kind of special program—like a hockey all-star squad—or if they get some kind of extraordinary opportunity that gives them a chance to put in those hours.” 

A person must have enough free time to put in the hard work noted in Ericsson’s study. Coming from a well-off family often means one has ample free time as a young person to hone a skill, as one can avoid distractions like having to work. Another path is to be selected by a program that provides intense training and practice. Individual hard work sounds like the common notion of success, but what allows the hard work to take place is what Gladwell’s concept of success entails.