summary of the book outliers

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Part 1, Chapter 2

Part 1, Chapters 3-5

Part 2, Chapters 6-7

Part 2, Chapter 8-Epilogue

Key Figures

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Summary and Study Guide

The nonfiction book Outliers: The Story of Success is Malcolm Gladwell’s third book, published in 2008. Gladwell is a prolific writer for the New Yorker , where he has been on staff since 1996. His writing often incorporates research from the social sciences, as in Outliers , in which he makes the case that the way we understand and portray success is wrong. Before joining the staff of the New Yorker , Gladwell was a reporter for the Washington Post from 1987 to 1996. He holds an undergraduate degree in history from the University of Toronto. In 2005, Time magazine named him one of that year’s 100 most influential people.

Gladwell presents his main theme in the Introduction: outliers, or people who fall outside of what is often considered typical due to their extraordinary success. His argument is that it takes many factors to create such a person, including family and cultural background as well as random circumstances. This goes against the commonly-held romantic notion of individual success through innate genius and hard work. Chapter 1 illustrates this by examining hockey stars in Canada. The key element in their success is an early birth date, ensuring that as children they will be that much more physically developed in their age class. This advantage leads them to progress faster, which leads to moving up the ranks.

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Chapter 2 introduces the idea of the “10,000-hour rule” as necessary to success. The author presents a study of musicians that concluded total practice time from when someone began playing an instrument was the sole difference between elite players and the others. Researchers concluded that 10,000 hours is the minimum amount necessary for reaching the top level in any field. Gladwell uses the Beatles and Bill Gates as two examples of this phenomenon.

In the next two chapters, he looks at the idea of genius as measured by IQ tests. His premise is that if success is purely innate and individual, the higher the IQ someone has, the higher their level of success should be. He demonstrates that this is false through the story of Chris Langan, a man with perhaps the highest IQ in the world. Langan has held a series of odd jobs and has had only moderate success, which Gladwell largely attributes to his dysfunctional family background. He contrasts this with the story of a lawyer named Joe Flom in Chapter 5. Flom’s parents weren’t wealthy but made a decent living in the garment industry; through timing and luck of geography, Flom would become one of the wealthiest, most successful attorneys in New York City. The public schools in the city were among the best in the nation when he attended them. He worked on corporate takeovers at a time when elite law firms thought it beneath them. Then, when the number of takeovers exploded in the 1970s and 1980s, he had put in his 10,000 hours and was poised to be the leading expert in the field.

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In the second part of the book, on legacy, Gladwell explores in depth the role of culture in people’s behavior. Chapter 6 explains how a “culture of honor” from the borderlands of Great Britain was carried over to the US and persists to this day. Chapter 7 investigates the role of South Korean culture in plane crashes, with Gladwell concluding that Koreans’ deference to authority made crashes more likely. Next, he postulates that the influence and history of cultivating rice make people in Asian cultures better in math than those in Western cultures. The last chapter demonstrates in a school setting how purposely changing one’s inherited culture can lead to different outcomes. In a long Epilogue, Gladwell shows how his own family’s background and culture, going back several generations, influenced his mother’s life and thus his own.

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Outliers Summary

1-Sentence-Summary:   Outliers explains why “the self-made man” is a myth and what truly lies behind the success of the best people in their field, which is often a series of lucky events, rare opportunities and other external factors, which are out of our control.

Favorite quote from the author:

Table of Contents

Video Summary

Outliers review, audio summary, who would i recommend the outliers summary to.

The only thing I knew about Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers , was that this is the book that the 10,000 hour rule came from. The rule says to become world-class at anything, you have to put in 10,000 hours of practice, which equals to about 5 years of uninterrupted 40-hour workweeks worth of practice. In reality, it’s often closer to 10 years.

Therefore, I expected the book to be about deliberate practice and how success is in your own hands , if you work hard enough. Boy, was I wrong. The book argues the exact opposite.

Here is a summary of Outliers in just 3 lessons:

• After you cross a certain skill threshold, your abilities won’t help you.
• The month you’re born in matters.
• Asians are good at math, because where you come from matters.

Let’s see what it takes to be an outlier!

If you want to save this summary for later, download the free PDF and read it whenever you want.

Lesson 1: After you cross a certain skill threshold, your abilities won’t help you.

To debunk the myth of the “self-made man”, which might be the most popular myth of our time, Gladwell first looked at how much your skills really influence where you end up in life.

Of course practice matters, and so do genetic predispositions in sports, but there are limits to their influence. As it turns out, once you cross a certain threshold with your skills and abilities, any extra won’t do you much good .

For example, since the 1980s, the average height of an NBA basketball player has been 6′ 7″ . Even if you grow to be 7′ tall, those additional inches won’t give you a huge advantage over other players.

Gladwell also looked at law school students and their performance. Some law schools lower their admission requirements for racial minorities, and even though these students tend to perform worse than their non-minority peers both before and in law school, this gap completely disappears once they graduate .

They make the same valuable contributions, get paid just as much and receive as many honors as their peers. Why?

Because once you’ve reached a certain level of legal expertise, other factors start to take over and influence your career, like social skills, how good your network is, and even catching a lucky break.

Lesson 2: Being born in the wrong month can put you at a disadvantage.

Remember when you saw an 8th grader in high school date a 10th grader? You were probably shocked! “He’s 2 years older than her, that’s insane!” – I still remember the comments, it was a huge deal in our school.

However, when you’re 40 and take your wife to dinner with the neighbors, nobody would be surprised to hear she’s 38, 42, or even several more years older or younger than you.

That’s because  relative age matters, especially when you’re young.  How old you are compared to your peers can give you a huge advantage or disadvantage, for example in sports.

Gladwell found out that most professional Canadian hockey players, who end up in the NHL, are born in the first half of the year. In fact, twice as many have birthdays in the first quarter as in the last .

That’s because the annual cutoff date for youth teams is January 1st, meaning kids born in December have to compete with their friends who are almost a year older than they are. When you’re 8 years old, you stand no chance against a 9 year old in terms of strength and speed – the difference is huge when a year makes up 12.5% of your entire life.

Think through your own life, and you’ll see this happens all the time. I too suffered from this problem in school!

Lesson 3: Asians are good at math, because where you come from matters.

If you think age is bad, try imagining being born somewhere entirely different . Warren Buffett always says he’s been lucky to have been born into the United States at the time he was , because a few thousand years ago, with his kinds of genes, he’d have been some animal’s lunch.

For example, Gladwell says there’s a reason for the stereotype that “Asians are good at math.” Several factors actually  are  in favor of Asians becoming relatively good at it.

First, Asian languages are set up so that children learn to add numbers simultaneously with learning to count. Second, hundreds of years of building a traditional culture around farming rice has instilled a great sense of discipline into Asian culture.

Unlike farming wheat or corn, farming rice is hard. It needs a lot more precision, control, coordination and patience. Rice farmers could also reap the full rewards of their work, whereas European farmers were often robbed of a big part of their harvest by greedy landlords and nobility, leaving them far less motivated to do their best.

Just like rice farming, math is hard. You have to stick with problems and let the gears in your brain crunch until you work it out. Europeans often give up a lot faster on hard math questions than their Asian peers, because neither math nor discipline are a part of their cultural legacy.

So yes, where you’re born matters .

I loved The Tipping Point , and I expect Outliers to be just as awesome. I’m really glad I read the summary first. Now, I’m even more interested in it than before. It is refreshing to hear some counter-arguments to the “self-made man” myth. I hope you enjoyed our brief book summary of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. This one’s definitely worth your time.

Listen to the audio of this summary with a free reading.fm account:

The 21-year-old with a weakness for motivational talks, who’s sure if he just keeps working hard every day, he’ll eventually get his dream, the 38-year-old Mum, who’s worried her child might get bullied in school for being younger, and anyone who thinks Asians are good at math is a stupid cliché.

Last Updated on July 28, 2022

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Niklas Göke is an author and writer whose work has attracted tens of millions of readers to date. He is also the founder and CEO of Four Minute Books, a collection of over 1,000 free book summaries teaching readers 3 valuable lessons in just 4 minutes each. Born and raised in Germany, Nik also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration & Engineering from KIT Karlsruhe and a Master’s Degree in Management & Technology from the Technical University of Munich. He lives in Munich and enjoys a great slice of salami pizza almost as much as reading — or writing — the next book — or book summary, of course!

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by Malcolm Gladwell

• Outliers Summary

In Outliers: The Story of Success , Malcolm Gladwell sets out to explain the various factors that lead to mastery and renown. The book itself is structured as a series of case studies that span different cultures and different time periods, but that all relate to a few central theses and theories. For Gladwell, success is not simply the product of a powerful personality or a high IQ. Instead, successful individuals often thrive thanks to the right combination of hard work, community support, and meaningful opportunity.

Outliers begins by considering the town of Roseto, Pennsylvania, a small community with remarkably low incidence of health problems such as heart disease. After this brief introductory section, Gladwell considers the first of the major factors--personal opportunity--behind his theory of success. He shows that completely arbitrary factors, such as day and year of birth, can determine opportunities to practice and achieve excellence . However, he also argues that expected measures of brilliance (such as IQ) are less important than influences such as class background, parenting styles, and work habits in determining an individual's future.

Where Gladwell's "Opportunity" section considers remarkable individuals such as programmer Bill Joy , software mogul Bill Gates , physicist Robert Oppenheimer , and unsung intellectual Chris Langan, Gladwell's next section shifts emphasis: in "Legacy," Gladwell argues that one's culture of origin--and some of the completely random circumstances that it presents--can determine success or failure. The discussion that takes place in "Legacy" addresses the cultural, social, and psychological roots of family feuds, airplane crashes, and mathematical aptitude. For Gladwell, the society of one's ancestors--whether those ancestors herded sheep in rural England or worked a rice paddy in rural China--can determine one's practices and preferences even in the present day.

To support his theses in the most personal manner possible, Gladwell uses the final section of Outliers , "A Jamaican Story," to show that the forces of culture and chance that have been analyzed throughout his book shaped the lives of his grandmother, his mother, and himself.

Outliers Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Outliers is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Outliers Questions

Yes, I believe that certain people are born with certain talents.

Gladwell says that in the end, preparation becomes plays a bigger role than talent. The "best" practice more than anyone else. Thus, someone with innate talent must still prepare or...

What is accumulative advantage?

All the advantages that one gets in life leading to success like family wealth, opportunity, race........All of these advantages accumulate.

What is the magic number for mastering a specific skill?

That would be 10000 hours.

Study Guide for Outliers

Outliers study guide contains a biography of Malcolm Gladwell, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Outliers
• Character List

Essays for Outliers

Outliers essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.

• The 10,000 Hour Rule in Outliers
• Malcolm Gladwell's "Small Change": A Rhetorical Analysis

Lesson Plan for Outliers

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Outliers
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Outliers Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for Outliers

• Introduction

Theme Editor

Outliers: The Story of Success Book Summary, Notes, and Quotes

Malcolm Gladwell

Download summary as PDF, eBook/ePub, DOCX

What it's about in a one sentence summary:.

A fascinating exploration of the hidden factors that contribute to exceptional success.

Bullet Point Summary, Notes, and Quotes

• Our society romanticizes the idea of a self-made individual, attributing success and achievement solely to innate abilities and personal efforts. In reality, extraordinary success is heavily influenced by factors such as cultural legacy, opportunities, and timing.
• Politicians like Jeb Bush have used the rhetoric of a “self-made-man” to bolster their image, despite coming from extremely privileged backgrounds. Outliers like Bush are statistically rare. The idea of a self-made person is a widely accepted but misleading myth.
• One's ability and innate capacity can be the foundations of success, but eventually they become more irrelevant after you reach a certain threshold. For example, just because you have an exceptionally high IQ does not mean you will win a Nobel Prize. Once a sufficient amount of expertise is achieved, traits such as social skills, connections, or luck become more important for success.
• To be outstanding in your field, you need a lot of practice. Studies show that achieving world-class mastery in anything requires a critical minimum amount of 10,000 hours of practice.
• It is a privilege to have the opportunity to practice for 10,000 hours. You need to have early exposure, access to the necessary resources and equipment, and support from family and friends. Bill Gates is one of the few people who met this criteria during the nascence of the field of personal computers.
• Being born in the right place at the right time plays a crucial role in success. People like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs all had ambition and practical intelligence, but what made them ultra successful was the unique opportunities they were able to capitalize on. They were born at the right time to take advantage of their access to new technologies and be at the perfect age to start their companies. This is why many software tycoons were born between 1954 and 1956.
• This cumulative advantage or disadvantage from your birth date also applies to other areas, such as schools. A six-year-old can become discouraged and disadvantaged if her peers are mostly seven year olds.
• Once you reach a certain level of skill, natural abilities matter less than practical intelligence , which involves knowing how to navigate social situations (e.g., dealing with authority). Wealthier parents tend to instill practical intelligence and a sense of entitlement in their children through attention and enriching activities, while poorer parents are less likely to teach these skills, which can significantly reduce their children's chances of success.
• Your geographical and cultural background can affect your success. For example, there is truth to the stereotype that Asians are good at math. In many Asian countries, math is integrated into language learning and so the children develop math skills earlier. Furthermore, Asian countries' history of reliance on rice farming, which is more difficult than farming Western crops, developed a lasting legacy of strong work ethic. Studies have shown that students in Western countries give up on math problems far sooner than students in Eastern countries do.
• Cultural legacies can also be harmful. For example, Korean Air had an abnormally high rate of plane crashes. An explanation is the Korean culture's tendency to respect authority figures and defer to higher-ranking individuals, which led to communication failures where pilots were hesitant to speak freely and clearly to their superiors. After addressing this issue, Korean Air's crash-rate improved to normal.
• The uneven playing fields that exist in various fields of life can hinder people from succeeding. For instance, annual cutoff dates in hockey mean that some juniors born late in the year have to compete against older and more experienced players, resulting in lower confidence and lost opportunities. Similarly, children from disadvantaged backgrounds may not have access to the same opportunities as those from wealthier families. However, by recognizing these flaws in the system and dividing young hockey players into narrower age groups or creating programs for low-income children, we can create more opportunities and reduce the impact of external factors on success.

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Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell: Book Review, Summary & Analysis

About the author: malcolm gladwell, book: outliers: the story of success by malcolm gladwell.

Outliers: The Story of Success is a non-fiction book written by Malcolm Gladwell and published by Little, Brown, and Company on November 18, 2008. In Outliers, Gladwell examines the factors that contribute to high levels of success. Wikipedia

• Originally published: November 18, 2008
• Author: Malcolm Gladwell
• Genre: A self-help book
• Title: Outliers: The Story of Success amazon.com
• Cover artist: Allison J. Warner
• Dewey Decimal: 302 22

Outliers : The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell  

Excerpts from the original text

Book analysis:  outliers: the story of success, book summary:  outliers: the story of success, book review:  outliers: the story of success, reading notes:.

• Opportunity number one was that Gates got set to Lakeside. How many high schools in the world had access to a time-sharing terminal in 1968? 
• Opportunity number two was that the mothers of Lakeside had enough money to pay for the school's computer fees. 
• Number three was that, when that money ran out, one of the parents happened to work at C-Cubed, which happened to need someone to check its code on the weekends, and also happened not to care if weekends turned into weeknights. 
• Number four was that Gates just happened to find out about ISI, and ISI just happened to need someone to work on its payroll software. 
• Number five was that Gates happened to live within walking distance of the University of Washington. 
• Number six was that the university happened to have free computer time between three and six in the morning. 
• Number seven was that REW happened to call Bud Pembroke. 
• Number eight was that the best programmers Pembroke knew for that particular problem happened to be two high school kids. and
• Number nine was that Lakeside was willing to let those kids spend their spring term miles away, writing code.

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Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell: Summary and Lessons

“Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.”

Rating:  7/10

Related:   Blink , What the Dog Saw , The Tipping Point , David and Goliath , Peak

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Table of Contents

Outliers Short Summary  

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell is a book that explores the hidden forces behind successful people. Gladwell shows that as much as talent and hard work are responsible for many of the success stories that we see and hear, there is much more to success than meets the eye. A bit repetitive so you can skim some parts but overall great lessons.

What Are Outliers?

Outliers are people who stand out . They are the top athletes, businessmen, billionaires, innovators, professionals, educators, scientists, and politicians. They are the definition of success. The ones that everyone looks up to.

When stories of outliers are told, there is a tendency to emphasize individual effort. Gladwell argues that there is another side to the story. Individual effort does count for a lot of things but it is just one of the reasons for success.

In other words:

Outliers don’t have a singular story. Luck, birthdays, opportunity, upbringing, and many other factors all play oversized roles too.

Part I: Opportunity 

The matthew effect.

The Matthew Effect: advantages tend to accumulate over time. Those that are given an early push get more advantages as time goes by and those that are put at a disadvantage continue to get limited resources. The Matthew Effect is basically another way of stating the law of cumulative advantage

The story of outliers follows a similar pattern. If you are put at an advantage over your peers and friends from an early age, the advantages will lead to meaningful differences in performance that persist for extended periods.

When looking at the stories of successful individuals, most people downplay the role that the Matthew Effect has on their life outcomes.

The 10,000 Hour Rule

The 10,000 Hour Rule: it takes about 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert at anything

But while this is true, the convergence of luck and opportunity is needed

For example:

• Bill Gates had unlimited exposure to computers at an early age
• Most of the Silicon Valley billionaires were just at the right age (born around 1955) and were in their early 20s when the computer revolution began
• Most elite hockey players are born in the month of January because the cut off for age-class hockey in Canada happens on January 1

Yes, preparation does play an oversized role when it comes to achieving greatness but so does luck and opportunity.

If you discount the role of luck and opportunity when retelling success stories, there are consequences for society including prematurely writing people off as failures.

“Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung. We make rules that frustrate achievement.” 

The Trouble With Geniuses

Having high intelligence (IQ) does not automatically mean that you will be successful in life. 

Above a certain IQ range, there isn’t much difference in performance.

There is a threshold for achieving in a particular area. Once that threshold is achieved, the influence of grades and IQ scores lessens with time.   

“If intelligence matters only up to a point, then past that point, other things—things that have nothing to do with intelligence—must start to matter more. It’s like basketball again: once someone is tall enough, then we start to care about speed and court sense and agility and ball-handling skills and shooting touch.”

The Role of Upbringing

Having a great mind is not enough. Genius has to be nurtured and encouraged.

When looking at the stories of outliers, it is easy to overlook the role that upbringing has on how successful one becomes. 

Studies show that background and upbringing have more of an impact on success than IQ scores.

Children from middle and upper-class families are taught to speak up, stand for themselves, and express thought independence. And this explains why they achieve more throughout their lives.

Their parents are also more involved in their lives and interests and this has a great impact on how they approach opportunities and challenges. They grow up believing that their voice and opinions matter even in the face of authority.  

“The heavily scheduled middle-class child is exposed to a constantly shifting set of experiences. She learns teamwork and how to cope in highly structured settings. She is taught how to interact comfortably with adults, and to speak up when she needs to. In Lareau’s words, the middle-class children learn a sense of “entitlement.”

On the other hand, children from poor backgrounds don’t receive as much attention from their parents. As a result, they grow to be timid around many situations and develop stifling deference to authority.

The Benefits of Opportunity and Luck

Starting out at a disadvantage can be an opportunity in itself.

For some outliers, disadvantages are often blessings in disguise. Rags-to riches stories focus on the many odds that the hero had to overcome, but they fail to point out that the odds work to empower the hero over future adversities.

Outliers also benefit from “Demographic luck” or being born at the right time.

Those who came to maturity in the 1930s during the height of the great depression had less of a chance to make it than those who matured later when the economy was booming. 

At the same time, engaging in meaningful work no matter how humbling gives you the opportunity to learn and grow.

Humble meaningful work can also serve as a pebblestone for the prosperity of future generations.

Part II: Legacy

Cultural legacies.

Cultural legacies play an important role in determining the success of outliers.

These legacies shape how we react to our environments, how hard we work, how we approach opportunities, and our deference to power and authority.

• Some cultures demonstrate a high reverence for power and authority to the extent that it can hinder job performance and personal growth
• Others show greater levels of individuality and this can lead to greater personal independence and  a willingness to take risks
• It is easier to count in Asian languages. And because of this math is more intuitive to South East Asians as opposed to westerners
• Most of the cultures in China, Korea, and Japan have rice as their staple food. Cultivating rice is more labor-intensive compared to other forms of agriculture and this translates to different attitudes towards work and life in general

Low-Income vs High-Income Students

The difference in performance between low-income students and high-income students is not down to differences in intelligence. Given the same opportunities, students from the two groups perform at the same level.

Low-income students’ performance drops during the summer vacation. Their reading levels drop and their maths grades go down suggesting that the home environment has an oversized effect on school performance during the period.

The length of the summer vacation also has implications on how well students perform. Students from the Asian countries of Japan and China have longer school days and as a result have better reading and math skills. 

With proper instruction guidelines and interventions, it is possible to bridge the gap between low- income and high-income students. 

“We are so caught in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth. We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that thirteen year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur. But that’s the wrong lesson.”

What school kids from low-income communities need is a chance.

Home » Business » Outliers Quick Summary: 15 Takeaways from Malcolm Gladwell’s Book

Outliers Quick Summary: 15 Takeaways from Malcolm Gladwell’s Book

Outliers: The Story of Success is a 2008 book by journalist and author Malcolm Gladwell. In this book, Gladwell dives into what makes the most successful people so good at what they do and discovers the commonalities they have which provided them with opportunities to succeed.

A 3 Minute Summary of the 15 Core Lessons

#1 Success Comes From Lots of Factors More than any single idea, Gladwell presents the concept that individual success is the result of multiple factors mingling and mixing together to form a perfect storm of circumstance and talent. One individual cannot be overly successful just because of their grit and determination. Nor can they be fantastically successful just because of their environment or upbringing. You need lots of things going right to produce a person of phenomenal success.

#2 10,000 Hours This isn’t to say that personal preparation and practice are not important. Gladwell reiterates the common idea that you need 10,000 hours of experience with something before you can become an expert in that field. This is not only an anecdote passed down between cultures but also scientifically valid.

#3 Love What You Do Naturally, most of us will be more willing to put 10,000 hours into a single subject or skill if we love that thing. Thus, you must discover what you love to do and focus as much of your time as you can into that subject or skill if you want to become an outstanding success in the field of your choosing.

#4 Know Your Own Culture Gladwell presents a startling example of airline pilots, accidents, and the cultures that different ethnicities of pilots came from and how all of those factors can affect airline safety. Knowing your culture, in terms of its limitations and its advantages, can help you become more successful. In addition, some cultures are more predisposed to produce successes in certain fields or subjects than others.

#5 Embrace Your Culture Because we’re all embroiled within our culture from the moment we are born, it might be a good idea to follow your heart so long as your own culture fosters skill development within that interest. Gladwell uses the development of the clothing business in New York City, developed by East European immigrants, as an example of how culture played a role in their success.

#6 Success is Partially Based on Luck In order to obtain the number of hours necessary to become an expert and in order to have a culture that nurtures your interests, you must be incredibly lucky compared to everyone. These are the titular “outliers”: those who were born at the right place and the right time to have an interest that led them to riches and greatness and the culture and aptitude to pursue their expertise to its conclusion.

#7 Early Success Leads to Later Success Gladwell also notes that those who start early in their passion or expertise tended to become more successful than those who begin late in life. The effects of success and of practice are cumulative. It’s important to develop your skills early on and, if you have kids, facilitate their interest as much as possible to give them the best shot at their maximum potential.

#8 Small Things Lead to Big Repercussions Gladwell uses the example of Chinese numbers being comparatively brief compared to English numbers. Because of this minor difference, Chinese people can recite seven digits more easily than English speakers and can theoretically perform arithmetic and excel at math more consistently. This small difference between languages may explain the huge cumulative advantage that many Chinese students have over many Western schoolchildren.

#9 Practical Intelligence The book makes a distinction between two types of intelligence: practical and analytical. The latter is what is tested by IQ exams and is what normally is prized by society. But practical intelligence, otherwise known as street smarts, is also important for those who want to become successful. Having a lot of practical intelligence will help you avoid social blunders and help you maximize social opportunities.

#10 Cultural Legacy Persists Whether you want to admit it or not, the legacy of your culture plays a huge role in who you are and your levels of success. Thus, cultural legacy and what we leave behind is even more important as it persists through many generations.

#11 Talent Matters Although the 10,000 hours mentioned earlier are the key to becoming an expert in any field, everyone must also understand that you have to have some natural aptitude to become a success in any field or ability. If you are terrible at playing the violin, 10,000 hours of practice won’t make you good enough to play in the best orchestras or best concerts.

#12 Opportunity is Exponential The good news for those who have the talent and time to make the most of their skills is that opportunity is exponential. Earning your initial successes and opportunities is much more difficult compared to once you have some achievements under your belt. This same concept is reflected with wealth; those who become rich find it easier to make money than those who are not already wealthy.

#13 Fulfillment There are three main factors that your work or vocation must give you in order to feel fulfilled in your life. The first is autonomy, or personal freedom to at least a certain extent. It must also be complex enough to provide you with an adequate physical or mental challenge. Lastly, your vocation or work must incorporate a clear connection between your efforts and any possible rewards.

#14 IQ Doesn’t Guarantee Success Having a high analytical intelligence does not necessarily mean you’ll be successful in your life. Instead, those who want to become astronomical successes must also cultivate social smarts and talent; raw intelligence is not enough of a crutch for most.

#15 Outliers are Rare Finally, many of us may wish to be outliers in order to obtain the rewards we associate with them. But outliers are by definition rare. So Gladwell advises those who would be disappointed to count their blessings, particularly as many outlier successes have difficult childhoods.

Top 10 Quotes from Outliers

• “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.”
• “Who we are cannot be separated from where we’re from.”
• “Those three things – autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward – are, most people will agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.”
• “…If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires.”
• “Achievement is talent plus preparation.”
• “No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.”
• “In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.”
• “Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig.”
• “We overlook just how large a role we all play–and by ‘we’ I mean society–in determining who makes it and who doesn’t.”
• “Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.”

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Outliers Summary

Summary of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

What You'll Learn

Introduction

When you look at successful people, there are often multiple reasons as to why they are successful.

They themselves may attribute their success to “dumb-luck”.

However, that is rarely the case. Within his book, “ Outliers ”, Gladwell lays out the foundation concerning success, and how it can be reached in multiple ways, which include both things within and outside your control.

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We will review three key points, including:

1) Our Culture celebrates they myth of the “Self-Made Man”

2) World-Class Mastery of anything demands around 10,000 hours of practice

3) If we recognize the reasons behind the uneven playing fields, we can create more opportunities for people to succeed

Lesson 1: Our Culture celebrates the myth of the “Self-Made Man”

The idea of a “Self-Made Man” is a very poplar myth.

When you take the time to break down the story of how someone became successful, it is more about the environment in which a person grew up in which makes the difference.

When you think of people who are the best within their fields, due to this “Self-Made Man” mentality, we like to think it is due to their innate talent.

This is often not the case, but rather a product of them being an “Outlier”.

Lesson 2: World-Class Mastery of anything demands around 10,000 hours of practice

When looking at people who are famous thru history, like Bill Gates or the Beatles, one key ingredient became obvious.

They became an outlier because they practiced for at least 10,000 hours before becoming masters.

When you break this down, it means 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year for 5 years.

Not everyone has this kind of time or opportunity, or the support system to make this happen.

For those who do, though, it is a great path towards having a world-class mastery of your talent.

Lesson 3: If we recognize the reasons behind the uneven playing fields, we can create more opportunities for people to succeed

There are many examples of this idea of an uneven playing field within our society, and they often can be traced back to a simple idea, which is a Cutoff Date.

This is especially relevant in sports.

For example, in Canada, the cut-off date for junior hockey teams each year is January 1st.

This means, a player who is born in late December is placed in the same level of kids who were born in early January of that same year.

In turn, this then means that they are playing against kids who are practically a year older than them.

One way to cut this out would be to have groups of kids, especially at an early age, who are clustered by their birth months.

If this can then be done for hockey, the possibilities are limitless, including other sports activities and school classrooms.

When the Singular Cut-Off date system starts at a young age, it can have a negative impact on a child throughout their entire school career.

This negative start can lead to them performing below their potential, which can cause their foundation to be less stable moving forward in life.

My Personal Takeaway

After spending some time with the book Outliers I must say it has given me some interesting perspectives upon success and the myths around it.

We give so much attention to the “self-made man” and praise them and call them lucky because of their successes and that they have great talents for what they do.

However, the book argues that often its just pure grit and hard work that make people achieve great things (as also discussed in our summary of Grit to Great ).

Did this summary excite you?

Book summaries are great , but I also really believe that you will not fully understand the book or the author without trying the real thing. Learn more about this subject by listening to the full book for free via Audible.

Put into Action

• Stop believing in the self-made man and talent. Great things can happened to anyone that put in time and effort into anything.
• Become an outlier by finding your call in life and master it.
• Think about how uneven playing fields affect people in your life, and see if you can change it to their advantage. No-one wants to be the worst player among the best.

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Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Gladwell directly challenges the traditional rags to riches narrative of success. Using examples ranging from successful hockey players and technology leaders to Jewish lawyers and Asian rice farmers, he demonstrates how the nuances of where people come from (their generation, culture, family, and unique life experiences) matter. Ambition, intelligence, and hard work are important to success, but they don’t explain everything.

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Key Takeaways

Reimagining the story of success.

Gladwell shows us that the traditional narrative of success – passion + talent + skill = success – is flawed. While these elements help drive success, success also stems from the circumstances in which a person is raised and lives.

For example, he demonstrates that more than 80 percent of professional hockey players were born in the months of January and February. The reason for this outcome is not due to statistical chance. Rather, it is because hockey leagues are structured around the calendar year in which you are born.

So a person born earlier in the year is older (i.e., bigger, faster, stronger) than people born later in the year. And when scouts look for the best players early on, the older players are picked up. And once they are picked up, they get better training and competition, further compounding the development of their skills.

The limitations of intellect

While the success of certain people is often attributed to their unique and superior intellect, studies show that intellect does not determine achievement after a certain threshold, and that threshold is much lower than you would expect.

Practical intelligence

A big driver in different outcomes between the rich and poor is that the rich receive training in practical intelligence. Practical intelligence is the soft and social skills that help you more easily navigate society – negotiation, comfort questioning authority, respecting your place in the work, etc.

Whereas poor parents typically let their kids develop independently, rich parents understand the importance of the practice intelligence skills and find ways to cultivate these skills in their children. For example, a rich parent may tell their child to ask questions at the doctor, which while seemingly trivial, develops that child’s comfort with questioning authority figures.

Gladwell calls this practice by the rich “concerted cultivation,” and it is a practice that gives rich kids a big advantage against poor kids.

What we need from work to make us happy

To be happy in our work, we have three needs – autonomy, complexity, and a positive relationship between effort and reward. No matter how much money we earn, without these three qualities, we will not be fulfilled in our work. Further, hard work is an absolute nightmare if we don’t have meaning. If we have meaning, it is exciting and joyful.

What really causes airline accidents

A few airlines companies had significantly more plane crashes than other airlines. While we might expect this is related to incompetent pilots, it was actually the result in diverging communication practices across cultures.

For instance, one Colombian pilot was flying into New York, and the pilot could have communicated something to the air traffic control in New York that would have prevented the crash. But because of the power dynamic between the pilot and co-pilot, and because of the directness of New York air traffic control, the communication channels broke down.

In short, the crash occurred due to cross-cultural communication differences. In an increasingly globalized world, we need to be aware of these differences and account for them in our operations.

Science vs. religion

Science explains the world whereas religion provides the intangible connection between humans and meaning.

Rice farming and education outcomes

Rice farming is hard work. In contrast to corn production, which has largely been scaled by technological advancements, rice farming requires people to wake up before dawn for 360 days of the year and hope that their labor allows the crop (and their family) to prosper for another year.

Surprisingly, differences in what’s required from corn production vs. rice farming explain differences in education practices between areas that produce corn and those that produce rice.

In areas that produce rice, schooling is much more intense. The school days are longer, and there are more days of schooling when compared with areas that produce corn. This means that kids in these areas are working harder and studying more, which allows them to improve more quickly in certain areas.

So when we observe differences in math abilities between Western and Eastern nations, we can’t discount the role of agricultural practices in fueling these differences.

The achievement gap and summer education

A large part of the achievement gap between the rich and poor is explained by differences in how the rich and poor spend their summers. Whereas rich kids spend their summers at expensive camps and other programs, the poor are more likely to be at home playing video games or just hanging out.

So while rich kids are accelerating their knowledge and abilities over the summer, the poor are losing ground. And as these differences in summers compound over time, you find a much larger achievement gap between the rich and poor than if they had spent their summers doing similar things.

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Outliers Summary

Summary of  Outliers   Book by Malcolm Gladwell

Short summary, it is not enough to ask what successful people are like; their ancestry and environment play equally significant roles in their success story, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.

Geniuses are the purest forms of outliers but the outcome of their lives buttress the fact that talent and hard work are not the only determinants of outstanding success

Successful people do not do it alone; they are the products of particular places and environments, the “culture of honor” hypothesis says that it matters where you’re from, not just in terms of where you grew up but in terms of your ancestry, by taking cultural legacies seriously, we can learn something about why people succeed and how to make them better at what they do, no one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich, outliers are those who have been given opportunities and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them, what is outliers about.

"Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell explores the factors that contribute to extraordinary success. Through a combination of research and storytelling, Gladwell challenges the notion of individual merit and highlights the importance of external influences such as culture, upbringing, and opportunity. By examining the lives of outliers, individuals who have achieved remarkable accomplishments, Gladwell uncovers the hidden patterns and circumstances that shape their achievements. This thought-provoking book offers a fresh perspective on success and encourages readers to reconsider their understanding of talent and achievement.

Who should read Outliers

Individuals seeking to understand the factors behind extraordinary success.

Entrepreneurs and business professionals looking for insights on achieving greatness.

Students and educators interested in exploring the psychology of success.

Topics in Outliers

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Book Summary Outliers , by Malcolm Gladwell

We love tales of geniuses and underdogs who rise to success through extraordinary talent and hard work—but this isn’t the whole story. In Outliers , Malcolm Gladwell argues that these stories of supposedly self-made men and women mislead us into thinking that success is an individual achievement. But in reality, every successful person had circumstances that contributed to their success.

In this guide, we’ll explain why uncontrollable factors like when you’re born, how you’re raised, and the culture you grow up in impact your success just as much as personal attributes. We’ve also included commentary that adds context to the case studies, provides nuance to the principles, and offers alternative explanations for Gladwell’s conclusions.

1-Page Summary 1-Page Book Summary of Outliers

When we learn about someone who’s extremely successful—an outlier—we often want to know what that person is like . We assume that they must be exceptionally gifted, intelligent, or passionate, and that these personal qualities are the keys to their success. This is the basis of the idea of the self-made man (or woman), who has earned their success and is in control of their destiny.

However, in Outliers , Gladwell argues that the self-made man is a myth. Instead, he says success depends just as much on factors that lie beyond the individual and the individual’s control , including where and when they were born, what kind of family they were born into, how they were parented, and how much money their family has.

(Shortform note: The myth of the self-made man is central to American culture. Around the time of America’s founding, Immanuel Kant promoted the idea that a person is “what he makes of himself,” as he and his fellow Enlightenment philosophers ushered in a growing secularism. Scholars suggest that when the nation’s founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence that people are entitled to the “pursuit of happiness,” they shifted from a Christian focus on reaching heaven to a secular emphasis on attaining earthly success through ambition and autonomy.)

Gladwell is a journalist; author of several best-selling books, including The Tipping Point and Blink ; co-founder of Pushkin Industries ; and host of the podcast Revisionist History . By the time Outliers was published in 2008, he’d garnered international fame and millions of fans for his accessible blend of storytelling and social science research. Seemingly in response to this acclaim, Gladwell dedicates the epilogue of the book to examining the unique circumstances that contributed to his own success.

Gladwell makes a case for the “nurture” side of the nature versus nurture debate—that environment and circumstance are at least as important as innate ability. His argument focuses on opportunities and culture. First, we’ll explore the importance of opportunities and the types of opportunities that significantly impact success. Then, we’ll examine how various cultures shape people’s behaviors and trajectories.

The Nature vs. Nurture Debate The book’s focus on “nurture” elaborates on a New Yorker article in which Gladwell disputed the idea that a person’s intelligence is tied to their race —a controversial implication of the “nature” argument. Specifically, the 1994 book The Bell Curve asserts that genes primarily determine a person’s intelligence and that the intellectually elite naturally rise to power in the United States. This echoed statements by Nobel Prize-winning scientist James Watson, who co-discovered DNA, and by prominent psychologist Arthur Jensen, who concluded that racial differences in American children’s test scores were attributable to genetics rather than circumstances. These views drew fervent criticism for suggesting that Black Americans are intellectually inferior to whites. However, in 2003, psychologist Eric Turkheimer revealed an important caveat to the nature argument: He concluded that DNA determines a person’s potential , but that their environment determines whether they reach that potential . Gladwell builds on this principle in Outliers .

Part 1: Opportunity Is Key to Success

In Part 1, Gladwell argues that people can’t become successful without the opportunity to become successful. While a person’s individual attributes—like talent and work ethic—may determine their potential, external factors determine who has the opportunity to reach their potential and who faces roadblocks.

Furthermore, Gladwell writes that people who get opportunities early in life have a huge advantage over those whose opportunities come later, because:

1. They create self-fulfilling prophecies. Children who believe they’re talented or smart act as if they are, which leads them to actually develop the talent or intellect they believe they already possess. Likewise, children who believe they’re unremarkable tend to embody that identity.

(Shortform note: In Mindset , psychologist Carol S. Dweck reveals a caveat to this: Children who are praised for being smart tend to shy away from difficult tasks for fear of failure because they want to uphold their identity as a smart person. This reaction comes from a fixed mindset, a belief that innate abilities (like intelligence) are unchangeable . By contrast, children who are praised for their effort develop a growth mindset, a belief that you can build upon your natural abilities by working hard and challenging yourself.)

2. They benefit from accumulative advantage , meaning that early opportunities lead to more opportunities, creating a snowball effect of compounding advantages. By the same token, the Matthew effect also describes how small disadvantages tend to snowball into larger ones.

(Shortform note: Research shows that the concept of accumulative advantage—a principle called the Matthew Effect—applies to many areas of life, including education and wealth distribution . However, [the reality is more...

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READ FULL SUMMARY OF OUTLIERS

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Outliers Summary Shortform Introduction

Outliers is a collection of stories, each exploring a variety of external factors that contribute to success. Malcolm Gladwell argues that extraordinarily successful people—or outliers—reached that point not just because of hard work and determination, but also thanks to luck, timing, and opportunities. He challenges the notion of self-made success through anecdotes and insight from various disciplines, including history, sociology, and psychology.

About the Author

Gladwell is a New Yorker staff writer and author of several bestselling books that have earned him worldwide fame and millions of fans for his captivating style of writing and unusual subjects. Gladwell blends storytelling with social science research to offer new perspectives on topics such as how trends catch on and when to trust your intuition. His books—which include five New York Times bestsellers and have sold millions of copies in dozens of countries—have popularized concepts such as the “ broken windows theory ,” the Pareto principle , the...

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Outliers Summary Introduction: Defining an Outlier

In Part 1, Gladwell explores the importance of opportunity in setting the stage for success. These opportunities come in many different forms, as we’ll explore below. But before we start breaking down the components of the outlier’s success, let’s look at what an outlier is.

The Myth of the Outlier

Gladwell defines outliers as people who reach a level of success so extraordinary that it’s statistically improbable.

We typically assume that outliers must be exceptionally gifted, intelligent, or passionate. Gladwell notes that this belief promotes the idea of the self-made man (or woman), who relies on their innate intelligence and perseverance to succeed. According to this mythology, the self-made person has earned their success and is in control of their destiny.

However, Gladwell argues that success depends just as much on factors that lie beyond the individual and their control , including their culture, community, and family. Upon further inspection, there are hidden advantages, exceptional opportunities, and cultural legacies that contribute to the outlier’s success.

Origins of the Self-Made Man Myth In taking on the myth of the self-made...

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Outliers Summary Part 1: Opportunity | Chapter 1: Opportunity Is Key to Success

In Part 1, Gladwell argues that people can’t become successful without the opportunity to become successful. These opportunities come in many forms, and in this and the next few chapters, he examines different types of opportunities, including:

• Opportunities to gain more opportunities (Chapter 2)
• Being raised in a way that fosters practical intelligence (Chapter 4)
• Unexpected benefits of seemingly unfavorable environments (Chapter 5)

While a person’s individual attributes—like talent and work ethic—may determine their potential , Gladwell asserts that external factors determine who has the opportunity to reach their potential , and who faces roadblocks. In other words, it’s impossible to achieve success if you don’t have the chance to put your skills to work.

Furthermore, Gladwell writes that people who get opportunities early in life have a huge advantage over those whose opportunities come later, because early opportunities:

• Create self-fulfilling prophecies
• Benefit from accumulative advantage

Seemingly Minor Aspects of Upbringing Can Have Big Impacts In addition to the benefits that Gladwell describes, your childhood...

Shortform Exercise: Acknowledge Early Opportunities in Your Life

Think about the role of accumulative advantage and self-fulfilling prophecy in your own life.

Describe one opportunity or disadvantage that you had early in your life or career. For instance, maybe you had a particularly supportive coach, or you had to cope with instability in your home life.

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Outliers Summary Chapter 2: The Opportunity of Time (and Timing)

It may seem obvious that we need to work hard to succeed, but Gladwell argues that, too often, we attribute success solely to talent and forget that the hours we put in matter just as much as, if not significantly more than, the natural gifts we start with. He writes that, after a certain level of natural talent gets your foot in the door in a particular field, practice becomes the determining factor in how successful you are.

Although we tend to think of practice as an equalizer—that anyone who is a hard worker can succeed—Gladwell points out that having the time to practice enough to master a skill is a luxury afforded only to the privileged.

Gladwell cites studies showing that the most masterful individuals in their fields have practiced their craft for at least 10,000 hours, which averages nearly 20 hours every week for 10 years. Someone needs to be in pretty extraordinary circumstances (with the extraordinary opportunities they provide) to accumulate 10,000 hours of focused practice as a young person.

The 10,000-Hour Debate K. Anders Ericsson, the psychologist who led the study from which Gladwell gleaned the 10,000-hour rule, has criticized Gladwell...

Shortform Exercise: Clock Your 10,000 Hours

How can you achieve your 10,000 hours for mastery?

Think of a skill or craft that you wish to master. How much time would you estimate you’ve already spent deliberately practicing that skill?

Outliers Summary Chapters 3-4: The Opportunity of Intelligence

In addition to the opportunity of time, Gladwell argues that successful people have the opportunity of intelligence—though not the type of intelligence we typically associate with success. He notes two types of intelligence:

1. Analytical Intelligence

• Measured by IQ tests
• Good for solving intellectual puzzles
• Genetic and innate, at least in part

2. Practical Intelligence

• Not measured by IQ tests
• Also known as social savvy; enables you to accurately read other people and situations and adjust accordingly, in order to get what you want
• Learned rather than innate

(Shortform note: Analytical and practical intelligence are two of three types identified in psychologist Robert Sternberg’s model of intelligence , called the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence. The third type is creative intelligence, which entails thinking outside the box to come up with innovative solutions.)

Although we tend to assume that analytical intelligence—indicated by a high IQ—is a prerequisite for success, Gladwell asserts that extraordinary success in life is often the result of practical intelligence. As we’ll see, this...

Shortform Exercise: Take the Divergence Test

Are you a divergent or convergent thinker?

Set a timer for two minutes. Answer the question: How many uses can you think of for a box?

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Shortform Exercise: Hone Your Practical Intelligence

Reflect on your upbringing and strategize to fill in any gaps in practical intelligence.

Describe at least one instance in your childhood in which your parents demonstrated that you should either challenge or comply with authority.

Outliers Summary Chapter 5: Opportunities Hidden in Hardships

So far, we’ve looked at the opportunities provided by privilege and good fortune. But difficult circumstances can also bring unexpected opportunities.

In this chapter, Gladwell illustrates this point by examining the life of Joe Flom, a lawyer who grew up in poverty during the Great Depression. As we’ll discuss, because of his early hardships, Flom grew up to become a partner at one of the largest and most powerful law firms in the world—Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher, and Flom.

Although Gladwell frames Flom as an outlier, he clarifies that Flom is representative of an inordinate number of highly successful lawyers who had the same hidden opportunities that we’ll explore in this chapter: being Jewish, being the child of garment workers, and being born in the 1930s. As we’ll see, these circumstances and their consequences encapsulate many of the principles from previous chapters, such as accumulative advantage, the importance of upbringing, and the necessity of thousands of hours of practice to master a skill.

Let’s look at the hidden opportunities in this rags-to-riches story.

Hidden Opportunity #1: Being Jewish

Gladwell writes that **when Flom entered the job...

Shortform Exercise: Find Opportunities in Challenges

Reflect on the advantages you’ve gained from your disadvantages.

Describe a difficult challenge you’ve faced in your life.

Outliers Summary Part 2: The Effects of Cultural Legacies | Chapters 6-9

The cultures of our ancestors (even the aspects we no longer practice or ascribe to) influence our present-day behaviors. In Part 2, Gladwell explores how the legacies of our cultures foster or impede our success by examining three distinct cultures:

• The culture of honor (Chapter 6)
• The culture of deference (Chapter 7)
• The culture of diligence (Chapter 8)

Each example shows that it matters where you’re from—not only geographically but also culturally. Then, in Chapter 9, we’ll examine a case study of a school who achieved success because it challenged the cultural norms of western education.

Chapter 6: The Culture of Honor

First, Gladwell describes what sociologists call the culture of honor, in which your self-worth (and sometimes your livelihood) is based on your reputation. In this culture, you’re more likely to fight someone who challenges you and, therefore, jeopardizes your reputation. Whether or not you come from a culture of honor may impact how you respond to certain situations, which can affect your life trajectory.

(Shortform note: Gladwell doesn’t make an explicit connection between a culture of honor and success, as he did with the...

Shortform Exercise: Identify Cultural Legacies

Reflect on the lessons, beliefs, and assumptions passed down to you.

Think of lessons your parents explicitly taught you growing up, or values or beliefs you learned from your parents’ or other relatives’ example. What are they?

Shortform Exercise: What Is Success?

Gladwell’s examination of the formula for success challenges common beliefs.

In what ways has your idea of success changed after reading this book?

Table of Contents

Book Summary: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Table of Contents

The Book in Three Sentences

What makes successful people different? That’s the question Malcolm Gladwell wants to answer in Outliers. According to Gladwell, we focus too much on the traits that successful people have, but not on where they come from.

Outliers Summary

Introduction.

The town of Roseto, Pennsylvania was famous because most of its inhabitants were only dying of old age. There was no alcoholism, addictions, crime, heart attacks, or heart diseases. Roseto was the exception to the rule, an outsider, an outlier. Rosetans’ didn’t have good eating habits, they didn’t have exceptional genes, and there wasn’t anything peculiar about the location they lived in. Their secret to longevity was the close-knit community that kept them isolated from the stresses of the modern world. The medical community didn’t welcome these findings with open arms because one doesn’t associate health with community. But whether we like it or not, our cultural values and our friends and family have an impact on who we are.

Part One: Opportunity

Chapter one: the matthew effect.

In most professional sports, the only ones allowed to participate are the best of the best. This is similar to what happens in other disciplines, such as ballet, or classical music. The only way you can get into those worlds is based on your abilities. Although this leads us to believe that success is based on individual merit, that’s not always the case.

While we believe that people owe their success to personal qualities, their parents, opportunities, hidden advantages, or cultural legacies are as important. There was a pattern among Canadian hockey players: most of them were all born in January, the second most frequent birth month was February, and the third was March. This happened because the eligibility cutoff for hockey players is January 1st, so the oldest players in their category (the ones born earlier) had an advantage over the youngest ones (the ones born later). The oldest players received better coaching, played more often, and had better teammates. This compounded over time and by the time the players participated in professional competitions, they were the best hockey had to offer.

These biases appear in other areas as well, such as education, where the oldest players score better than younger ones. So the opportunity to have a head start (something they didn’t deserve or earned) has made them successful. Sociologist Robert Merton called this “ the Matthew Effect ” which he named after the verse in the Gospel of Matthew. The verse says that successful people receive more opportunities and they become even more successful. Some sociologists call this “ accumulative advantage ”.

All hockey players start the same, but small differences create a change that makes the differences a bit bigger, that leads to a bigger opportunity that leads to a bigger difference, and so on. Sadly, this means that players who weren’t born in the first months of the year might never play professional hockey. By creating an arbitrary rule, we accidentally wrote off most people and labeled them as inapt or as a failure.

Chapter Two: The 10,000-Hour Rule

At a young age, Bill Joy was fascinated with computers. He started programming at the age of sixteen in the Computer Center at the University of Michigan. Joy enrolled at the University of California in 1975. He invented algorithms on the fly, rewrote UNIX, and rewrote Java. Is Joy an example of innate talent? The difference between the best, the merely good, and the mediocre is the number of hours they practice. Elite performers usually have a total of ten thousand hours of practice, good students eight thousand, and casual performers around four thousand. In other words, the number of hours of practice separates the professional from the amateurs. There isn’t such thing as being a “natural”, what distinguishes one person from the other is how hard they work. Those at the very top work harder than anyone else.

According to researchers, anyone can achieve true expertise in ten thousand hours. By practicing that amount of time, you can become a world-class expert in anything: athlete, chess player, writer, or musician. Ten thousand hours is a lot of time and to reach that number, you also need other resources, such as encouraging parents and some money.

On top of that, Bill Joy had several opportunities: he happened to be in a university that had a Computer Center, he discovered programming by chance, he spent a lot of time there because it was open twenty-four hours a day and he found a bug that allowed him to be there indefinitely. Before he could become an expert in his field, he got the opportunity to learn so that he could become one. Unsurprisingly, Joy estimates he must have spent around ten thousand hours writing programs.

To put the ten thousand-hour rule to the test, the author used two examples: The Beatles and Bill Gates. Before visiting the US, The Beatles had been together for seven years. It took them around ten years between founding the band and creating their best work (though this is a matter of opinion of course). The band used early experiences as a chance to get better and get confidence. When they went to Hamburg, The Beatles used to play eight-hour-long shows, seven days a week. After touring, The Beatles had played twelve hundred shows. When the band from Liverpool started making music, they were average at best, by the time the tour was over, they had discipline, stamina, a varied setlist, and a unique sound.

Bill Gates came from a wealthy family. He got bored easily and left public school to attend Lakeside, a private school for the elite families of Seattle. The Mother’s Club at Lakeside did an annual sale and one year they used the three thousand dollars they had on a computer terminal. This happened in 1968, a time when computer terminals weren’t that popular. In fact, most colleges didn’t have access to them. This gave Gates the opportunity to learn how to program as an eighth grader.

Eventually, Gates was lucky enough to go to the University of Washington and be part of the Computer Center Corporation (C-Cubed, for short) and get free programming lessons. When C-Cubed went bankrupt, Gates participated in Information Schieces, Inc. Programming was Gates’ obsession and he acquired a sought-after skill that few people had. All the opportunities Gates had access to gave him time to practice for ten thousand hours and probably much more.

The Beatles, Bill Joy, and Bill Gates are talented, but what set these people apart isn’t their talent but their opportunities. If we consider the seventy-five richest people in human history, fourteen are Americans born in the mid-eighteenth century. So how old you were during the American economic transformation of the 1860s and 1870s mattered.

Something similar happened with the tech wizards of Silicon Valley: Gates, Allen, Jobs, Ballmer, and Schmit were born in the 1950s. Although brilliant, all the people mentioned had opportunities and seized them. Their tremendous success was influenced by the world they lived in.

Chapter Three: The Trouble with Geniuses, Part 1

Christopher Langan was a special guest in the 1 vs. 100 quiz show. People called him a genius because he did everything perfectly with little to no preparation which included playing musical instruments, learning languages, doing metal calculations, and so on. He left the show with $250,000 after calculating that the risks of losing were greater than the potential benefits of winning. So why wasn’t Langan, an obviously brilliant person, more successful?

After WWI, Lewis Terman, a professor of psychology at Standford University came up with an IQ test to find the brightest children. To this day, a lot of schools, universities, and companies see someone’s IQ as untapped potential. In some cases, a high IQ test means more education, more money, and living a longer life. But there’s a limit. When someone reaches 120 IQ points, there’s no real-life advantage. This means that past a certain point, IQ doesn’t make a difference. The author refers to this phenomenon as “ the threshold effect ”. Once you’re good enough, what you do or know beyond that point doesn’t matter. Finding the most intelligent children became Terman’s obsession. The children he “found” earned good incomes, but few of those geniuses became famous figures. This proved that there’s no connection between intellect and achievement.

Chapter Four: The Trouble with Geniuses, Part II

Chris Langan was the eldest of four. He never met his father and his mother was estranged from his family. Chris grew up in poverty but was offered two full scholarships when he graduated high school: one to Reed and one to Chicago. He chose Reed and soon regretted it because he didn’t fit in. Langan spent his time at the library and soon lost his scholarship because his mother didn’t send a financial statement. He left Reed, worked in construction and as a firefighter, and eventually enrolled at Montana State University but decided to drop out. Chris Langan was into philosophy, mathematics, and physics. He even wrote his own treatise but could never publish it because he lacked academic credentials.

Gladwell compares Langan to Oppenheimer, the physicist who was a key part of the development of the nuclear bomb in WWII. People also called Oppenheimer a genius, but he had severe emotional issues. He once tried to poison his tutor but the university put him on probation after the incident. Eventually, Oppenheimer became director of the Manhattan Project despite being a theorist, having communist friends, and not having administrative experience. While Langan lost his scholarship and had to drop out of college because he didn’t send a financial statement, Oppenheimer tried to poison a tutor and still made a name for himself. What happened was that Oppenheimer was a genius, but more importantly, he knew how to make a case for what he wanted. Experts call the skill that lets you adjust to a situation “ practical intelligence ”.

Sociologist Annett Lareau explained that there are two parenting philosophies: that of wealthy parents and that of poor parents. Wealthy parents send their kids to different activities and often ask their children about their teachers, coaches, and teammates. Apart from asking them questions, they also reason and negotiate with them. Lareau refers to middle-class parenting as “ concerted cultivation ” which encourages a child’s talents, opinions, and skills. Poor parents, on the other hand, don’t give their kids such an intense schedule and on top of that, they respond passively to authority. Poor parents use “ accomplishment of natural growth ”. They care about their children, but they let them learn and grow on their one.

No parenting style is better than the other. As part of the research, poor children behaved better and were more creative and independent. Middle-class kids, on the other hand, learned teamwork, knew how to interact with adults, and knew how to speak up. But while no style is better, the latter represents a cultural advantage. Not only are kids from wealthier families better off because they have more money and they go to better schools, but also because they have acquired an attitude that allows them to succeed in the modern world.

This would explain why Oppenheimer led a more successful life than Langan. Oppenheimer was the perfect example of concerted cultivation. His family had a chauffeur, he went to Europe regularly, and he attended a private school. Oppenheimer took care of challenges flawlessly because he’d seen his father negotiate his way out of complicated situations before. His entire life had prepared him to convince people of what he could accomplish. Conversely, Langan was raised by a violent stepfather, he resented authority and craved independence. Nobody had taught Chris to speak up for himself, reason, or negotiate. This was a limitation that prevented him from achieving certain things in life.

Chapter Five: The Three Lessons of Joe Flom

Joe Flom is a partner of the law firm Shadden. He grew up in Brooklyn’s Borough Park during the depression. His parents were Jewish immigrants and they were poor. He was lucky enough to be accepted on Towsend Harris, a legendary public high school, and eventually applied to Harvard Law School. Flom quickly became a top student and was invited to be associated with a new firm called Shadden. The firm grew exponentially and Shadeen is now one of the largest, most powerful law firms in existence. Although Flom seems like the exception to the rule, we know that no one makes it alone and the environment you grow up in matters. Flom is intelligent and ambitious, but that, on its own, means nothing. So what opportunities did Flom have that allowed him to be successful?

Lesson Number One: The Importance of Being Jewish

Flom lacked all the qualities that a lawyer should have: he didn’t have a pleasing personality, didn’t have a sharp appearance, and didn’t come from the right background. Since he was Jewish, the only firm that would hire him was a struggling one that specialized in the kind of cases that no other firm would take: hostile takeovers and litigation. Flom excelled at these and when people started looking for experts in this area of law, Flom was one of the best. While everyone else was focusing on something else, Flom was perfecting his craft and learning the skill that soon became highly coveted.

Lesson Number Two: Demographic Luck

There is a perfect time for a New York Jewish lawyer to be born, Flom was born then. Where you come from, the economic class you belong to, and your age matter. Simply put, Flom had all the right conditions to succeed.

Lesson Number Three: The Garment Industry and Meaningful Work

In the late 1800s, clothing manufacturers thrived in America because, for the first time, even poor people could afford their clothes. Jewish immigrants took advantage of this business by doing garment trading. They started doing clothes themselves, invested in machines, hired people, and bought their own factories. They were learning about the modern economy, market research, manufacturing, negotiating, and so on. Meanwhile, other immigrants, such as Mexicans, Italians, or the Irish didn’t have the same opportunities. It’s worth mentioning that before immigrating to America, Jewish people were forbidden to own land in Europe, so they dedicated their life to other professions, such as manufacturing clothes and this gave them a huge advantage in America.

For work to be satisfying, it has to have autonomy, complexity, and a relationship between effort and reward. This makes work fulfilling, and more importantly, meaningful. This is what the garment industry was like in the 1800s. By the late 1900s, the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of those immigrants became doctors and lawyers. 

Success isn’t a random occurrence. It’s the result of predictable and powerful opportunities.

Part Two: Legacy

Chapter six: harlan kentucky.

Harlan is a small town in Kentucky. The Howards and the Truners were two of the founding families and they didn’t get along. Things escalated between members of both families and several people got killed. Interestingly, this wasn’t an isolated case and there were many violent fights between families in the same area. A family fighting another one is called a feud and this was common in the nineteenth century, but when several families start fighting each other and in different places, it becomes a pattern. There were many apparent causes but the consensus was what sociologists call a “ culture of honor ”.

In certain places, when farming isn’t possible, people become herdsmen. Farming fosters a sense of community because they all work towards a common goal. Also, no one can steal an entire field, but herdsmen can lose cattle to thieves if they’re not careful. This makes herdsmen more aggressive and willing to fight. This is a culture of honor and most people of Scotch-Irish descent have it because this was one of the places with the fiercest and most violent cultures of honor in history. Since places like Harlan were remote, there was no law. This would explain why the American south has always had higher criminality rates than the rest of the country. When we talk about the culture of honor, where you come from matters.

In a more recent experiment, a couple of sociologists wanted to find out if the culture of honor of hundreds of years ago is still present in the modern era. Random people were insulted and the researchers studied their reactions. The young men from the north of the United States were amused by the incident in question, laughed it off, and moved on with their lives. Southerners, on the other hand, were infuriated and acted in a similar way to their ancestors who were picking fights in the nineteenth century. Cultural legacies have a long-lasting influence. Similarly to the way accents are passed down from generation to generation, these violent attitudes become social inheritance just like any other feature.

Chapter Seven: The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes

For a while, during the 1990s, Korean Air’s planes were crashing often which negatively impacted the company’s reputation. Over time, the company turned the situation around and it’s now one of the safest and most prestigious airlines in the world. What happened? In a way, the airline didn’t succeed until it accepted its cultural legacy.

Airplane accidents are rare because a series of human errors have to take place for a disaster to take place. Everyone has their own personality, but on top of it, there are tendencies we get from the communities we grew up in. This can cause communication problems among members of different cultures because they have different values. As in the case of the airline mentioned above, these problems can lead to disasters.

A lot of people working on the National Transportation Safety Board are psychologists and their job is to listen to the recordings from the black box of the crashed airplanes and reconstruct their exchanges. By doing this, they were able to determine that one of the flights from Korean Air that ended in tragedy happened because of several conditions: a technical malfunction, bad weather, and a tired pilot. But there was something else at play.

The Korean language has six different levels of conversational address, so depending on the relationship between two people (in this case the pilot and the first officer), they have to use the appropriate form. The person who’s socially superior or commands and the other one obeys. A lower rank person can hint at something without saying it, but the other person has to guess the meaning behind it. Since the pilot was tired and he misinterpreted what the first officer was saying, he made a bad call that ended in tragedy.

In 2000, Korean Air made some changes to prevent future accidents. Professionals evaluated The English language skills of the flight crew, they brought a Western firm to provide further training, and from then on everyone had to speak proficient English. The goal was to provide people with an alternate identity different from the one connected to their own culture. Korean Air offered pilots an opportunity to succeed.

Chapter Eight: Rice Paddies and Math Tests

The Chinese have cultivated rice for thousands of years. From there it spread throughout east Asia. Rice paddies are complex terraces that farmers have to irrigate. Everything about rice is an art form: watering it, planting the seeds, fertilizing it, the process of weeding, and so on. For the longest time, Rice was everything in China. It was breakfast, lunch, and dinner, it was wealth, and it was status.

It’s easier to remember a series of numbers in Chinese than it’s to remember them in English (or almost any other language, for that matter). Pronouncing Chinese numbers takes one-third of a second which makes it easy to remember them. While English is a highly irregular number system, Chinese has a more logical counting system. Something similar happens with Japanese and Korean. Due to this, Asian children learn to count faster. Soon, those kids are performing basic operations. There’s a pattern within the language that makes math easier for Chinese people. In this case, being good at math doesn’t mean that Asians are smarter, it means that math is part of their culture.

Western agriculture is based on sophisticated equipment. For Asian farmers to improve, they have to become smarter which meant weeding carefully, skillfully fertilizing, paying more attention to water levels, and so on. Chinese farmers are among the hardest-working people in history, but their work was meaningful: there was a relationship between effort and reward, it was complex, and it was autonomous. Being good at math isn’t innate, it’s about attitude. To succeed at math you have to persist, work hard, and explore. In some countries, those attributes are part of the culture: Singapore, South Korea, China, and Japan.

Chapter Nine: Marita’s Bargain

KIPP Academy is a middle school in New York City (KIPP stands for Knowledge is Power Program). The school is located in the South Bronx, one of the poorest districts. Students are randomly chosen, half are African American, and the rest are Hispanic. The federal government helps the academy get lunch. Despite what the description suggests, KIPP is a different school, and in a good sense. This is one of the most desirable schools in New York City and it specializes in math. The KIPP program is a philosophy that spread throughout the US and shows promise. Yet what sets KIPP apart isn’t the curriculum, teachers, or resources. What sets KIPP apart is that it took cultural legacies seriously and this has made a difference.

In the early nineteenth century, the public education system underwent a transformation. At the time, too much schooling was seen as negative, so Saturday classes were eliminated, the school day was shortened, and vacations were lengthened. These decisions have had consequences to this day. During the summer, poor kids fall behind because they don’t go to summer school, they don’t go to special classes, and they don’t read books. School works, but there isn’t enough of it. Summer vacations are a problem, something that KIPP schools are solving through 50 to 60 percent more learning time.

Success is predictable. You don’t have to be bright to succeed. To succeed, you need opportunities and the ability to identify and seize them. To transform the world, we have to give more opportunities to everyone and not just a select few.

Further Reading

• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• The E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber
• Ikigai by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles

Screen Rant

I'm not okay with this kingdom of the planet of the apes death - but the sequel can reverse it.

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10 Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes Easter Eggs & References

Mae's cut kingdom of the planet of the apes backstory detailed by freya allan, is caesar in kingdom of the planet of the apes.

Warning: Contains SPOILERS for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes!

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes ' most tragic death is quite shocking in the film, but luckily the situation surrounding the death means that the sequel can reverse it. While Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes features a lot of character deaths, one stands out as being especially tragic, with it costing the life of one of the main ape characters. Since Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the start of a new Planet of the Apes trilogy, however, it is entirely possible that this main character could return.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is finally here , with the highly anticipated continuation of the beloved modern reboot trilogy now out. A new trilogy is set to be started by Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes , with the series presumably continuing to follow Noa in the wake of the events of the fourth modern Planet of the Apes film. While some arcs may seem to have ended definitively in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes , this may not be the case across the board.

Raka's Death In Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes Isn't Definitive

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes introduced an all-new orangutan character, with the supporting ape being named Raka. Raka starts out as one of Noa's only allies in his journey to take down the masked ape clan, with him joining Noa and the talking human Mae on their journeys. However, the trio is eventually attacked by the masked apes while on a bridge, leading to the death of Raka.

Although Raka doesn't appear in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes again after the bridge scene, his death in the film isn't definitive. Raka is seen being whisked away by the strong river currents, but his body is never seen again, meaning that he could have made it to shore and simply didn't find Noa and Mae before the end of the film.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes features plenty of overt and sly references to other entries in the franchise, tying the plot to the larger series.

What Raka's Return Would Mean For Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes' Sequel

Raka's return in a Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes sequel would be a big deal, with the character having a major impact on future films. If Raka is to return, he could help Noa's clan learn more about books and the remains of humankind, which Raka specialized in before his death.

Raka's return could also mean that Noa and his apes are able to learn more about Caesar , who was a major figure in the film despite his death hundreds of years before. Raka seemed to be an expert on the legends of Caesar, and his knowledge on the subject could continued to be shared with Noa if he returns in the film after Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes .

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Set several years after the events of War for the Planet of the Apes, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the next installment in the Apes saga. Ape clans have taken up residence in the oasis that Caesar sought to colonize, but humans have reverted to their animalistic nature in their absence. Now battling between enslavement and freedom, outliers in the Ape clans will take sides in a newly burgeoning society.