Ever
since this book was written years ago and became a #1 National Bestseller, I’ve
wanted to read it, so I’m glad that I finally got the chance to do so. My older
brother told me about this book as I was starting college at BYU and he suggested
that I read it. At first I was a little bit skeptical because I wasn’t sure we
had the same taste in books. (His favorite book is “The 7 Habits of Highly
Effective People.”) But once he started to tell me a little bit about it I
began to be interested. I bought the book from the BYU Bookstore and it has
been sitting on my shelf since then.
The first thing that everyone always talks about when this book is
mentioned is the 10,000 hour rule. I got the just of the idea before I read the
book and specifically that chapter on the rule, but it was so very eye opening
and exciting to see this rule come to life in the lives of real people. My
favorite example, because I am a musician is that of the Beetles and how they
began to play every week in Hamburg, Germany while they were still a struggling
high school band.
They played in Hamburg eight hours a
day, seven days a week when they went to play. They had their first taste of
success in 1962 but at this point they had already been playing there since 1960,
and more than that, with their different trips to Hamburg, had performed
together about twelve hundred times. Gladwell refers to this as the “Hamburg
crucible,” but it is rather extraordinary, because many bands never even get to
perform that much together even in their entire careers.
Gladwell also shares the story about
Bill Gates and how he did 10,000 hours of programming before he started
Microsoft because he started programming as an eighth grader in the Seattle
area.
For me, this rule means that there
is hope and that I can work hard to become the professional musician that I
want to become. I have actually done some calculating, and it’s very rough,
because I haven’t been counting hours since I began, but I am approaching
having played cello for 10,000 hours and its exciting because I want to be an
outlier, like the people talked about in this book.
Another interesting thing that he
discusses in the book is the role of opportunity and how that makes a big
difference in an outlier’s life. The example with which he opens the book are
the birthdays of the professional hockey players on a Canadian time.
He explains that if you look at
birthdays, you’ll find that many of the professional hockey players are born
near the beginning of the month during January-March. Why is this, he asks. And
then he goes on to explain that in the beginning, when they are choosing who
should advance as youth, for every level they start the calendar on January 1st
and take everyone who was born in that year. Gladwell explains that because
they start this especially at such a young age, they are essentially ignoring
half of the candidates, because of course, when choosing teams, they’ll choose
the bigger players, those born in January or close to it. This trend because it
starts so young, continues to be seen all the way up to the professional level.
Opportunity plays a big role in
being an outlier. He really focuses on this theme a lot throughout the book. It
is about working hard, but it’s also about being at the right place at the
right time, knowing the right people, and even being born in the right year.
One more incredible example that he gives to illustrate this is that many of
technology’s brilliant minds were born within years of each other. Bill Gates
was born in 1955, Paul Allen: 1953, Steve Ballmer: 1956, Steve Jobs: 1955, Eric
Schmidt: 1955, and Bill Joy: 1954.
This was incredible for me to see.
Yes, these people are all outliers, and yes, they worked extremely hard to get
to where they are now, but even more than that, they were born in that perfect
technology time frame when it and were teenagers/young adults when it was
starting to really take off. It’s incredible. It’s more than fate that their
brilliant minds were born within years of each other.
This is important in my life because
it helps me be realistic. Yes, I can work hard, and yes, I will accomplish
amazing things, but there is more on the line than talent and hard work. So I
want to keep working but not be frustrated if I am never labeled an, “outlier.”
I absolutely loved reading this book
and it is definitely one that I will read again and continue to think about.
There is so much that I could discuss but these are the main points that I
wanted to illustrate.
“Outliers,” by Malcolm Gladwell is
an incredible book that I think everyone should read in order to understand
business, success, hard work, failure, opportunity, etc. It inspires me to work
and be better than I am now.
