Outliers
First of all I have to commend the Author’s ability to form an argument. He manages to convey his points well and the book flows. Overall it was a fun read.
But I have to say I do overall disagree with the Author’s message and the point it tries to make.
Malcom shares that the number one reason that successful people stand out is because simply they were lucky.
I’ll briefly share the examples he talks about throughout this book:
- A disproportionate number of professional baseball players are born in the month of January.
- Chinese students are good at Maths because of how numbers are processed in their language.
- Bill Gates is successful because he was privileged enough to have access to a terminal based computer when most people did not.
While these examples definitely have merit and do make sense, the book ends up feeling like it is saying your success is not in your control. That is something that doesn’t sit right with me personally.
I fully acknowledge that yes a huge part of success is for sure the luck factor of where you were born and the kind of environment you grew up in and all of those aspects.
But I believe in the developed western world there are endless opportunities in the modern day. What’s required is the hard work to execute and take advantage of the opportunities given to you.
Many people are blessed with the opportunity of being born in a developed country. Receiving a free education and doing a degree in whatever field they desire. But why do they not become successful? Can we say in good faith that they did not have the right opportunity in life?
There’s also an argument to be made that even in developed countries you still have people in lower socio-economic circumstances and they do not have the right opportunities. Which is something again I would agree with.
But I would say that this particular difference of privilege can be made up by hard work.
No amount of hard work can help if you live in an environment where there are no opportunities. And in those cases I completely agree that it’s all completely on luck.
Which is why I think if you have the privilege to live in a developed world that does have opportunities, then you have already gotten lucky. Millions of people would kill to be in a position like that. After that all that is required is hard work.
Malcom does talk about the 10,000 hours rule and how Beatles success came from the fact that they performed 8 hours a day for such a long time in Germany to become extremely good.
So he does acknowledge that hard work plays a part but in the book overall this felt like a very small point.
I have some more thoughts but this will do for now.
