Success does not happen overnight

If you look below the surface and try to discover the factors which cause a person to be successful, what would you find? Malcolm Gladwell, author of the best-selling Tipping Point and Blink, addresses these sorts of questions in Outliers: The Story of Success. A consistent theme of the book is that success which appears to be attributable to extraordinary genius is often in reality attributable to a combination of favourable circumstances and hard work over a long period of time.

Interesting observations which are made in the book include: people born in certain months are more likely to become high achievers in certain sports as an accidental consequence of cut-off dates set for children’s sports; the amount of time taken to become highly accomplished in any given field is typically around 10,000 hours; pilots whose cultural background demands a high respect for authority are more likely to crash planes; and Chinese-speaking people are better at mathematics than English-speakers because numbers have more logical names in Chinese.

As with all Gladwell’s books, the subject matter is interesting and the writing is highly entertaining. The ideas raised are certainly thought-provoking, although not always thoroughly convincing. I am inclined to think that natural ability plays a greater role in personal success than Gladwell gives it credit for, but nonetheless the book is valuable as an encouragement to seek success through persistent hard work and through thinking laterally about which opportunities to pursue.