Outliers: The Story of Success is a book by Malcolm Gladwell, written about his thoughts about essential factors of success. He gives many stories as examples to support his thesis. What he believes is a bit differnet from what I thought would usually affect one's success; one's environment and background, mostly. Another thing that he emphasizes is the '10,000-hour rule'. It is a rule that says 'greatness requires time'. The rule basically means that one needs to spend 10,000 hours doing something in order to succeed in it. The author illustrates his thesis by giving stories of hockey players, the beatles, Bill Gates, etc.
His theory seemed not to agree with what I used to think-I thought success has to do more with one's talents and efforts. Here, the author agreed that efforts are necessary, but he emphasized the environment and background more than other factors I could come up with. It seems that the author thinks that luck is something that counts as the most important factor of success, and it seems that this, actually, is pretty much true. Nonetheless, still I think talent is something really important as well since many people who succeeded not only struggled for achievements but also had talents that others didn't have. Especially here in KMLA there were chances that make me realize the importance of talents. It seems that at times talents even outweigh efforts.
I agree that Gladwell's ideas are hard to accept at face value at times. But I like that he makes us think about our own situations, and how we have the potential to seize opportunities. I'm not sure to what degree he is saying that talent is not such a big factor. Is he saying we need to focus less on it? I think maybe. Maybe he's suggesting we need to consider other factors you mention - not just luck but the "cumulative advantage." It is hard to argue that Bill Gates and Kim Yuna aren't incredibly gifted. But would their gift bloom if they hadn't been in fertile conditions? If Kim Yuna' had a different mother or a different hobby as a child, would we know who she is? There are many things to gain from this book, even if it seems to be dampening our views of success. I hope you guys ultimately find it inspirational.
답글삭제Two future reading journals you should prepare for are: 1) You pick someone famous not in the book and illustrate how they qualify as an outlier 2) You take a look at yourself and illustrate how you perhaps fall into this outlier category (or hope to in the future).