OUTLIERS by Malcom Gladwell

After reading “what the dog saw” by Malcolm Gladwell and getting all hyped about how psychologically entertaining he was, I decided to Google who he was and found out he had other published books. Looking at all the titles of the books, remembering seeing Outliers at Torchbearers books (tbssgh) some days before and Henneh’s appraisal about the book. I decided to get a hold of it and read for myself.

Now, on picking the physical copy of Outliers, its cover read that it is “revelatory” by the Times. So I could theorize that it was commercially successful and widely read. At the bottom of the cover page was “the number 1 international bestseller” complimented with penguin books logo and history has it that any book published by penguin books will fuel your imagination and guide the soul and I’m all about that, so I knew this will be a special read for me. Did I mention I’m a completely converged fan of Malcom Gladwell too? Oh my bad! I am a Gladwell lover (not only a fan)

The book proper.

If you are someone who is very inquisitive and curious about how some people are successful while others are not and why things happen in a certain way and not the other, then OUTLIERS is for you. ⁣⁣
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Reading this book made me realize that there is something profoundly wrong with the way we make sense of success. ⁣⁣
I figured most successful people lie to their fans, followers & friends.⁣⁣
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Some lie deliberately while some also just don’t know how they became successful, the “it just happened” kind of people. ⁣⁣
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Gladwell revealed all of that in his book, like the cover page states, it’s “a story of success”. It’s about men and women who do/did things that were/are out of ordinary. ⁣⁣
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Most at times we always want to know about the successful, how they made it, what’s their secret, how intelligent were they, any talent, any special anointing, etc etc and we seem to always get the same story line-“…born in modest circumstance and by virtue of his/her own grit and talent, fought his/her way to greatness” ⁣⁣

😥tsheeee are you kidneying me? Where is the how? The why,what,when,which etc? 😏😏(the joker in me. Forgive me😁)⁣⁣.

This reminds me of when I was in college. I had a big blue note book that I use to record my everyday activity in it. The reason why I started doing that was because of this monotonous biographies of successful people. My idea was to keep all my stories for the future and when I reach that peek stage of success (if only there is) I can take the book and tell people my why, how, what and when.

Well, the idea came when I was in my final year in college and I successfully documented every single day of that whole academic year. I remember getting fed up because I always wrote “… i went to lectures… ” it got boring documenting too, but I kept it up. After college I stopped (of course, I found alot of sleep and a lot of food to eat, documenting all that for the future was not necessary. Lol)😁. So there went my big blue book with empty pages.

This is not the picture of my actual book but this is a look alike I found on Google images

So if you stop and connect all these dots, it becomes apparent (to me anyway) that Gladwell is attempting to explain the plight of the African-American.

Of course in a very subtle manner so that he isn’t instantly brushed off or rebuked. Some of the individual chapters are interesting such as the chapter that discusses a plane crash that happened in New York because the pilots were too subservient to make it clear to the air traffic controllers that they were almost out of gas. That is interesting, if not sad then funny. Lives were lost!

Personally, I’m going to begin the 10,000 hours to master a task to reading and writing⁣.

It makes alot of sense and explains quite a number of occurrences to me. So yes! I’m totally going to deliberately practice that.

Oh by the way, the famous 10,000 hours rule for mastery is the result of the Swedish psychologist Anders Ericsson studies and was merely popularized, by Malcolm Gladwell.
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I think the main value of reading Gladwell’s book is that he encourages you to seek unconventional explanations for familiar phenomena, and that is one of the coolest things an author can do.⁣⁣ ⁣⁣

The super erudite and elusive undercurrents of the book is adroit! I must say. (You’d have to read that sentence twice to get it😁)

Four Lessons From the book.

• With enough consistent practice, almost anybody can be successful in their field of expertise. (The 10,000 rule)
• You don’t necessarily have to be a geniuse to be successful. You can work hard and be successful.
• Intelligence Quotient isn’t everything. Everyone has a threshold of intelligence. Identify yours and be useful with it.
• Success is not by luck. You owe what you are now to something. For example; you owe your trending story to the numerous books you’ve read and the writers club you are committed to. It’s not luck

Takeaway quote from the book.

“Each of us has his or her own distinct personality. But overlaid on top of that are tendencies and assumptions and reflexes handed down to us by the history of the community we grew up in, and those differences are extraordinarily specific.”-Malcom Gladwell

Why you should read the book.

If you like exploring phenomenon beyond their appearance and if you enjoy story-telling writings about factual subjects, in this case, “success” then this is my finest recommendation.
The way Gladwell observes and concludes is so enticing and far different from what you might think about why a phenomenon has or should happened. Just look at how these arguments sound:
Chinese are good at math because of their way of sowing and reaping rice in the fields. And the flight number X crashed, because the co-pilot was Colombian hence any other Colombian in his place might have led to the very same outcome.

Bizarre? Yes, Mystifying? It seem so, and Malcolm nicely shows how these seemingly unrelated events are tightly bound.
So from the point of the way he see’s things differently and actually tries to find actual reasons behind events you’ll find the book amusing and thought provoking.

The Guardian says “Gladwell is not only a brilliant storyteller; he can see what those stories tell us, the lessons they contain”

You still won’t read? Please think twice about that😊.

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