Success By Malcolm Gladwell - 1598 Words

In society, there is a common misconception that success simply arises from a combination of an individual s innate talent and drive to acquire success. However, in the book Outliers-The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell, Gladwell introduces a new and different perspective of the foundation of success, and proposes that other factors contribute to and can even determine the likelihood of someone succeeding. Aspects such as hidden advantages, upbringing, timing, and cultural legacies play a significant role in how well one will do in this world. The outliers of society are the individuals who, because of their chance opportunities, have cultivated their inner talents and abilities to become successful. Hidden advantages play a†¦show more content†¦As Gladwell dives deeper into the success stories of notable figures, their stories all share a common theme that â€Å"their success was not just of their own making† (67) but was â€Å"a product of the world in which they grew up in.†(67) The special opportunities hidden in their lives allowed them to achieve the 10,000 hours needed to master their craft, one of Gladwell’s essential components for the recipe to success. Bill Gates, a distinguished figure in the software world serves as a prime example as a beneficiary of the hidden advantages received that launched him into a path to success. Bill Gates’ â€Å"sheer brilliance and ambition and guts† (50) were not the only reasons for his success. Gates’ success is owed to his opportunity to â€Å"do real-time programming as an eighth grader in 1968† (51), essentially setting him up to become successful, as others did not have the same opportunities as he did. If Bill Joy had not had â€Å"an extraordinary, early opportunity to learn programming†(51) and the Beatles had not had the opportunity to perform â€Å"for 270 nights on just over a year and a half† (50), would they have become just as successful? Through these cases, Gladwell makes it evident that the role of chance opportunities is significant and vital to the likelihood of one becoming successful. An individual’s chance of success is predetermined by their family background and upbringing. As Gladwell investigates those who were successful and thoseShow MoreRelatedHow Success Is Achieved By Malcolm Gladwell1199 Words   |  5 PagesPsychology How Success Is Really Achieved Outliers: The Story Of Success written by Malcolm Gladwell tells us the story and behind the scenes view of a few â€Å"outliers†- men and women that do things out of the ordinary. Malcolm Gladwell started off writing a range of non-fiction novels. His academic studies and materials have granted him to write about psychological experiments and sociological studies in the vernacular, therefore allowing broad audiences to understand his thesis. Gladwell was frequentlyRead MoreSuccess And Success : Malcolm Gladwell s Outliers : The Story Of Success1843 Words   |  8 PagesWendy Villalpando Professor Dobyns English 100- CRN#10915 01 December 2015 Luck VS. Success There may be no topic that more easily divides two set of people more than when they talk about success and luck. Some of them find it easy to associate success with luck rather than hard work and talent. Many conservatives would be the one to celebrate success as an almost imminent result of talent, effort, and hard work. Liberals, on the other hand, believe that even when people who work hard and areRead MoreAnalysis Of Malcolm Gladwell s The Story Of Success 1963 Words   |  8 PagesAbstract Malcolm Gladwell focuses on an individual’s ability to effect change within society. Outliers deal with the cultural and societal forces that give rise to opportunistic individuals. Most people when telling a story about a successful person usually only focusses on intelligence and ambition. In the book Outliers Malcolm Gladwell generally argues that the true story of success is ultimately very different, and that if we as individuals want to understand how some people thrive, we shouldRead MoreOutliers-The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell Essay1894 Words   |  8 PagesOutliers-The Story of Success is a sociological, and psychological non-fiction book, which discusses success, and the driving reasons behind why some people are significantly more successful than others. Malcolm Gladwell explains this by dividing the book into two parts, opportunity and legacy. 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Every author is different than one another. Some write fiction, some write non-fiction. Others like to argue and introduce their theories and ideologies to the world. But all authors have one thing in common: each writer has a main point, or main idea, to get across the papers and into our heads. Whether it is a short story, chapter book, article, or even a paragraph written down. Every wordRead MoreIt’s All About the Drive in Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell657 Words   |  3 PagesIn the second chapter of his book â€Å"Outliers: The Story of Success,† Malcolm Gladwell introduces what he believes to be a key ingredient in the recipe for success: practice. The number of hours he says one must practice to obtain expert-level proficiency in a particular skill is ten thousand hours. He goes on to list several examples of successful individuals and makes the correlation between the amount of hours they practiced their skill and when they achieved e xpert-level proficiency (almost alwaysRead MoreSimilarities and Differences of Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell, and the Essay Self-Reliance, by Ralph Waldo Emerson881 Words   |  4 PagesOutliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell, and the essay Self-Reliance, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, interact with each other quite well with many similarities and differences. In Gladwell’s book, he shares many stories of how people become successful, explaining that success is not achieved based on the character traits and work habits of an individual. He says, â€Å"We all know that successful people come from hardy seeds. But do we know enough about the sunlight that warmed them, the soil inRead MoreOutlier1537 Words   |  7 Pageshave thought and understood success compared to the way Malcolm Gladwell argues is the circumstances and families that create success. Previous to reading this book, I strongly believed that the way to become successful was to put i n hard work. For example, my theory to success was similar along the lines to what Malcolm Gladwell discusses earlier in the book. He says, â€Å"Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good†(Gladwell, 2008). I believed if you practicedRead MoreOutliers, By Malcolm Gladwell1245 Words   |  5 Pagesspan of 3 years? Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Outliers, suspects that there is something more behind this occurrence than just a simple coincidence. He asserts that there is no such thing as a self-made man and success does not come from natural talent, rather it comes from extraordinary opportunities and hidden advantages. In Outliers, Gladwell attempts to debunk the myth that people are successful because of themselves, and not because of other factors. Even Malcolm Gladwell acknowledges that