Book of the Week: Outliers
23 Dec 2013
Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers talks about why people are successful.
“People don’t rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.” - Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers
Compounding Advantage One theme is that some people accrue many small advantages that lead to large disparities with their peers. It is like compounding interest. This is why Canadian hockey players in the top leagues are overwhelmingly born in January, February and March. The cut-off date is January 1st for the youth leagues. A kid born in December 2013 will be playing with a kid born January 2013. Kids grow fast, so the kid will born in January will be bigger and better at hockey than the December kid. This kid gets placed in a more competitive league that makes him play more hours. This repeats with each level. By the time they get older, all the kids in the top leagues are all born in the early months of the year, because they had cumulative advantages. If you separate kids before they have a chance to develop, you will the selection later in life. 10,000 hours
“We talking about practice. We talking about practice. We talking about practice” - Allen Iverson, on practice
It takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in something. Expertise helps with becoming successful. When Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard, he already had 10,000 hours of programming experience. Why continue school when you’re already an expert?
“They kept going back because they got a lot of alcohol and a lot of sex” - Philip Norman, writer of Beatles Biography, Shout!
The Beatles got their 10,000 hours of practice playing in strip clubs in Hamburg. If they didn’t spend so many hours playing those gigs, they wouldn’t have nearly been as good. Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google, is against teaching yourself programming in 21 days and instead advises to Teach Yourself Programming in 10 years, which is close to 10,000 hours. It takes time to get good. What do you want to get good in? If you spend your time doing something, make sure it is something you want to become a master in. If you make a concerted effort to become good in something, you will be a master after 10,000 hours. IQ and Background
“that intellect and achievement are far from perfectly correlated” - Terman, Genetic Studies of Genius, Vol 4.
Good news, you don’t need to be a genius to be successful. IQ only needs to be good enough. If IQ doesn’t correlate with success, then what does? Having rich parents. It sucks to be poor. If you’re poor, it is harder to amass those 10,000 hours. The stories of people telling you that you can be successful if you’re poor and work hard are lies. You need to work hard and have many opportunities along the way.
“The poorer children were, to her mind, often better behaved, less whiny, more creative in making use of their own time, and had a well-developed sense of independence. But in practical terms, concerted cultivation has enormous advantages.” - Outliers
Middle-class parents interacted with their children different than poor parents. Kids raised by middle-class parents have a sense of entitlement, because their parents make them discuss things, reason with them and challenge authority. Poor parents are intimidated by authority. Government and authority present roadblocks that the middle class is adept at navigating. Their view of the world is that the world should adapt and bend to them. Poor children tend to be better behaved, less whiny. Poor parents, let the kids go outside and play, so they are more independent and have self-identity.
“Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds.” - Outliers
Many of these factors are out of my control, except the 10,000 hours. What do I want to become an expert in next?