'OUTLIERS' BY MALCOLM GLADWELL

This is  a book about outliers that is men and women who do things that are out of the ordinary. In this book the writer introduces you to one outlier after  another: to geniuses, business tycoons, rock stars, and software programmers. In this book the writer uncovers the secrets of a remarkable lawyer, look out what separates the very best pilots from pilots who have crashed plane, and try to figure out why Asians are so good at Math. And in examining the lives of the remarkable among us – the skilled, the talented, and the driven. The writer is of the opinion that there is something profoundly wrong with the way we make sense of success.

What is the question we always ask about success? We want to know what they are like –what kind of personalities they have, or how intelligent they are, or what kind of lifestyle they have , or what special talents they might  have been born with. And we assume that it is those personal qualities that explain how that individual reached the top.

In Outliers the writer tries to or in fact convince us that successful people are not people that rise from nothing. They are not self made. According to him , we do owe something to parentage. 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. it makes a difference when and where we grew up. The culture we belong to and the legacies passed down by our forebears shapes the patterns of our achievement in ways we cannot begin to imagine. It is not enough to ask what successful people are like in other words, it is only asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn’t.

According to the writer, Achievement is talent plus preparation. To achieve success in our endeavors we must have spent Ten Thousand hours of our time into it. Ten Thousand hours is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world class expert – in anything.

The amount of time spent in acquiring purpose in any field. Success is not exclusively a matter of individual merit. The success of successful people was not just of their own making. It was a product of the world in which they grew up.

According to the writer, having a good IQ is an advantage but that alone cannot guarantee success if you lack what he called ‘practical intelligence’ or  ‘social savvy’. Practical intelligence is a set of skills that have to be learned. It has to come from somewhere, and the place where we seem to get these kinds of attitudes and skills is from our families. Social savvy is like knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it for maximum effect.   

According to the writer, hard work is a prison sentence only is it does not have meaning.

In summary in outliers the writer was able to push to us that success follows a predictable course. It is not the brightest who succeed. In this book the writer made references to some well known personalities like Bill Gates, Chris Langan, Joe Flom, Bill Joy , etc.,

In simple terms outliers are those who have been given opportunities- and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.

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