Commentary

Gladwell's 'Outliers': Hard Work Matters

  • by , Featured Contributor, January 15, 2009

Like many of you, I took some time over the holidays to read a book or two while unwinding and enjoying my leisure. For me, one of those books was Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers." I am a big fan of Gladwell's, having read and liked his two earlier books and having met him a couple of times on the conference circuit. I think that he is an extraordinary storyteller and has a unique ability to systematically explain complex concepts in plain language.

Since I had already had several friends tell me about the book, I generally knew its basic premise before reading it: research demonstrates that many successful people owe their unique success more to being in the right place at the right time than to their talent.

Thus, I started reading the book, expecting to learn that being lucky was more important to success than being talented or smart or ambitious or hard-working. Happily, once I'd read the book, I realized that I was wrong.

Yes. It is true that the core thrust of the book is that in a number of fields, from hockey to computer science to law, being born at the right time to the right parents in the right neighborhoods was almost a "requirement" to ultimate success in the field.

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For example, professional hockey players in Canada are predominantly born in the first few months of the year, almost never in the last few months. Why? Because the youth leagues use strict calendar year-based age grouping and when the boys are young, a few months' difference can make an enormous difference in physical maturity. Thus, eight year-olds born in January are able to outskate (and outfight, I suspect) those born in October. It then follows that they have more success while young, get more coaching attention, play on the "select" teams that get to travel and play better teams and, most importantly according to Gladwell, also get much more practice time.

It turns out it's the practice time that really makes the difference. Gladwell argues that virtually every endeavor, from practicing law to computer programming to playing hockey, requires the same amount of dedicated and focused practice time to perfect one's skills -- 10,000 hours. Yes, it appears that one cannot be successful without 10,000 hours of dedicated practice to a particular craft, and those that ultimately were the most successful in the areas that he studied -- from Bill Gates and Bill Joy to Joseph Flom to the great industrialists of the 1800's -- were in the right place at the right time not just to be successful, but to get significantly more quality practice time at their endeavor before others. Thus, luck gave them a chance to put in the hard work to be successful; it didn't replace it. It didn't give them any shortcuts around it.

I highly recommend "Outliers" to all of you. It is an easy and fast read and, no matter what field you work in, it will make you think very differently about success.

7 comments about "Gladwell's 'Outliers': Hard Work Matters".
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  1. Brad Ball from LoyaltyMatch Inc., January 15, 2009 at 5:50 p.m.

    As Coleman Cox said, "I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have."

  2. Robert Bader from Robert Bader Associates, LLC, January 15, 2009 at 5:51 p.m.

    How close are you to having logged 10,000 hours for The Tennis Company? It'll be interesting to hear about your successes, when you're ready to share them.

    Robert Bader

  3. R.J. Lewis from e-Healthcare Solutions, LLC, January 15, 2009 at 5:54 p.m.

    I give Outliers five stars (one a five star scale). I really love the way Gladwell thinks, and conveys those thoughts on paper. He's got some very interesting perspectives...

    The outlier "successes" he identifies, had already put in their 10,000 hours of practice when the lucky aspect of being in the right time/right place arrived. Much like many of us (ahem... Dave Morgan a fine example), who were obsessed with online services and the Internet years before they seemed to be anything but a "hobby" to most. When the time came, we already had our 10,000 hours of practice under our belts, so were able to capitalize, as experts, on opportunity more quickly.

    Great read (along with Tipping Point and Blink).

  4. Paula Lynn from Who Else Unlimited, January 15, 2009 at 6:56 p.m.

    "If only I knew then what I know now". No such luck ;)

  5. Peter Naylor from NBC Universal, January 15, 2009 at 7:01 p.m.

    NOTHING beats practice. Loved the book, too.

  6. Jason Krebs from Tenor/Google, January 16, 2009 at 9:45 a.m.

    Those of you attending the OPA Summit next week can pick up a copy courtesy of ShortTail.

    Thanks for the timely plug Dave.

  7. Joe Fredericks, January 16, 2009 at 1:21 p.m.

    Maybe Gladwell should profile you, Dave? You seem like an outlier.

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