Outliers《When and where you were born do count》

I’ve just read Outliers: The Story of Success written by Malcolm Gladwell the author of international bestsellers blink and The Tipping Point.

Stories of success are hot nowadays so hot that anyone could easily grab a whole bunch of them from the bookshelf. I decided to buy Outliers: The Story of Success from a pushcart bookseller for 10 yuan only because it was written by Malcolm Gladwell. He is a wonderful story teller. I have been completely enthralled by his way of telling stories in blink and The Tipping Point.

Again he did not disappoint me. Outliers is a book about how and why some people succeed. Here outliers refer to those people out of ordinary. For example Bill Gates. In this book Gladwell entertains us with different stories of people society history and culture. Once you pick up the book it is hard to stop. These stories are thought-prompting and extremely interesting. They unfold in an unexpected way and are used to explain eye-opening revelations.

For example most top Canadian hockey players were born in Jan Feb Mar. Why? Because the selection system help the “bigger” kids stand out. Let me explain this way. If there is a match in primary school then pupils born in Jan 1 to Dec 31 of the same year will compete with each other. No wonder those born in Jan are much stronger than those in Dec and gain advantages. They are regarded as more skillful more gifted by trainers and hence given special attention and more training. Then they are doing better and better. Their story of success finally becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. A small difference in the beginning mounts to a big change. This story of “accumulative advantage” is commonplace every where from almost all sports field to university life. It is understandable that students born in Sep Oct Nov (the cutting date is Sep 1 for school admission in many countries) is doing generally better than those born in Jun Jul and Aug and thus more poised to get admitted to colleges.

Incredible isn’t it.

And more are coming. It requires 10000 hours of practice at the minimum for anyone to be an expert. Not all guys with strikingly high IQ succeed; once one is smart enough (with a threshold IQ of 120) other factors in his life than IQ loom larger. Children raised in families of different class have different worldview and lifestyle which decide to a large extent whether they succeed or fail when they grow up. And so on and so forth.

Basically this book is telling us that success is not decided by oneself. Where and when you were born is more important than you thought.

For Chinese that is nothing new.

However this book does help me reevaluate my life my family and my career and make me more grateful that I was born into a great era and a great country.