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Success Leads to Success and Other Gladwellisms

Sprinkled throughout Outliers are Gladwellisms that succinctly address his view of success. Here are a dozen ideas that I found most compelling.

1. Success is the result of accumulative advantage. Those who are successful are most likely to be given special opportunities that lead to further success.

2. The systems we set up to determine who gets ahead aren't particularly efficient.

3. We make rules that frustrate achievement.

4. We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail.

5. We overlook just how large a role society plays in determining who makes it and who doesn't.

6. We cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we choose to write as a society don't matter at all.

7. Achievement is talent plus preparation. But we overlook the bigger role that preparation plays in the careers of gifted people.

8. The people at the top work much, much harder than everyone else.

9. The magic number for world-class expertise is 10,000 hours of preparation. It takes this long for the brain to assimilate all it needs to achieve true mastery.

10. IQ has a threshold: once you've reached an IQ of around 120, additional points don't seem to translate into any measurable real-world advantage.

11. Outliers always have help along the way.

12. Our ability to succeed at what we do is powerfully bound up with where we're from.

Also of interest:

Book:
Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin, published by Portfolio Hardcover, October 2008. Colvin, Fortune magazine's senior editor-at-large says that greatness is not due to your genes but comes from practice and perseverance and the ability to learn from mistakes.

Book:
Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin, published by Portfolio Hardcover, October 2008. Godin argues that tribes, even in corporations, best effect change.

Book:
Genius Explained by Michael J. A. Howe, paperback edition published by Cambridge University Press, June 2001.

CIOZ Question: What do you attribute your biggest success to?

Comments (1)

	1. 12-29-2008 04:45
	Well written and real thoughtful perspective. While i agree with the author for most of the points, but at the same time i would like to say that there are some exceptions also to this. What i mean to say is that there are few people who have tasted the success without having the attributes of the likes of Bill Gates and allied. Say for an example Ex-President of India (Hon. Abdul Kalam) came from a very humble society where there were no ample opportunities for one to be where he went.   Overall i liked the perspective. Registered

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