Outliers: The Story of Success

by Malcolm Gladwell

They picked up on the particular egalitarian ethos of the community, which discouraged the wealthy from flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures.

the Rosetans had created a powerful, protective social structure capable of insulating them from the pressures of the modern world.

In the autobiographies published every year by the billionaire/entrepreneur/rock star/celebrity, the story line is always the same: our hero is born in modest circumstances and by virtue of his own grit and talent fights his way to greatness.

Success is the result of what sociologists like to call “accumulative advantage.”

“The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert — in anything,”

But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”

by the standards of mature composers, Mozart’s early works are not outstanding. The earliest pieces were all probably written down by his father, and perhaps improved in the process. Many of Wolfgang’s childhood compositions, such as the first seven of his concertos for piano and orchestra, are largely arrangements of works by other composers. Of those concertos that only contain music original to Mozart, the earliest that is now regarded as a masterwork (No. 9, K. 271) was not composed until he was twenty-one: by that time Mozart had already been composing concertos for ten years.

Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.

In fact, most people can reach that number only if they get into some kind of special program — like a hockey all-star squad — or if they get some kind of extraordinary opportunity that gives them a chance to put in those hours.

10000 hours

“Ideas are in the air constantly. It’s such a stimulating place to be.

Some people just don’t have the intellectual firepower to be mathematicians.’ ”

If you had met them at five or six years of age, you would have been overwhelmed by their curiosity and mental agility and sparkle.

But as is so often the case with outliers, buried in that setback was a golden opportunity.

Instead, what started out as adversity ended up being an opportunity.

Those three things — autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward — are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.

if you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires.

So he has to be aggressive: he has to make it clear, through his words and deeds, that he is not weak. He has to be willing to fight in response to even the slightest challenge to his reputation — and that’s what a “culture of honor” means.

‘Stop. Don’t do anything. Do not talk to me until I talk to you.’ And she just left him there. Finally the pilot picks up the microphone and says, ‘Madam. Was I married to you in a former life?’

that cultural legacies matter — that they are powerful and pervasive and that they persist, long after their original usefulness has passed.

“NO ONE WHO CAN RISE BEFORE DAWN THREE HUNDRED SIXTY DAYS A YEAR FAILS TO MAKE HIS FAMILY RICH.”

Throughout history, not surprisingly, the people who grow rice have always worked harder than almost any other kind of farmer.

That’s the kind of fatalism and pessimism typical of a repressive feudal system, where peasants have no reason to believe in the efficacy of their own work.