Out lie rs

Outliers is a book by Malcolm Gladwell, which analyses the success of people and tries to put the big picture behind the success. As it says, the bigger picture is the things our conventional moral lessons fail to say. It says how society, cultural heritage and chance plays important role in one becoming successful or famous. It is not just one’s talents. What it says is not those people became successful just because they were lucky. It accepts they were talented. But they had something beyond their talents that brought them the fortunes. For some it was where their great grand parents born. For some it was their year of birth or month of birth. Actually these are the things it states as reason for their success more than their talents: When you born, where you born, to whom you born and to whom they were born. It’s interesting and even more convincing. But what it ignores is it doesn’t speak about negative samples. About the people whom even with their talents failed. Well it shrugs of it with the argument those people don’t exist; they are wiped out simply because it’s winners who write history.

The book brings out an interesting fact; any person who succeeds has put 10000 hours of work before he succeeds. Neither one succeeded without that much hours of effort, nor one failed with that much work. What it extrapolates is the people with some advantages (the ones stated above) gets these hours. And the other group doesn’t. Well its huge amount of time to put. You won’t put so much unless you get some feedback, you will give up in middle if you don’t think you can make out. It’s like a marathon. The moment you know you won’t finish, you quit. It’s easy. You can find it sooner. But it applies only to the people who run for the purpose of winning. Not for those people who run for the reason of running. It is the point the book fails to understand. It is true the year of birth plays pivotal role in the Silicon Valley success stories. But it’s more important when they entered into computer field they don’t know it’s the future. They hooked to it because they loved it, not because they thought it will bring them success. That is the fundamental reason. The passion. No one can predict how world takes its course over years. All one can do is to do the things that he love to do. It’s one thing you can see in the people all who succeeded. Bill gates didn’t spend 10000 hours in computer because he predicted it will be the future. It’s true A.R.Rahman got Oscar because he was in music industry when world is shrinking and India is growing. But what’s more important is he didn’t chose music as his profession, because he predicted globalization or because he know what he should do in next 20 years to get Oscar. It’s simply because he loved music. The converse is also true. Take any profession or industry, its not nurtured persons, persons whose parents identified it’s the future and nurtured their offspring, who made their marks in industry. By overwhelming majority its people who are first of it’s kind. What Malcolm Gladwell fails to point out is a single story where a person understood his date of birth advantage, his year of birth advantage, his cultural advantage and chose a profession and marveled in it. He can’t present a case like that simple because it doesn’t exist.


What he says is truth, undisputable but it holds no value. It’s like the fact earth is round for a person who never traveled more than 100 mile from his place of living. It is as much true as saying, sun raises in east is false. But it holds no value. Because at the end of day, what makes this life a worth one is the reason for which it lived. A man loses his life once he knows his life is built on nothing. It is his beliefs, his passion, however foolish they are to the critical eyes, but that’s what keep them running. It’s not the success it gives. Success is just by-product.

P.S.:
An important thing, I learned in this book is that I have to give my 10000 hours of work to make whatever I wrote to be more interesting.