Success can be defined in many ways. Some desire monetary success while others strive for career success, but they all take hard work to accomplish. Many people spend their entire life trying to achieve their own definition of success. In “Outliers”, Malcom Gladwell examines many factors behind the upbringing of successful people known as the outliers.
Gladwell starts off the book by exploring the opportunities successful people get. By examining many professional hockey players and their birth dates, Gladwell reaches the conclusion that the few months advantage gained by those born early in the year accumulate over time and increase their chance of succeeding. Secondly, Gladwell explores the 10,000 hour rule by looking into the upbringing of Bill Joy, Bill Gates, and the Beatles. Gladwell reaches the conclusion that the number of hours it takes to master something is 10,000 hours. He then finds out that people with the opportunity to practice something for 10,000 hours at the right time have the highest potential to succeed, as seen by the upbringing of entrepreneurs in the 1830s and software engineers in the 1955s. Thirdly, Gladwell asserts that abnormally high IQ does not automatically equate to success and reaches the conclusion that factors such as parent involvement, high practical intelligence, and family background matter more when it comes to succeeding as seen by Robert Oppenheimer, Chris Langan, and Joe Flom. Gladwell then explores how cultural legacy affect people