Ingredients for Success in Life: The Outliers Book Notes
Book Title: The Four Agreements
Rating: 4/5
Read the book here
Ever wondered what really drives success beyond talent? You’re not alone. Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” dives deep into the ingredients for success in life, uncovering surprising factors like timing, a bit of serendipity, and yes, even the month you were born. It’s a thought-provoking read that will shift your perspective on what success means, and how it’s built. This isn’t a blueprint for instant wealth, but an interesting exploration that challenges our assumptions about how success is truly achieved.
Opportunity: Being Dealt the Right Cards
We can all agree that the wealthy are considered the lucky group in the room. We like to that assume that daddy’s money is what propels success. But it isn’t the whole picture. There are plenty of unassuming ways you could be dealt the right cards. Your birthdate, the state of the economy, IQ, and so on. Sure, the uber-wealthy have the advantage of money, which creates opportunity— that’s a fact. But there are also outliers who have started from “nothing.”
What does starting from “nothing” really mean? Just because somebody was self-made and started poor, doesn’t mean they had nothing. There are almost always hidden advantages, opportunities, or circumstances that contribute to someone’s success, even if they aren’t immediately obvious. Gladwell encourages us to look beyond the surface and acknowledge these often invisible factors. He wants us to understand that success is a complex equation with many variables, not just a simple matter of individual grit and determination.
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“We all know that successful people come from hardy seeds. But do we know enough about the sunlight that warmed them, the soil in which they put down the roots, and the rabbits and lumberjacks they were lucky enough to avoid?”
1. The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer
The Matthew effect is a phenomenon where people who start with an advantage will continue to accumulate advantages compared to those who didn’t start with it. It’s based on a Bible verse from Matthew 25:29.
Matthew 25:29
“For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he
shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”
It’s like a snowball effect. Early advantages, even small ones, can open doors to further opportunities. These opportunities lead to more advantages, which lead to even more opportunities, and so on. This “accumulative advantage” means that those who are dealt the right cards early on are more likely to keep drawing winning hands, increasing their chances of success.
2. Canadian Hockey: The Power of Your Birth Month
Canadian hockey is a meritocracy that starts selecting players for the rep squad at age 10. Players born earlier in the year have a slight advantage because of the eligibility cutoff for age-class hockey. The older and slightly more physically mature players get selected for better teams. That means more coaching and practice time, giving them a higher chance of reaching professional levels.This small advantage accumulates over time.
The Relative Age Effect
InnerDrive
“The Relative Age Effect is the term used to describe how those born early in the academic year tend to perform to a higher level than those born later. This disadvantage may occur because those who are older are typically more physically, emotionally or cognitively developed than those who are younger.”
The Relative Age Effect tells us that the kids who want to become star hockey players must be born earlier in the year to have a physical advantage, increasing their chances of reaching the professional level.
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“It’s simply that in Canada the eligibility cutoff for age-class hockey is January 1. A boy who turns ten on January 2, then, could be playing alongside someone who doesn’t turn ten until the end of the year and at that age, in preadolescence, a twelve-month gap in age represents an enormous difference in physical maturity.”
This selection and streaming process sifts out young players who haven’t completely developed and can look less desirable than those who’ve had more time to develop physically. Then comes the Matthew effect, for those born at just the right time, they receive even more advantages such as extra training and practice. When you further divide the group, the kids born earlier in the year will continue moving up in the league, therefore creating a bigger divide.
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“In the beginning, his advantage isn’t so much that he is inherently better but only that he is a little older. But by the age of thirteen or fourteen, with the benefit of better coaching and all that extra practice under his belt, he really is better, so he’s the one more likely to make it to the Major Junior A league, and from there into the big leagues.”
Gladwell goes on to say that the notion of the best and brightest rising to the top is too simplistic. They may be more talented than the average Joe, but they also had more opportunities neither deserved nor earned.
3. When You Start Matters
Bill Joy, also known as the “Edison of the Internet,” is one of the finest computer scientists of his generation. His contributions largely enabled the rise of the modern Internet. Some would call him a genius. But if there’s anything I learned from the Outliers, it’s that we should look deeper into the story.
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“The University of Michigan had one of the most advanced computer science programs in the world, and over the course of the Computer Center’s life, thousands of students passed through the white room, the most famous of whom was a gawky teenager named Bill Joy.”
Bill was 16 when the computer center opened. When he stumbled upon it, it became his life. He spent hours tinkering and learning. He, “buried himself in the world of computer software.” All the hours building up expertise led to Bill co-founding the Silicon Valley firm Sun Microsystems. It’s an amazing story that highlights, once again, opportunity. Not all teenagers his age had the opportunity to play around in a computer center (especially during those times) as much as he did. But he put in the hours. He reaped what he sowed.
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“I lived in the north campus, and the Computer Center was in the north campus,” Joy went on. “How much time did I spend there? Oh, a phenomenal amount of time. It was open twenty-four hours. I would stay there all night, and just walk home in the morning.”
Two things happened here: Bill put in the hard work but he also had access to a computer Center that many people around the world didn’t. He had a head start.
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“Achievement is talent plus preparation. The problem with this view is that the closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play.”
10,000 Hours
That Computer Center was a game-changer for Bill Joy. He racked up so much practice time, and that’s exactly what the “10,000-hour rule” is all about. It says you gotta put in the hours if you want to be truly great at something.
Obviously, 10,000 hours is a lot of time, meaning you would have to start young. How? That’s where the involvement of the parents comes in. Having parents who have the time to encourage and support you plays a big role in achieving those 10,000 hours. Gladwell also points out the same effect for musicians. As long as you have enough ability to get into a top music school, the distinguishing factor is whether you work harder than the others or not.
Key point: clock in your 10,000 hours.
4. IQ Matters Up to a Certain Point
Chris Langan is a certified genius, with an IQ of 195. You’d think that with an IQ like that, he’d be living a successful life, publishing papers and making a big contribution worldwide. Unfortunately, for Chris Langan, it was a matter of opportunity robbed. Chris wasn’t born in a wealthy household. He didn’t have the same opportunities like the wealthy. But he was smart, capable and should have had a stage to be heard. Instead, he lives a simple life with no academic qualifications.
If he had the same opportunity, parents looking out for him to make sure he got the education he needed, and took interest in his talents, it would have been a different story.
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“If intelligence matters only up to a point, then past that point, other things that have nothing to do with intelligence must matter more.”
Legacy: The Importance of Your Culture
It’s no secret that we all have values passed down to us from our ancestors. The question is, to what extent does it affect us?
Take the Colombian airliner, for example. The Avianca flight 052 crashed in January 1990. Why did it happen? It was because of poor teamwork and communication. They were en route to Kennedy Airport in poor weather. The airplane was running out of fuel and failed an attempt to land. It was the First Officer’s job to communicate with Air Traffic Control. The downfall of Avianca flight 052 would be a result of miscommunication and assumptions.
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“…All the guys had to do was tell the controller, ‘We don’t have the fuel to comply with what you are trying to do.’ All they had to do was say, ‘We can’t do that. We have to land in the next ten minutes.’ They weren’t able to put that across to the controller.”
The lack of assertiveness and the poor choice of words resulted in a web of miscommunication and errors.
It was later found through voice records between the Captain and the pilot that the First Officer assumed Air Traffic Control was angry. Talk about miscommunication! Turns out, the First Officer may not have been assertive enough because of a cultural factors.
Take for example, some common conversations and interactions between Captains and their first officers in Korean Airlines. Before a crash, the situation is usually like this:
The First Officer, acutely aware of a looming crisis, found himself trapped in the web of his culture’s high Power Distance Index. His ingrained respect for authority and the strict hierarchical structure of the airline made him hesitant to directly communicate the gravity of the situation to the Captain. Instead, he resorted to mitigated speech, subtly hinting at the problem but avoiding any direct challenge or confrontation. This indirectness, a product of his cultural conditioning, stemmed from a deep-seated reluctance to question or contradict a superior, further complicated by the inherent power imbalance between a Captain and a First Officer. His hesitation to take control, despite his growing concern, was a direct reflection of a culture where deference to authority often superseded even the most urgent of necessities.
- Power Distance Index (PDI)- concerned with attitudes toward hierarchy, specifically with how much a particular culture values and respects authority.
- Countries with high PDI- have strict command and control structure, don’t allow low-ranking individuals to challenge superiors, large gap between the welathy and poor
The bottom line: The culture we grow up in can influence the way we navigate the path to success.
Ingredients for Success in Life: The Takeaway
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“We are so caught in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth.”
Success isn’t solely built on hard work and dedication; it’s also shaped by opportunity and chance. But even if we feel our initial hand wasn’t ideal, we can still play it strategically. It’s about maximizing the resources we do possess and transforming them into advantages. As I mentioned, we all hold valuable cards, even if they’re not immediately apparent. The key is recognizing those potential opportunities and capitalizing on them.
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“To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success— the fortunate birth dates and the happy accidents of history— with a society that provides opportunities for all.”
