Outliers: The Story of Success .. Quick Review and Insights

What does it take to be an outlier?

During the last two decades psychological researcher has been concerned with a case of which humanity has thought to be closed for debates from a long time ago.

The case of what it takes to make a human superior at some field. Of what makes some people extraordinary successful in something they do better than the others.

What it makes someone a super achiever and thrive in his live while the others are only struggling to survive.

Some people like Einstein, Bill Gates, Bill Joy or Tiger Woods sure have their own fingerprints on the history of mankind.

Are those people the result of rare innate talents and mysterious gifts or they are like any other human on earth but they only reached what they have reached because of their hard work and commitment?

The most obvious answer to that question is the first answer. People believe that those achievers are born with some rare gifts that nobody have except them.

Some others believe it’s a pure luck. Some admit that they must be their hard work but there must be some innate talent that’s not available for the rest of us.

Reason of gifted people theory

There must be some reasons for that theory of talent people are born with is to be dominant.
In my belief those reasons are:

1-People love to say that things are being controlled by hidden forces or some magical act instead of believing in hard work.

2-People want to relive themselves from the mental pressure that they apply to oneself if he thinks that he can be one of successful people if he had worked as hard as them.

So they only take the word that those people have what we don’t have in their minds and souls.

It’s easier to say that Bill Gates is born to be a computer genius instead of feeling the pressure of working as hard as he did as a young man to be a superior software programmer.

It’s easier to take the assumption that Tiger Woods has been born as a talented golfer instead of having to be trained as a four years old boy as Tiger did as a child.

Another hypotheses luck and coincidence
Here in his book Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcom Gladwell is comparing legends in different fields of success starting from hockey, software engineering, business and entrepreneurship ending with being a powerful lawyer or clothing manufacturer by viewing their success stories and circumstances.

After carefully studying each one of them, he came up with the fact that outliers are not actually outliers. No one who have succeeded in any field can stand to say that he has made it all by himself.

For example:
He found that most of hockey players in Canada are born in January, February and March.

And that’s because the cutoff date for age of selection for hockey players is in January 1st.

He found that most computer tycoons are born in about 1955 and 1956.

That’s because the computers have reached their huge wave at the 1970’s when popular electronics published a cover story about Altair 8800. And that’s where those young men had the proper age to work and learn to be the future software giants like Bill Gates and Bill Joy.

It was a collection of the right timing, the right birth date, the right chance, the right environment and the right parents.

And after all the right personality that took all those circumstance and made advantage of them for making enormous success.

On the other hand, the writer has mentioned the smartest person in the world named Chris Langan whose IQ was reportedly believed to be between 190 and 210 and though he had a tough childhood that made him leave school at early age of his life and couldn’t be able to go to college.

The writer has this idea of chance being the main player in the story of success.

Outliers: The Story of Success

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