Outliers Book Summary

Book Summary

15 min

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Brief Summary

People who achieve extraordinary success are outliers. While they have some level of innate talent, their success is mostly due to societal forces that are beyond their control. Personal opportunities and cultural legacies can give individuals a leg up, and accumulated advantages compound over time. To be successful, individuals must devote 10,000 hours to practice, and must also learn procedural knowledge that will give them the necessary practical skills to navigate life. These factors are outside of an individual’s control, and it is only by recognizing and adjusting for these external factors can a greater level of success be achieved by more people.

About the Author

Malcolm Timothy Gladwell is a Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker. He worked as a staff writer for the New York since 1996. He is the author of 5 New York Times Best Seller books. He hosts a podcast called Revisionist History and is the founder of podcast company Pushkin Industries. He previously worked as a reporter at the Washington Post. He currently lives in New York.

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Key Insights

Most people believe life is a meritocracy, and those people with the highest levels of success have earned it simply through innate talent and hard work. However, studying these successful outliers can help illuminate the false beliefs underlying the idea of the self-made man. Outliers show how some people can achieve great successes, while others, even with similar innate talents or abilities, do not. These outliers often benefit from personal opportunities and cultural legacies that give them an accumulated advantage over time. There are often external factors, such as family, community, and socioeconomic status, that contribute to their success.

Innate talent alone will eventually reach a skills threshold, where after a certain level, innate talent will not provide additional benefit. Gladwell presents the idea that the mastery of a relatively complex skill requires at least 10,000 hours of practice, which is more important than talent in the long run. However, many people are unable to dedicate this amount of time to their craft.

Procedural intelligence is also essential to long-term success, as it teaches practical life skills and helps people navigate in society. Cultural legacies also play a big role in shaping success. Both of these factors are out of an individual’s control, and greater success for all can only be realized once these external factors and recognized and societal changes are implemented to give more people an equal chance to succeed.

The Myth of the Self-Made Man

Studying statistical outliers can help shed light on the societal factors that lead to extreme success or failure. Once factors that contribute to success are understood, anyone can take those lessons and apply them to reap their own benefits. Similarly, researching negative outliers can help illuminate solutions.

People tend to give credit to individuals for their own success because they believe success comes from innate talent and hard work. The myth of the self-made man is prevalent in America because it is a culture that values individualism. The American Dream is the belief that all Americans are capable of upward mobility through hard work and perseverance.

However, this means people tend to ignore systemic forces that contributed to individual success. The idea of the self-made man and the American Dream is a myth that perpetuates systemic inequalities, and research has largely disproved it. In reality, the United States has the lowest amount of social mobility in the Western world. However, most Americans overestimate the possibility of economic advancement, especially those who are the most economically disadvantaged. This can cause lasting harm to marginalized children, who feel responsible for their lack of social mobility, and thus experience low-self esteem and begin engaging in high-risk activities.

Small Advantages Can Lead To Big Success

Accumulative advantages are small competitive edges, often seemingly arbitrary, that increase over time. An example of accumulative advantage is when someone’s birthday falls. In Canada, boys who are born just after January 1st will become better hockey players. January 1st is the cutoff for eligibility, and because they are older and physically stronger than their peers, these boys...