Outliers

A couple of weeks ago I finished the audio book (because I don't have the attention span to read) Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Before going into detail I would like to emphatically recommend this audio book. Malcolm Gladwell is an excellent story teller; so beyond the fact that the major premise that he proposes is profound in it's wise and detailed simplicity, the audio book narrated by him is enormously entertaining. 

Malcolm Gladwell's simple premise is that reasons for the achievement of successful people; leaders and industry superstars are complex and that success may be more based upon historical, cultural, and circumstantial chance than the persons intelligence and hard work. Gladwell states that it is a wrong choice to personalize success and make it exclusively the result of someone's personal attributes. He speaks of the 10,000 hours rule, which essentially says that it takes 10,000 of practice in order to master any certain skill. He uses the example of Bill Gates and Bill Joy; the two bills are by right on the top five list of the most influential men in today's technology world. The story details the fact that these two men being born in the time that they were and by chance going to schools that had access to a type of computer that enabled the first generation of quick computer programming and coming of age on the cusp of a personal computing revolution allowed these men the 10,000 hours necessary to master their fields. Of course, both of these men are also brilliant. But it doesn't change the fact that the computer that they both had access too at the time they did was as rare to the common man as having access to your own satellite in space today.

Why should you read Outliers? For me it allowed an opportunity to look back at my own life and the chances that have been afforded to me to get to where I am. It allowed me to evaluate my talents and to look at them in the context of both ability and opportunity. It's a great wake up call in my mind to seize your life's mission and to personalize your own success and build upon it with more clarity.