Book Review of Outliers - The Story of Success

BooksRoundup.Blogspot.Com - Success, a word we all love to embrace, chant and yearn. We search for it at workplace, in our personal lives and everywhere we could possibly imagine. We also know success is a culmination of relentless determination, passion and hard work, but still we fail to understand it. However, most of the times we seek out for success without much effort, as though it was a pill which can be popped whenever one wished to be successful.

Book Review of Outliers - The Story of Success - Wouldn’t it make you wonder, if someone told you that success is very much achievable provided you work hard on a daily basis, and identify the opportunities life presents us? Malcolm Gladwell throws light on similar note in his recent book “Outliers”, wherein he shares his hypothesis on the number of hours one has to spend before mastering any activity.

The book brings forth real life stories of ordinary people, who with unceasing commitment became extra-ordinary. According to his book which is based on a research which states that the sooner you complete 10,000 hours, the sooner you become a master at that activity, precisely meaning successful. If you do the math then it rounds up to an average of three hours a day for approximately 10 years, sounds incredible doesn’t it, but the author has stories to prove it. Gladwell emphasizes on the fact that obsessive practice makes any person good at what they wish to pursue.

He takes “The Beatles”, Bill Gates as his real life examples, to prove the stupendous amount of time they spent before becoming world class. Especially in the case of Bill Gates, the author says he had a computer when the world didn’t even know what it actually was. Had he not put his nose in it and became damn good at it, none would have known about Microsoft ever at all. The theory of Power Distance Index (PDI) is an intriguing chapter which describes the willingness to communicate within a paradigm of hierarchy. This proved the miscommunication in airplanes where crew members are at different levels of hierarchy. Thus leading to several airplane crashes.

The discussion about how people tend to give up on Math when they can’t arrive at solution instantly is a story that would make you smile, especially if you ever gave up on math in your life. Cultured cultivation is yet another interesting chapter wherein Malcolm shares his ideologies on culture. He describes cultured cultivation as the difference in the way middle class and lower middle class raise their children.

Malcolm’s narration is very subjective, but he supports every word with reliable data and reasons, never making one feel rhetorical. The author enlightens his readers by throwing light on factors that lead to success and failure, he points out that if success is a combination of many factors, so is failure. He also point out that not everyone has the same opportunities and in some cases this can be changed by society. Finally, Outliers is a landmark book, which will definitely influence and make a difference in its reader’s lives. If you are looking for some inspiring read then I would definitely recommend this book.