Sunday, June 9, 2013

Book 6: "Outliers: The Story of Success"

Are you an outlier?

The 6th book on my summer reading list was Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. It's a departure from previous books I've read because it's less rooted in the experience of a single person and more a collection of selected moments across time, based in very different parts of the world, that support the author's belief that success is more than effort. By covering such a diverse range of stories in four dimensions, Gladwell seems to covers all his bases--proving that his theory is more than just an anomaly limited to selective instances. Of course, the central question I was left wondering is whether or not the theory was proved as effectively as it might have been in a lengthier book with deeper analysis. Alas, the book is a "#1 National Bestseller," and there are specific reasons why that is. 

I first heard about the book from my boss. She said that her husband loves self-help books and usually shares them with her, even though she usually falls asleep reading them. This one, she said, was easy to read and very interesting. While browsing in B&N, I saw the book in the "New in Paperback" section, and the back cover of the book was what really sold me (when is that not the case? That's the point of book marketing, duh). This is the captivating first line of the back cover: "In understanding successful people, we have come to focus far too much on their intelligence and ambition and personality traits. Instead, Malcolm Gladwell argues in Outliers, we should look at the world that surrounds the successful--their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing." That, in a nutshell, is what Gladwell believes and seeks to prove over 285 pages. 

I suppose the best audience for a book of this kind is a that with a complete openness to formulas of success. Unfortunately, I'm not that kind of person. My ideas about the world are pretty black and white, and it's hard for me not to quickly categorize things into previously formed impressions. In this instance, I've become a firm believer in hard work. First off, you're either born with socioeconomic advantages or you're not. Those who do have a "step up" in the world have an almost innate advantage in progress towards achievement. That part of Gladwell's theory I do agree with. But then, the rest of the theory is about finding even more ways in which some people are born better than others and, to me, that's discouraging. In response, I simply refuse to believe that cultural histories (being born Asian or Jewish, or not being born in an ethnic group that Gladwell deems significant in a particular moment in time) plays significant enough a part to fate anyone towards success. I also don't believe that being born in a particular month in the year can make you better at Canadian hockey, or give you a leg up in school. Yes, being bigger physically or having a more developed brain at the time of sorting (into ability-based leagues, or classes in school) might be a slight advantage, but that one event is not enough to change a life, I think. Getting set back academically or ability-wise in sports are determined by more than just the flawed judgements of coaches or admissions officers, a lot of it has to do with a plethora of other factors. Although accumulating the right indicators of success might be Gladwell's cumulative conclusion at the end of the book, I don't believe that one must have positive outcomes in all the factors of success, and I rank hard work above all else. 

Part of my rationale for refusing to buy into all of that is based in personal experience. I'm born in April, which would be a disadvantage in both private school admissions and in tennis, according to Gladwell. At Punahou, the calendar year period for boys starts around July (although some guys in my graduating class were born as early as June), which puts me in the fourth quarter of the admissions year. Despite that "disadvantage," I got in, graduated with honors and bypassed many of the peers who had the advantage of being born 9 months before me. To Gladwell, I would probably have been the weirdo on the hockey roster who was born in November. An outlier, of the opposite sort that somehow slipped through the cracks. When I played junior tennis, I was also the recipient of a disadvantaged birth month. Age division qualification for the prestigious Level 1 junior tournaments begin in September. If you're born in September, you're eligible for the zone teams (top five players in 12s-, 14s-, 16s- and 18s- and under age divisions) representing the region you live in. Starting to play tennis at age 9 (late for top players), and being born in April was not supposed to be a recipe for success. In fact, I struggled quite a bit in the first couple of years playing tournaments. It wasn't until I was 17 that I finally qualified for the Boys 18s National Team Championship and Boys National Tennis Championship  in Kalamazoo, and ended the year ranked #1 in the Hawaii-Pacific Region for the first time. The top players in the rankings were months older than I was, often times over a year older, but somehow I got to the top. Was it because I was born to a middle class family? Maybe, if you're delusional enough to believe that lessons translate to rankings, but that isn't the case. What does make the difference, both in performing well academically and in sports? I think it's hard work. 

"Doesn't that make it sound like success is something outside of an individual's control?" When asked that question, Gladwell (in the "Reading Group Guide" at the end of the book) replied, "I don't mean to go that far. But I do think that we vastly underestimate the extent to which success happens because of things the individual has nothing to do with." He more or less dodges answering the question any further, but attempts to end the response on a high note that knowing about all of the factors of success can allow more people to be successful. Maybe that is true if applied exclusively to individuals, but how will that stop people from looking at what they don't have and giving up? One of the points I hope to make here is that no one needs to feel as though the odds are against them. Everyone has odds to overcome, and it is true that some people have more than others, but no one needs a National Bestseller to tell them. True, the book is meant to inspire--to prove to people that success is a complicated formula involving a number of factors. To me, it was illuminating, thought-provoking and certainly interesting, but it didn't feel particularly inspirational to me.  For some people, reading the book will show them that some aspects are success are out of their hands, but look at it from the reverse perspective and it's a daunting, maybe even more impossible task to achieve the success of idols like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. That if you're not born at the right time, and someone doesn't give you access to a (then) rare computer, you'll never lead an industry. Intelligence, as measured by IQ, has already been proven to be genetic, and you can't help what kind of family you're born in to. If you already believe in fate, does "the sky is the limit" mean anything at all? If the answer is no, then an outlier you will never be. I refuse to limit myself by societal precursors and close-minded, narrow definitions of success. Neither should anyone else. 

America has always been called the "land of opportunity," yet everyone is so keen to throw in the towel and blame the income gap, or this and that about their lives--precursors, as Gladwell would label them--for why they don't make it big. We know that "hard work trumps talent if talent doesn't work hard enough," and I truly believe "talent" can be substituted for "intelligence" in all areas of life. I'm not going to go into a lengthy discussion about success or measures of intelligence because they're both contentious, relative terms that maybe could have been explored in a longer, more philosophical book. What I do believe is simple: that the sky is the limit and hard work can overcome everything (except maybe extreme prejudice). 

There are a couple of things I like about this book. Power distance. First, I really enjoyed the chapter about pilots and the ways in which cross-culture differences contributed to plane crashes. Countries with a great amount of emphasis on seniority create barriers to communication in situations where directness may be necessary at times. Being able to apply cultural knowledge to business is interesting to me because I've been guilty of underwriting the role of humanities or social science knowledge beyond academia. 

"Achievement is talent plus preparation." Secondly, I also enjoyed the chapter called "The 10,000 Hours Rule." If you read the book, you might realize that you've heard the idea behind this chapter before. When the book first came out, Gladwell created quite a stir by suggesting that the magic number of hours one needs to become proficient at any hobby, skill or subject is 10,000, roughly 10 years. It's a novel idea that can probably be explored (like almost every other topic in the book) at much greater length, but what Gladwell wrote here is a decent soundbite and will probably be one of the tidbits you walk away with.

Who is Daisy? I also liked the final chapter, which was an example of outliers near and dear to Gladwell's heart. In terms of writing style and emotional depth, the last chapter was about near perfect in that it supported the author's central theme, while paying tribute to his lineage and the shoulders he's stood on to get where he is today. 

Other tidbits I enjoyed had to do with the differences in parental involvement in low income versus middle class kids education; the elements of a satisfying job (autonomy, complexity, connection); support for longer school days and years; and the rice paddy legacy of Asian kids in America and how it makes them better at math. 

What I'm saying is that, depending on where you stand, you're either bound to be inspired or bound to be disappointed after reading the book. One thing I would expect from a book like this (besides more similarly compiled books by authors who want to cash in) is a discussion about how society can make changes, or maybe even apply these kinds of statistics in real-time situations. Maybe instead of looking back and noticing patterns after the fact, we can catch these key differences earlier and intervene in beneficial ways. The only way that can happen is if Gladwell's results are backed up and can be investigated across multiple platforms. 

Update: I just talked to my boss today (the one who recommended the book) and she agrees: Outliers is a one-time, easy read, but it's not exactly the manual for success in life. One point she brought up that I hadn't thought about before is that kids (referring to Gladwell's statistical findings in sports and education) vary widely not only in their cognitive but also their social maturity (between genders and by year of birth). Both, as well as any of the many other indicators of maturation, may differentiate kids from one another, and those differences affect their success in school and extracurriculars like sports, music, etc. Her son is late born and she and her husband decided to hold him back another year. Cognitively, he's on-point and capable of doing kindergarten work, but socially he's not ready to move up a year. Rather than subject him to comparisons from his teachers, they've chosen to give him time to even out. Too often, we associate continual advancement as the only acceptable form of progress, but when you consider multiple definitions of success, the picture isn't so clear. Simple solutions like separating kids into two groups (Jan-June, July-Dec) or keeping them in school longer might not be best, and maybe we have to evaluate kids on multiple levels besides just cognition or physicality. Perhaps the real solution is being able to personalize school curriculum so that kids can strengthen areas they are weaker in, while leading in areas they are strong in. An interesting point that I hadn't considered.

Rating: 4/5 stars

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