Malcolm Gladwell Success

A Look into Malcolm Gladwell's Recipe of Success:

It May Not Be Your Fault You Are a Loser

Have you ever wondered why Bill Gates is so prosperous, or why the Beatles became so famous? Many believe these wealthy tycoons got where they are today solely on dedication and hard work, but what if I told you that is not the case? Malcolm Gladwell, prominent author, digs deep into this interesting question and the misconceived notion of success in the interesting book Outliers. When looking through each chapter of the Outliers, Gladwell takes a success story and then analyzes it in great detail explaining why certain people are where they are today. Gladwell goes beyond personality, hard work, and instead also looks at peoples surroundings to understand

At the beginning of "The 10,000 Hour Rule", Gladwell opens with a narration about a successful computer programmer by the name of Bill Joy. By opening up with a narration the audience is instantly intrigued because a story is easy to read, while also being much more interesting than being presented some random statistics. This narration pushes the reader to then read on, because the reader wants to understand more on why Bill Joy became so successful. A story is comprised of a beginning, middle, and end. The audience feels a sense of uncompletion if they do not read further to reach the end. After this narration Gladwell then goes into a study done by a psychologist by the name of K. Anders Ericsson about the positive correlation between practice and success. By using a study about hard work and success, it adds to Gladwell's ethos. A psychologist with a degree is supporting Gladwell's claim that hard work is coordinated to success, therefore it makes the audience more willing to trust what Gladwell is saying. Putting a study here is genius because the audience is already grasped from the narration before. After this study Gladwell then puts the study into context by explaining more about Bill Joy as well as Bill Gates and The Beatles. By utilizing the study into context through narration, the audience is more logically informed

Gladwell goes into a deep analysis of how Bill Gates became so successful through his unusual amount of opportunities and hard work. By Gladwell using a narrative it allows the reader to become emotionally connected to the person at hand, in this case Bill Gates. The reader becomes connected to Gates, and others, because they can now understand how he ended up where he is at today. We are presented the life story of Gates, and in this, there is the recipe for success. The reader continues to read on because they want to understand how it is Gates became so successful, in order to learn how to replicate it in their own lives. From the narration we learn Bill Gates put roughly 10,000 hours of practice into programming and had extraordinary opportunity compared to others at his time. Bill Gates says himself "I had a better exposure to software development... than I think anyone did in that period of time" (Gladwell 55). This is Gladwell's thesis for the chapter, and he proves it in this narration. Logically if it worked for Bill Gates, a young adult like much of the audience, why would it not work for others? The audience understands this statement, and realizes with the right timing and hard work they too can become successful. This realization forms an emotional