Malcom Gladwell's Outliers: The Story Of Success

407 Words2 Pages

In "Outliers: The story of success", Malcom Gladwell explained and gave examples of ways to be successful. There are many ways that Gladwell mentioned, such as luck, practice, background, family, and culture. There are many more of course, but I will save time. There are three of which I think are the most important, these being Intelligence, Social Skills, and Location; and these are explanations as to why I think these are the most important. First, and probably the least important of the three, is Location. I'm sure many of you have heard the term "Location, Location, Location". Gladwell says "Cultures of honor tend to root in highlands and other marginally fertile areas, such as Sicily or the mountainous Basque regions of Spain." Honor for your work and culture can lead to success, but like I said, it is the least important of the three. Next, we have the friendly way, Social Skills. Social Skills can be used to gain trust and information to be successful. Gladwell presumes "The particular skill that allows you to talk your way out of a murder rap, or convince your professor to move you from the morning to the afternoon section, is what the psychologist Robert Sternberg calls “practical intelligence.” Practical intelligence is basically the same thing as Social Skills; you can basically talk …show more content…

Intelligence is what gets us by everyday; it gets us jobs and helps to provide for ourselves and others. I'm not saying you need to be the smartest person ever to be successful, but you at least have to be smart enough. Gladwell mentions that "Langan’s IQ is 30 percent higher than Einstein’s. But that doesn’t mean Langan is 30 percent smarter than Einstein. That’s ridiculous. All we can say is that when it comes to thinking about really hard things like physics, they are both clearly smart enough." You can be the smartest person ever about one thing, but you have to be at least smart enough to get through everyday

Open Document