The book Outliers written by Malcom Gladwell details his uncommon view on the success of others. As most people believe success can be achieved through ambition, intelligence, and hard-work, Gladwell argues that in order to understand why certain people are more successful than others, more emphasis should be put on the conditions of life around them. Gladwell discusses the uncontrollable and often overlooked factors that are crucial in determining success. One of the key conditions Gladwell touches on is month of birth in relation to success in both sports and school. When studying common hockey and educational trends, Gladwell noticed something odd: those born in the second half of the calendar year have a huge disadvantage when it came …show more content…
Gladwell found that the most successful people in a wide variety of fields ranging from musicians to programmers put in at least 10,000 hours of practice. The minimum number of hours practiced in order to master the level of success seen in those considered prodigies or in the top of their field is known as the 10,000-hour rule. Gladwell includes multiple studies and examples of the 10,000-hour rule to prove his theory that innate talent plays a small role in the attaining of success. Some people need more hours of practice to master specific skills than others, and although psychologists are still unable to understand why, the 10,000-hour rule supports Gladwell’s claim that the key factors of success are determined by outside features rather than talent …show more content…
His theories and those who share the same thoughts are not often talked about, as society would rather live on believing in equal opportunity for everyone to obtain some form of success. While there are some who remain outliers to this theory, to Gladwell it makes much more since to think about success as being based on the situations surrounding someone rather than based on their ideals as an individual. Everyone has different ideas of success and how to obtain it so it is nearly impossible for those who truly look deep into it—like Gladwell-- to think that success is a representation of a singular