Book Review: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

I've just completed reading Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success. It follows true stories of peoples (and groups of peoples) who have had remarkable achievements (athletes, maths geniuses, professional musicians, etc) and tries to pinpoint the factors behind their successes. Commonly, we think prodigies are born talented, with the seemingly natural ability to be really good at what they do, whether it's tinkling the keys or solving puzzles quickly. Perhaps so in some cases, but as Gladwell takes us through the book, he reveals that it's not just innate talent that births successful people - but the type of upbringing that person had, the culture they lived in, the opportunities that came their way at just the right time, and in some cases, the year that they were born had a part to play, too.

Three interesting things I bookmarked from this book were:

1. The 10,000 hour rule. I've heard of this before, and Gladwell compiles certain popular instances where the 10,000 hour rule showed its effectiveness, like how the Beatles got 10k hours of performing before they hit mainstream popularity, by performing almost 7 days a week for many stints in Hamburg. That got me thinking: what is my Hamburg - something I've been doing for 10,000 hours or more?

"Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good."

2. The 3 secrets to job satisfaction: autonomy, complexity and a connection between effort and reward - which I think is meaning or purpose. From what I gather, these factors are key if you want to stick to racking up your 10k hours.

"Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning."

3. The secret to why Asians (Chinese? IDK, you guys pandai-pandai k) are good at maths. In an interesting part of the book, Gladwell asks his readers to memorize a string of random single digits. After a few moments, the reader has to try reciting the sequence from memory. English speakers can get this right almost half of the time, but if you're Chinese, you're likely to get this string right all the time. And it's true - after I read the numbers in English, then in Chinese, I realized that:

- ALL of the Chinese numbers were one syllable, and
- Each of the Chinese character for the number had a tone to it

He also goes on to explain how the Chinese numbering system is logical: Twenty Two is TWO TENS PLUS TWO (er-shi-er). This is probably why it's easier to do basic calculations in Chinese (which I never realized).

Further on, he noted that on average, a four year old Chinese speaking child can count up to 40, while his English speaking counterpart can count up to 15 at the same age. What this all meant - from my understanding - is that if you studied maths in Chinese, there's a higher likelihood you'll be better at maths. GUYS! THAT'S WHY KUMON/ARITHMETIC CLASSES ARE SO EFFECTIVE. AND THAT'S WHY I HATED MATHS SO MUCH BECAUSE I ONLY LEARNT IT IN ENGLISH/BAHASA!!!



I must say that reading it made me reflect back on my own life, whether my generation had opportunities presented to it that weren't available before or after our time. It also leaves me with motivation to work on my 10,000 hours - whatever it may be!