Outliers

** It’s as much about where we’re from and what we do, as who we are — and that no one, nor even a genius, ever makes it alone.

Notes:

• Introduction
  • Outlier
    • Something at is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body
    • A statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample
• Opportunity
  • The Matthew Effect: For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance. But from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.
  • It is those who are successful, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success.
  • Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung.
  • The closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play.
  • Ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert — in anything.
  • Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.
  • Their success was not just of their own making. It was a product of the world in which they grew up.
  • Practical intelligence includes things like “knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect.”
  • Social savvy is knowledge. It’s a set of skills that have to be learned. It has to come from somewhere, and the place where we seem to get these kinds of attitudes and skills is from our families.
  • The plain truth of the Terman study, however, is that in the end almost none of the genius children from the lowest social and economic class ended up making a name for themselves.
  • Those three things — autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward — are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.
  • Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it become the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig.
• Legacy
  • The “culture of honor” hypothesis says that it matters where you’re from, not just in terms of where you grew up or where yours parents grew up, but in terms of where your great grandparents and great-great-grandparents grew up.
  • Can we learn something about why people succeed and how to make people better at what they do by taking cultural legacies seriously?
  • Everything we have learned in Outliers says that success follows a predictable course. It is not the brightest who succeed. Nor is success simply the sum of the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf. It is, rather, a gift.
  • Outliers are those who have been given opportunities — and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.