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Outliers … And Business School

I’ve been taking a lot of packing breaks this week and trying to do a lot of reading. It’s been great. I hope I’ll be able to spare some time once school begins. I recently finished the book “Outliers” by Malcom Gladwell. It’s the 2nd Gladwell book that I’ve read this summer. The premise of the book is answering the question, “why do some people succeed more than others?” I thought this was a pretty appropriate book considering I’m headed off to law school and business school especially at Northwestern, where there will undoubtedly be a lot of aspiring CEOs, General Counsels, Partners, and Managing Directors. The real question, though, is which of us will ultimately become the outliers of the world?

The fact that these schools have so many successful people brings up the question, what is it that these students do that makes them become successful? Do I have to get perfect grades, network with the most people, ace my job interviews, get promoted every year, or do I just have to get lucky. When I go to the bookstore, I can usually find a hundred biographies of famous people and self-help books that try to answer that question, and give me the seven habits (now eight habits) that will get me there. In fact, I’ve even read a few of them. However, what’s different about Outliers, is that this book puts much less focus on individual characteristics and emphasizes one’s environment, the people you come across, the breaks you are given, and the year you are born, basically all the things that are determined by chance. It’s the complete opposite of all the motivational books out there.

As part of his argument, Gladwell references the 10,000-hour rule that explains how much high achiever practice in order to become great (i.e. Beatles practiced music for 10,000 hours, Bill Gates practiced coding for 10,000 hours, Tiger Woods golfed for 10,000 hours, etc). While he agrees that these were extremely talented and highly practiced people, he also argues that most of us ignore the fact that these individuals had opportunity to practice, that the stars aligned for them to have good coaches, facilities, and mentors to help them achieve greatness. He also argues that if the stars hadn’t aligned for them, then they would have turned out much differently, as there are a lot of other talented, hard-workers who could have done achieved the same things.

In my opinion, Outliers is pretty well-argued and inspires me not only to work really hard in school but also to understand that some things are out of my control. The book also makes me think a lot about my future classmates. Who I will meet? Who will be in my section, my class, and in the seat next to me? Which folks are going to end up being really successful one day? And will I be one of those people?

Who knows. But sometimes it’s interesting to think about it, and it’s also pretty exciting to know that I’ll be around a lot of successful people at both schools.

Tags: Books, Careers