Outliers

I always review the books I'm reading on Visual Bookshelf for Facebook, but I decided I would like to post those reviews on here as well and perhaps get more feedback that way.

Outliers: The Story of Success

I first heard Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour theory from his address at the Gain AIGA Design and Business Conference in 2008. (This address is available online and great, by the way.) Since that time, I have been looking forward to reading Outliers and hearing the rest of his thesis.

In Outliers, Gladwell addresses much more than the 10,000 hour rule. He sets about to show us how success is not a meteoric rise, but the result of opportunity and hard work, even for those we might consider the exception such as Mozart or Bill Gates.

Gladwell also shows us the importance of where we come from. For good or for bad, our cultures and familial legacies play a role in our present. Don't think that Gladwell is a pessimist though. He shows how acknowledging the role of those legacies can help us to overcome and succeed.

I found this book to be on my mind even when I wasn't reading it, which to me, means it was well-written and engaging. I find myself to now be studying my own life and how to recognize when hard work meets opportunity and how I can best use both of those factors towards my own success.

On to the next book!