This book has been recommended to me by several people and I finally got around to reading it. It’s an interesting concept which explores what makes people great or exceptional. It reminds me a little of Freakonomics in the style of writing and the topic of choice.
Whole premise can be summarized as this: Genius is not what most people think it is and often the cause of something is rarely what might seem the obvious. People have an average if circumstances are in their favor and they are able and willing to take advantage of it. Up to a certain point being any more smart doesn’t help you as IQ isn’t all it takes to be successful
A couple of key things that stuck with me from this book:
Athletes are more likely to be successful if they are born earlier in the cut off year mainly because they have the advantage over their peers by being slightly older, faster, taller, stronger etc. This is compounded over time to a huge advantage.
Having a really high IQ gives you an advantage up to a point. After that it has very little effect on your success. Interpersonal skills are probably more of a factor on how successful you are in your life.Â
Aeroplanes crash at the rate of about one in 4 million.There used to be a strong correlation between Plane crashes due to human error and where the pilots were from. It explains about Power distance index.This loosely explains how much distance there is betweens subordinates being able to speak up to people of authority. Something which has caused people to lose their lives because a co pilot is afraid to speak out to his captain or the ground control when they think a mistake has been made. So the pilot’s culture used to be a huge factor in disasters until someone realised this and started retraining pilots to overcome their cultural norms.
Asian people are better at Maths than westerners which fundamentally boils down to the way numbers are said. Numbers in China are pronounced much quicker and logically they make sense opposed to the awkward English language.
Favourite quotes from the book:
Skewed age distributions exist whenever three things happen: selection, streaming, and differentiated experience. If you make a decision about who is good and who is not good at an early age, then you’re going to end up giving a huge advantage to that small group of people born closest to the cutoff date. – Page 25
Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good. – Page 42
Intellect and achievement are far from perfectly correlated. – Page 90
The middle-class parents talked things through with their children, reasoning with them, if their children were doing poorly at school, the wealthier parents challenged their teachers, The poor parents, by contrast are intimidated by authority. – Page 103
Then the world changed and he was ready. He didn’t triumph over adversity. Instead, what started out as adversity ended up being an opportunity. – Page 128
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. It is not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It’s whether our work fulfills us. If I offered you a choice between being an architect for $75,000 a year and working in a tollbooth every day for the rest of your life for $100,000 a year, which would you take? I’m guessing the former because there is complexity, autonomy, and a relationship between effort and reward in doing creative work, and that’s worth more to most of us than money. – Page 150
If it’s attorneys do not outsmart you, they will outwork you, and if they can’t outwork you, they’ll win through sheer intimidation. – Page 155
It’s a world where a man’s reputation is at the centre of his livelihood and self worth. – Page 167
The “culture of honor” hypothesis says that it matters where you’re from. – Page 170
Our ability to succeed at what we do is powerfully bound up with where we’re from. – Page 209
Why is the fact that each of us comes from a culture with its own distinctive mix of strengths and weaknesses, tendencies and predispositions, so difficult to acknowledge? Who we are cannot be separated from where we’re from – and when we ignore that fact, planes crash. – Page 221
Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds. – Page 246
Everything we gave learned in Outliers says that success follows a predictive 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 have the strength and presence of mind to seize them. – page 267.
Overall: 82%