I am so excited to hear that Gladwell will be on NPR. I listen to NPR every day at work and just finished listening to “Blink” last week. It was one of the best audio books I have ever heard. Cannot wait to read/listen to the “Tipping Point” and his new book. I wonder if he kept his hair long and is still getting trouble from police because of it. : )

Thank you

I have not read the book and I am wondering how the author defines “success” or “luck”.

This conversation reminds me of someone I work with who has a saying: “He was born on third base but thinks he hit a triple.”

Based on Gladwell’s thesis, how does he account for Barack Obama’s success?

I’m listening to this conversation right now.

I just heard them say that kids from Asia do a way better job in these tests than Americans. I know when I was in school, 8 years ago, if the test didn’t affect my grade, I (as well as others) answered “c” for everything. I think this might be contributing to the test results.

Maybe they have more regulated tests now, I’m not sure, but I still think this is something to consider.

About the 10,000 hr rule – no duh, sirs. Every pianist, every scientist I know spent their youth constantly, almost obsessively “practicing” for their future occupation. Based on this, I think we’re raising a generation of screen-watchers, some small fraction of whom will be very successful video game creators. Thanks, Malcolm, for another great book pointing out the obvious behind the popular myth.

You might think about beauty – now that’s a birth advantage that really gives head starts to the young. When you’re older, you learn to create your own beauty, but when young, you’re at the mercy of the culture and your inexperience. Well..but then there’s Paris Hilton…

A few years ago, I looked at the birth dates of famous composers and mathematicians. I noticed that an overwhelming of them were born in the first quarter of the year.

Vermont – I agree that performance (or “talent”) is often really about your environment. Culture is part of this.

For some reason, U.S. culture believes that if you don’t find a task immediately easy, you shouldn’t bother trying. I think it’s not as much a laziness thing. I think it’s fear that one might be seen as a “Tool Shed”. Fear that you don’t deserve to learn something if you don’t have the “talent”.

However, I’ve learned to be an instrument rated pilot. I also learned to juggle. Sometimes being less talented at the start pays dividends down the road…

“Systems for identifying talent are flawed” … often absolutely true! What are people afraid of learning about anyway?

Will be very nice to have some statistical analysis supporting this theories. He is talking a lot about records all over the world but he don’t mention any figure supporting his sayings

What about the choices that a society makes to protect or squander generational inheritance? Right now hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers are rushing to jobs at American companies that we gave them by allowing massive outsourcing. Doesn’t a society that does not discourage such practice pay a price?

Up until 1959, the year before I began kindergarten, the city I lived in (Paterson, NJ) did divide the students by age. There was kindergarten A, kindergarten B, and this continued on up into high school. Kids entered school in either September or January and it was based upon age. Some kids graduated high school in December and others in June. I don’t know why this changed, but I suspect it had something to do with more students beginning to attend college and the desire to begin college in September rather than January.

Malcolm,

I have a question as to how much inate ability plays into a person’s success. Are you saying that there are a few hundred or maybe even a few thousand people who could have attained the success of Bill Gates if they were in the same situation as him or are you saying that there are millions of people who could have accomplished the same things he did if they were as lucky. The latter seems hard to swallow, I think inate ability must play some role.

I think Gladwell always offers creative ways to think about social problems and realities, and I love that he is addressing how complicated the factors are that go into making us who we are.

This so challenges our American notions of individual work and success, and I’m noticing that Tom Ashbrook is having trouble accepting Gladwell’s ideas. His tone towards Gladwell belies his need to believe in his own success being self generated.

As a teacher, I notice this among students who don’t want to believe that their race, class, or gender has anything to do with their current situation.

I’m wondering what sort of data exists for the influence of siblings regarding development of children born later in the year. I was born in late August, and am the fourth of five children. As a result, my verbal and social skills always rated high as reflected on my early report cards!

I don’t think the month of my birth was a detriment to my success in school and in my career. However, Americans are having fewer children. Has this factor been been studied in recent generations?

So, there are many other people who’ve had it much better than Barack Obama, but why aren’t they as successful as Obama?

It seems to me that what the author is suggesting is more that if we recognize the edge some people have vs others, we can better address how to help children without this edge.

As long as we continue to only see this as “My success is all because of my efforts,” we fail to recognize how we can help a greater number of people.

I think there is a problem discussing these large quantitative studies in individual terms. Let’s remember this research is dealing with averages on a broad level not individuals. Malcom may use individual case studies to illustrate this phenomenon, but it is not necessarily scientifically relevant. It is a gimmicky way to tell a story in a book. The truth is there may not be one individual who actually fits the exact profile depicted in the quantitative research.

Truth is, the US public school system was designed to provide robotic workers to fuel the industrial revolution. The three R’s were the bare minimum a worker needed to do his/her job. Our schools were never designed to encourage creativity or innovative problem solving. And these days, they’re all about performance and test scores.

Gladwell should take a field trip to the Sudbury Valley School (www.sudval.org) where he can see children of all ages interacting freely, pursuing their passions, and going on to lead lives characterized by a sense of empowerment and contentment.

Schools today — public and private — don’t give children any time or space to pursue their passions. They’re wrapped up in transmitting a proscribed curriculum.

And extending school days and the school year does nothing but rob children of some of those 10,000 hours Gladwell credits with producing “Outliers.”

The correlation of age and gender is especailly important for academic success – I found this to be true in my own family. I reared 3 sons – the first and 3rd born in November – when I observed the first “floudering around” in 2nd grade, I had him repeat that grade. The 2nd was born in June – no problems in school (very successful, actually). I had the 3rd, another November baby-repeat 1st grade to be sure he was mature enough for success. (It is pretty well known in educational circles that verbal abilities in girls mature more quickly than boys.) They graduated, in order of age from Virginia Tech, University of Pennsylvania, and the College of Wm. & Mary!

What about the link between success and happiness, as Tom mentioned? As we know, many highly successful are not very happy at all. And if one has always tied one’s happiness to success, what happens when one retires or is now longer at the top of their game?

There are many kids who’ve had an enriched background, but they end up as disappointments even worse, how do you account for that? What about Osama Bin Laden? Very rich kid, great education, now the most infamous person in modern times. What about the fact that the terrorists if 9/11? Some of them were gifted architects.

Comment regarding point that early advantages can affect later success / outcomes.
I’ve read that studies show that on average, taller men earn more money than shorter men (supposedly due to perceived greater power, or greater confidence, etc).

However I once read a study that showed that key difference was not so much the height of a man, but rather the height of a man during his childhood / teenage years. Thus, tall men who were short during their childhood years were more similar in adult earnings to always-short boys/men than to always-tall boys/men.
So being tall early in life was the key advantage, not being tall in adulthood.

The lawyers mothers expecttations: nothing new. This is the classic immigrants dreams – Asians, Africans, etc.
not neccessarily cultural as such.

Africans have now surpassed Asians as the “model minority” especially in US Colleges and Universities.

I am curious as to what Gladwell thinks about the moral component of success. Many philosophical accounts of the “good life” include a notion of human flourishing, e.g., “being all you can be.” However, many so-called “successful” people are incredibly unhappy, and I suspect more than a few of them are not what we would consider “good” people. Are these people living the good life?

Additionally, what are our moral obligations to ourselves and our children to encourage and pursue success? Or is the claim merely that IF we WANT to achieve success, here’s what we need to think about?

excellent programme…

The gender issue is still debated. Are boys better at math and girls better at writing? Or is this another case of fulfilling the expectation of culture? If children are (even unintentionally) encouraged in one direction over another, their abilities can be impacted. That is not to say some people cannot have natural ability in one area over another.

Also, one caller brought up the fact that while hard work can help some overcome poverty, opportunities such as college are also a factor. But what about those people in poverty working three jobs who do not want to go to college- success to them would be working hard at the jobs they have and NOT living in poverty.

My wife and I made a conscious decision to start our son in Kindergarten a year later than we could have to give him a developmental leg up in school. He is 8 now, an A student, takes violin and voice, and participates in gymnastics.

I must also add that he attends a private school with a 5-1 student/teacher ratio and an individualized education plan where each student moves forward in a subject upon mastery and not a particular time line. This makes an enormous difference in outcomes.

While this system may not be scalable to large public schools, particularly as they now exist, there are lessons to be learned. Good educational outcomes also require sufficient investment and the right structure. No successful educational system in the world funds schools from local property taxes.

Bob

Some of the ways those born into poverty or limited opportunities deal with its inherent unfairness are
– to learn to accept things as they are,
– to value handling well the burdens and difficulties you face, and
–to acknowledge fate as a major determinant in life.

These are really useful coping mechanisms in many circumstances that all of us need some of the time, but – along with limited exposure to people who have “succeeded” in moving up- may be a barrier to changing one’s circumstances.

Birth date effect.

I don’t know whether Gladwell mentions it in the book but birth dates are a factor in certain types of abilities. It is well documented that the amount of sunlight that a pregnant mother gets affects the relative qrowth rates of the fetuses cerebral hemispheres.

Throw in the old adage “Geography is Destiny” as another parameter to this argument; it gets very interesting. Frank Sinatra’s pipes wouldn’t have had much opportunity in Juneau, would they?

Amber.

If you read the esoteric literature of Budhism or Advaita, a central tenet is to achieve transcendental happiness, everything else is menial. There isn’t a single person used as an example in books like Malcolm’s is actually considered successful under this criteria. Not Mozart, Tiger Woods, not even Einstein.

I love this program. It is so time to stop making excuses and to just succeed. He attacks the idea of the perpetual victim. “Poor me,”…yeah if you define yourself based on your social environment. But if we simply start there and grow, we can be successful. Is that luck once success comes? How many significant events did I encounter that caused no change for me, but another it changed their life immensely? I wonder if the book answers questions such as this.

This certainly doesn’t take away from some “undoing” of social injustices and rectifying them, but it helps us to begin to not being so emotional over them and see them as realities to be defeated. I like the assertiveness and proactive feel to his theory. Can’t wait to read the book.

As a 71 year old successful child of imigrants, married twice to highly successful poor children of Italian imigrants. The men, 86 and 76 years of age, both were spotted in the NYC school system as very bright, both were in rapid advance programs, both stumbled when they got out of high school (they were not accultured to the idea of higher education) and went to college late, on the GI bill. The early programs let them know they were intelligent, the GI bill later paved the way to education. One became a successful academic and the other a successful lawyer/politician. Schools need to go back to screening for bright children and seeing to it that they have a start. I went to school in Chicago where they did split the year in two. Whether that was a variable in my success, I am not sure, but it did mean that my class was a tight age cohort. The split year has been abandoned probably because it doesn’t fit with the college entrance pattern. I started college in January, but that was unusual, even in the early fifties.

Interesting discussion. I have a friend who though quite smart struggled in grammar and middle schools. Why? Because they used to give IQ tests to kids (do they still do that??) and the teachers got the results. The problem was that he wanted to go out and play so he blew through the test not knowing what it was for or that it could be important. For many years successive teachers saw the IQ, saw his grades from prior years and decided he wasn’t very smart. They didn’t bother to help him learn because they figured average was the best he could do. Why waste their time when they could help the kids that ‘could’ learn? Somewhere along the line, he came into his own. I don’t know if teachers no longer got the IQ rating so he wasn’t prejudged or someone figured out there was more ‘upstairs’ than prior results showed and worked with him.

I grew up on the poor east side of Detroit. I was always one of the youngest in the class, my birthday is late September. I have always done relatively well in school. I went to college 94-98, earned a degree in Physical Sciences. I obtained my master’s. I am successful in my career. When I was young I was proud to be the youngest. I don’t feel like it limited me in society.

So much fetish made of smarts and intelligence, not enough emphasis on kindness and compassion. But such is our present-day society.

Posted by eric baker, on November 20th, 2008:
“I just heard them say that kids from Asia do a way better job in these tests than Americans.”

Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that Asian schools screen out poor students and limit further public education to only good students. The U.S. and Europe on the other hand require ALL children to attend school. So we are constantly comparing apples and oranges. We seem to spend a lot of time applying unfair stereotypes to Asian cultures.

Tom,

I’m 30 years old and admire Malcolm for his stab at destroying the American myth of self made success. No one has a better explanation. This kind of thinking will save us from where we are now.

I understand your skepticism, which in my mind is generational. The idea that you aren’t self made must be shocking to your generation because that is your bread and butter! I say that lovingly and jokingly! Malcolm is great at taking a naked look at the human mind. His thinking represents OUR future, not your past.

Barack Obamas father wasnt a nobody. His father was a high level economic advisor in Kenya. Thats in his blood. I am an African immigrant, with an American stepdad. My advantage was that they never told me what they expected of me, i’ve made my path. It may also be my downfall.

[...] read more | digg story [...]

This presentation also reminds me of something I watched on Youtube…which says that “the largest failure of humankind is the inability to understand exponential growth”…

Thank you so much for this informative interview that I have already used in two classes that I teach: Cultural Diversity in Education and Psychology 101. Your shows can always be counted on to help move students to the more amazing points of our shared learning.

Like Gladwell?
Read Levitt’s, ‘Freakonomics, ‘and S. J. Gould’s, ‘Full House.’

Read Levitt’s, ‘Freakonomics, ‘and S. J. Gould’s, ‘Full House.’

On the issue of why many Asians are more successful in math (and no, I don’t think it’s because of rice-growing), I once saw, twice in one day, Asian mothers with very young children — 2 year olds, perhaps — doing math games the way I did rhyming or alliteration word games or puns with my kids. These two separate mothers were both waiting with their children, one in line at a grocery store, one somewhere else. Both mothers were actively playing math games with their children, e.g. if you add up the number of ears I have and you have, and then you add one more ear, how many do you have? If you take the toes on your right foot, and subtract the number of eyes you have, what number will you have? Etc. If this is something that happens regularly in some kids’ lives, those kids are gonna be better at math (than my kids, alas.) If the whole country does this as a matter of course, then we’ll see the kinds of worldwide differences that we know exist.

I think it should be noted that while hardwork and determination are not the only factors that dictate success I do think that they are the only determinants of success that individuals control.

I’ve been a fan of Gladwell’s for years. You all might enjoy some of his older New Yorker articles:

http://www.gladwell.com/archive.html

Lots of kids are smart but not all of them do things with their intelligence. The doing is what expresses the intelligence and without the doing what good is the intelligence?

What Gladwell was talking about with 10,000 hours of practice is the idea that having the raw materials is just the start, you absolutely have to use them, often, to have success.

I would also argue that even without “talent” or genius practice can do quite a bit to get the rest of us numbskulls a lot farther in life than we’d get without it.

Malcolm’s books and New Yorker articles have a consistent weight of thoughtful insight on complex social phenomenon told in digestible personal stories. Today I have a new found respect for him after standing up to the grilling that Tom dished out. Tom was searching for a chink in the armor and searching hard – too hard. It was as though they were at a private dinner party, and he was looking for a fight. Maybe we could correlate this to the social phenomenon of Boston guys loving to badger New Yorkers? Nonetheless the commentator should be embarrassed for needlessly pushing a great writer of our time quite so much.

Tim: While I’m a huge fan of both Gladwell’s and Tom’s I have to agree with some of what you are saying. Tom’s pushing the determinism line after Gladwell rebutted it articulately was a bit over the top. Tom sounded, at times, like a more typical talk show host looking for dirt rather than celebrating the nuanced and brilliant ideas of Gladwell.

In many ways Gladwell is like Obama: both talk to their readers/listeners like adults, not shying away from nuanced complexity. Good thing both of them can think and talk coherently.

I’m quite sure Tom is smart and worldly and this was a case where maybe he could have gone further to take the gist of what Gladwell was saying and expand on it rather than attempt to reduce it to something it isn’t.

Many people want to use Gladwell as a recipe book for how to win, no doubt that’s why he’s popular with so many MBA programs but I don’t read him that way at all. Like Obama he’s simply looking at complex problems from a different vantage point from the norm and I find that fascinating and right on much of the time.

[...] here he is on yesterday’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook. Each interview is different and Ashbrook spends more focusing his questions on the implicit attack [...]

I don’t mind the work of Gladwell. He’s always thought-provoking, although to me it seems he’s not quite finished. I felt this way with both his previous books. There’s more there I’m sure.
And I always love Ashbrook and his questioning style. He can immediately pick up and deliver the base point of the conversation and/or question – and clarify the point beautifully, almost poetically. He is perhaps the best journalist in America.
However, I too noticed his attitude and do believe he isn’t such a Gladwell fan. Usually there’s no tone in Ashbrook’s comments or questioning like he seemed to have here with Gladwell…..
I’d love to know what Ashbrook is really thinking about this subject and/or author since I trust and admire his perpective. I wonder if there’s some sort of history between these two or if there are other factors involved.
But back to Gladwell. He presented his thesis well. His points are solid, but there’s more to this subject, much more. I wish this interview could have continued on – or I guess I should just go buy the book.
ss

I agree with Tim, Steve and Richard. I consider Tom Ashbrook to be one of the greatest interviewers working today and am always impressed with his ability to dig out an interesting point from a difficult caller or present fairly both sides of an argument. This interview is the first time I’ve ever heard him sound overly biased and aggressive. It’s a surprise that I hope will also prove an anomaly. For his part Gladwell, who I’ve always found great in ten pages and underwhelming in 200, makes a good case for his role as a public intellectual. Even more disappointing then that Ashbrook fumbles the ball.

Gladwell is right on target, especially when he said that society must find better ways of exploiting human potential. That we must eliminate the myth of the self-made man and find ways to level the playing field so that everyone has an opportunity to succeed…partnering society with the individual.

Regarding Tom Ashbrook…he is one of the greatest interviewers of today. I can’t think of anyone else who is as good at succinctly paraphrasing the responses of the person he is interviewing. However, I think Ashbrook is conflicted about Gladwell’s book because he fears the general public will misinterpret Gladwell’s words, not only as advocating determinism, but that already competitive parents may react to it by pushing their children to succeed at the expense of everything else, including their childhood. I think it’s a legitimate concern, considering America’s obsession with being #1.

@Tom: “For his part Gladwell, who I’ve always found great in ten pages and underwhelming in 200…”

Wow, this is so true. I’ve read pretty much everything he’s written in The New Yorker but the book form of the same writing is lacking. Thanks for articulating that.

Doesn’t mean his ideas are bad, I think they’re fantastic, but maybe his books need to take a different form, like a series of essays talking around a topic without over worry about connecting them.

I’m successful and no one is going to tell me otherwise.

Richard: I have to admit I’ve never read Gladwell, but his ideas are very impressive. Ashbrook’s statement makes me believe he wishes Gladwell would stick to writing articles…that the meaning of his work gets lost in books.

It’s somewhat obvious that Ashbrook’s impression after reading the book was what you said about the book being a “recipe book to win”. I think Ashbrook gets that Gladwell is trying to say more but he’s frustrated that that’s not how the book translates.

I cannot wait to read this as I have enjoyed both Tipping Point and Blink!

I think Dan Seligman’s book “A Question of Intelligence” does a better job explaining the performance of East Asians on math/science subjects. Essentially, if you look at the group average, they do particularly well on the non-verbal component of psychometric tests. This is consistent with their performance on math/science subjects. Seligman also notes possible explanations of this including:

“Severely compressed, his explanation goes about like this: Some sixty thousand years ago, when the lee Age descended on the Northern Hemisphere, the Mongoloid populations faced uniquely hostile “selection pressure” for greater intelligence. Northeast Asia during the Ice Age was the coldest part of the world inhabited by man. Survival required major advances in hunting skills. Lynn’s 1987 paper refers to “the ability to isolate slight variations in visual stimulation from a relatively featureless landscape, such as the movement of a white Arctic hare against a background of snow and ice; to recall visual landmarks on long hunting expeditions away from home and to develop a good spatial map of an extensive terrain.” These, Lynn believes, were the pressures that ultimately produced the world’s best visuospatial abilities.”

I was a little surprised at Tom Ashbrook’s unwillingness to give up the determinism charge – it’s fairly apparent that Gladwell was NOT saying your race, social standing, etc. are the sole determinants of success (however you define success) – however, it’s ludicrous to imagine that privilege plays a minor or no role.

I have friends from very wealthy households who are raised with access to education and resources (particularly economic resources). This has allowed them to fast-track it to financial success.

While we love these rags to riches stories, they are the exception. It’s naive to image that hard work is the only factor in determining upward mobility.

There’s a post on here by a gentleman saying through hard work he was able to find success after a tough childhood in the inner city – I’d like to know how many of his childhood friends had the exact same experience.

It’s obvious that some people are better than others at appreciating outside factors that influenced their rags to riches story. Anyone who claims he or she did it all by him or herself is either a liar or extremely egotistical.

The definition of success as the opportunity to engage in meaningful(autonomous, complex, and rewarding) work really says a lot about different perceptions of what it is to be successful. Many people associate wealth or accolades with success, but in some cases there is neglect of meaning in the experience of the person who is very rich or has received many awards and praise. Tangible or emotional reward is only part of the combination, and if people are not challenged or feel that they are taking their own path, then they still may not realize the real success they long for. (e.g. Yonica Babyyeah in War, Inc.)
It’s too bad that Tom ignored this key idea and was kind of a mic bully there for a bit. Nevertheless, I appreciate his usual candor and intuition. I don’t worship Gladwell, but he held his own and could have been treated a little more fairly and respectfully as a guest.

He has hit the wall..The theory doesn’t hold water. Ask any athlete about the time he has spent on the practice court. Should not have stuck his neck out when it came to sweat…