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Do You See The Consequences Of The Way We Have Chosen To Think About Success? Because We So Profoundly Personalize Success, We Miss Opportunities To Lift Others Onto The Top Rung...we Are Too Much In Awe Of Those Who Succeed And Far Too Dismissive Of Those Who Fail. And Most Of All, We Become Much Too Passive. We Overlook Just How Large A Role We All Play—and By “we” I Mean Society—in Determining Who Makes It And Who Doesn’t.

-Malcolm Gladwell

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Do You See The

Malcolm Gladwell

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Do You See The Consequences Of The Way We Have Chosen To Think About Success? Because We So Profoundly Personalize Success, We Miss Opportunities To Lift Others Onto The Top Rung...we Are Too Much In Awe Of Those Who Succeed And Far Too Dismissive Of Those Who Fail. And Most Of All, We Become Much Too Passive. We Overlook Just How Large A Role We All Play—and By “we” I Mean Society—in Determining Who Makes It And Who Doesn’t.

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We Can Unravel The Logic Behind Who Succeeds And Who Doesn't.

By Shifting The Balance Away From The Individual We Open The Door For The Individual. Because We Make It Obvious That Anyone Can Do It Given The Right Circumstance.

In A Country That Never Wins Anything: In Canada, If One Of Our Athletes So Much As Makes The Final In A World Championship, We Declare A National Holiday.

The Fact Of Being An Underdog Changes People In Ways That We Often Fail To Appreciate. It Opens Doors And Creates Opportunities And Enlightens And Permits Things That Might Otherwise Have Seemed Unthinkable.

My Earliest Memories Of My Father Are Of Seeing Him Work At His Desk And Realizing That He Was Happy. I Did Not Know It Then, But That Was One Of The Most Precious Gifts A Father Can Give His Child.

Our Unconscious Reactions Come Out Of A Locked Room, And We Can't Look Inside That Room. But With Experience We Become Expert At Using Our Behavior And Our Training To Interpret - And Decode - What Lies Behind Our Snap Judgment And First Impressions.

First Impression

Lands' End Has Undergone Three Major Changes Over The Past Couple Of Decades. The First Was The Introduction Of An 800 Number, In 1978; The Second Was Express Delivery, In 1994; And The Third Was The Introduction Of A Web Site, In 1995. The First Two Innovations Cut The Average Transaction Time-the Time Between The Moment Of Ordering And The Moment The Goods Are Received-from Three Weeks To Four Days. The Third Innovation Has Cut The Transaction Time From Four Days To, Well, Four Days.

Affect, Imagery, Consciousness, A Four-volume Work So Dense That Its Readers Were Evenly Divided Between Those Who Understood It And Thought It Was Brilliant And Those Who Did Not Understand It And Thought It Was Brilliant.

I'm In The Storytelling Business, And So You're Always Drawn To The Unusual. And Early On, I Discovered That's The Easiest Way To Tell Stories... If You Come Up Through A Newspaper As I Did, Your Whole Goal Is To Get A Story On The Front Page, And You Only Get Something On The Front Page If It's Unusual.

People Can't Do Much About The Fate Part, But We Can Certainly Do A Lot About The Man Part.

There Is Nothing More Common Than Critics Of Journalists Accusing Them Of Practicing Journalism. It Is Our Function In The World To Take Things That Are Complicated And Render Them In A Form That Non-experts Can Follow And Make Sense Of.

One Of The Things I Think The Police Have To Do Is To Stop Behaving Like Armies.

I'm Someone Who Can Provide An Intellectual Framework, But I Can't Tell People Who Are Trying To Sell Product X How To Do That Because I Don't Know, And I Would Be Faking It If I Attempted To Step Into That Role.

Anyone Who Knows The Marketing World Knows That Ideas Come And Go, And People Latch Onto Things And Think Of Them As A Kind Of Solution.

What A Gifted Child Is, In Many Ways, Is A Gifted Learner. And What A Gifted Adult Is, Is A Gifted Doer. And Those Are Quite Separate Domains Of Achievement.

When We Become Expert In Something, Our Tastes Grow More Esoteric And Complex.

Television Allows The Audience To Argue With The Creator In A Way You Don't In A Movie.

When You're An Underdog, You're Forced To Try Things You Would Never Otherwise Have Attempted.

[research] Suggests That What We Think Of As Free Will Is Largely An Illusion: Much Of The Time, We Are Simply Operating On Automatic Pilot, And The Way We Think And Act – And How Well We Think And Act On The Spur Of The Moment – Are A Lot More Susceptible To Outside Influences Than We Realize.

Of The Great Entrepreneurs Of This Era, People Will Have Forgotten Steve Jobs.

Good Writing Does Not Succeed Or Fail On The Strength Of Its Ability To Persuade. It Succeeds Or Fails On The Strength Of Its Ability To Engage You, To Make You Think, To Give You A Glimpse Into Someone Else's Head.

There Is A Simple Way To Package Information That, Under The Right Circumstances, Can Make It Irresistible. All You Have To Do Is Find It.

What Must Underlie Successful Epidemics, In The End, Is A Bedrock Belief That Change Is Possible, That People Can Radically Transform Their Behavior Or Beliefs In The Face Of The Right Kind Of Impetus.

In Fact, Researchers Have Settled On What They Believe Is The Magic Number For True Expertise: Ten Thousand Hours.

The First Person Who Throws The Rock Is A Lot More Radical Than A Hundredth Person.by The Time The Riot Has Attracted A Hundred People, You Don't Have To Be Nearly As Much Of A Daredevil Or A Hothead Or Committed Or Any Of Those Things To Want To Engage In A Riot.

That's Your Responsibility As A Person, As A Human Being - To Constantly Be Updating Your Positions On As Many Things As Possible. And If You Don't Contradict Yourself On A Regular Basis, Then You're Not Thinking.

If People Disobey, Don't Ask What Is Wrong With Them, Ask What's Wrong With Their Leaders.

What Do We Tell Our Children? Haste Makes Waste. Look Before You Leap. Stop And Think. Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover. We Believe That We Are Always Better Off Gathering As Much Information As Possible And Spending As Much Time As Possible In Deliberation.

Where They Come From Matters. They're Products Of Particular Places And Environments.

It Changes How People Read You If You Believe In God. It Gives Insight Into Your Motivation, How You Look At Problems And How You Deal With People.

If You Think Advantage Lies In Resources, Then You Think The Best Educational System Is The One That Spends The Most Money.

Our Intuitions, As Humans, Aren't Always Very Good. Changes That Happen Really Suddenly, On The Strength Of The Most Minor Of Input, Can Be Deeply Confusing.

Emotion Is Contagious.

People Don't Rise From Nothing.

There Are Exceptional People Out There Who Are Capable Of Starting Epidemics. All You Have To Do Is Find Them.

The Conventional Explanation For Jewish Success, Of Course, Is That Jews Come From A Literate, Intellectual Culture. They Are Famously "the People Of The Book." There Is Surely Something To That. But It Wasn't Just The Children Of Rabbis Who Went To Law School. It Was The Children Of Garment Workers. And Their Critical Advantage In Climbing The Professional Ladder Wasn't The Intellectual Rigor You Get From Studying The Talmud. It Was The Practical Intelligence And Savvy You Get From Watching Your Father Sell Aprons On Hester Street.

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Part Of Me Thinks That Innovation, Real Innovation In Health Care Delivery, Needs To Happen From The Bottom To The Top.

I Have A New Way Of Doing Things, And I Don’t Care If You Think I’m Crazy.

The Key To Good Decision Making Is Not Knowledge. It Is Understanding. We Are Swimming In The Former. We Are Desperately Lacking In The Latter.

There Are Moments, Particularly In Times Of Stress, When Haste Does Not Make Waste, When Our Snap Judgments And First Impressions Can Offer A Much Better Means Of Making Sense Of The World.

First Impression

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That Was It! The Whole Redwood City Philosophy Was Based On A Willingness To Try Harder Than Anyone Else.

I Would Say First Of All, Anyone Who Wants To Challenge The Status Quo Always Gets That Response. Ninety Percent Of The Time, That's Just Bull. That's Just The Way In Which People Choose To Prop Up Their Own Privilege Or Their Own Particular Position. So Mostly I Shrug It Off.

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Success Is Not A Function Of Individual Talent. It's The Steady Accumulation Of Advantages. It's Bound Up In So Many Other Broader Circumstantial, Environmental, Historical, And Cultural Factors.

Individual Talent

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If We Can Control The Environment In Which Rapid Cognition Takes Place, Then We Can Control Rapid Cognition

We Cling To The Idea That Success Is A Simple Function Of Individual Merit And That The World In Which We All Grow Up And The Rules We Choose To Write As A Society Don't Matter At All.

In The Act Of Tearing Something Apart, You Lose Its Meaning.

Basketball Is An Intricate, High-speed Game Filled With Split-second, Spontaneous Decisions. But That Spontaneity Is Possible Only When Everyone First Engages In Hours Of Highly Repetitive And Structured Practice--perfecting Their Shooting, Dribbling, And Passing And Running Plays Over And Over Again--and Agrees To Play A Carefully Defined Role On The Court. This Is The Critical Lesson Of Improve, Too, And It Is Also A Key To Understanding A Puzzle Of Millennium Challenge: Spontaneity Isn't Random.

Who We Are Cannot Be Separated From Where We're From.

The Issue Isn't The Accuracy Of The Bombs You Have, It's How You Use The Bombs You Have - And More Importantly, Whether You Ought To Use Bombs At All.

An Innate Gift And A Certain Amount Of Intelligence Are Important, But What Really Pays Is Ordinary Experience.

Courage Is What You Earn When You've Been Through The Tough Times And You Discover They Aren't So Tough After All.

As Human Beings, We Always Expect Everyday Change To Happen Slowly And Steadily, And For There To Be Some Relationship Between Cause And Effect.

Cause And Effect

Happiness, In One Sense, Is A Function Of How Closely Our World Conforms To The Infinite Variety Of Human Preference.

Clear Writing Is Universal. People Talk About Writing Down To An Audience Or Writing Up To An Audience; I Think That's Nonsense. If You Write In A Way That Is Clear, Transparent, And Elegant, It Will Reach Everyone.

We Are Approaching Levels - If We're Not Beyond Levels - Of Threshold For The Number Of Messages That Consumers Can Take In In A Given Day. There Is A Kind Of Hunger For Some Kind Of New Approach To Getting The Word Out About Something.

We Sometimes Think Of Being Good At Mathematics As An Innate Ability. You Either Have "it" Or You Don't. But To Schoenfeld, It's Not So Much Ability As Attitude. You Master Mathematics If You Are Willing To Try.

Sometimes The Most Modest Changes Can Bring About Enormous Effects.

The Answer Is That We Are Not Helpless In The Face Of Our First Impressions. They May Bubble Up From The Unconscious - From Behind A Locked Door Inside Of Our Brain - But Just Because Something Is Outside Of Awareness Doesn't Mean It's Outside Of Control.

A Radical And Transformative Thought Goes Nowhere Without The Willingness To Challenge Convention.

It's Just Strange To Think That So Much Of Our Enjoyment From Sports Comes From The Elevation Of Arbitrary Differences.

The Tipping Point Is The Biography Of An Idea, And The Idea Is Very Simple. It Is That The Best Way To Understand The Emergence Of Fashion Trends, The Ebb And Flow Of Crime Waves, Or, For That Matter, The Transformation Of Unknown Books Into Bestsellers, Or The Rise Of Teenage Smoking, Or The Phenomena Of Word Of Mouth, Or Any Number Of The Other Mysterious Changes That Mark Everyday Life Is To Think Of Them As Epidemics. Ideas And Products And Messages And Behaviors Spread Just Like Viruses Do.

When I See Someone Who Reads Something Of Mine And Draws Something Out Of It That's Very Different From My Perspective, I Think That's Actually Cool. Sometimes It's Worrisome When You Feel They Badly Misinterpret It, But It Just Says That They're Thinking, And They're Bringing Their Own Interpretation To Bear On It. [...] That's Part Of The Wonderful Thing About Putting Words Into The World, And If I Was Worried About That, I Couldn't Be A Writer.

It's Not About How Smart You Are. It's About Your Values.

Humans Socialize In The Largest Groups Of All Primates Because We Are The Only Animals With Brains Large Enough To Handle The Complexities Of That Social Arrangement.

The World Is Not A Meritocracy, As Much As We May Like To Pretend That It Is. And We Have A Long Way To Go Before We Really Reward People Based On Their Own Merit.

I'm Necessarily Parasitic In A Way. I Have Done Well As A Parasite. But I'm Still A Parasite.

The Law Of The Few... Says That One Critical Factor In Epidemics Is The Nature Of The Messenger.

Instead Of Thinking About Talent As Something That You Acquire, Talent Should Be Thought Of As Something That You Develop.

There Is More Going On Beneath The Surface Than We Think, And More Going On In Little, Finite Moments Of Time Than We Would Guess.

We Tell Ourselves That Skill Is The Precious Resource And Effort Is The Commodity. It's The Other Way Around. Effort Can Trump Ability-relentl Ess Effort Is In Fact Something Rarer Than The Ability To Engage In Some Finely Tuned Act Of Motor Coordination.

Sometimes [genius] Is Just The Thing That Emerges After Twenty Years Of Working At Your Kitchen Table.

When Crime Drops Dramatically In New York For No Apparent Reason, Or When A Movie Made On A Shoestring Budget Ends Up Making Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars - We're Surprised. I'm Saying, Don't Be Surprised. This Is The Way Social Epidemics Work.

Take A Random Group Of 8-year-old American And Japanese Kids, Give Them All A Really, Really Hard Math Problem, And Start A Stopwatch. The American Kids Will Give Up After 30, 40 Seconds. If You Let The Test Run For 15 Minutes, The Japanese Kids Will Not Have Given Up. You Have To Take It Away.

The Visionary Starts With A Clean Sheet Of Paper, And Re-imagines The World.

So The First Task Of A Police Force Is Not To Fight Crime And Enforce The Law. It Is To Establish Legitimacy With The Law-abiding Citizenry And Then Fight Crime And Enforce The Law.

When It's Easy To Make Money, You Have No Incentive To Think About Development Of Talent.

Why Are Man Hole Covers Around?" If You Don't Knwo The Answer To The Questions, You're Not Smart Enough To Work At Microsoft

I Want To Convince You That These Kinds Of Personal Explanations Of Success Don't Work. People Don't Rise From Nothing....it Is Only By Asking Where They Are From That We Can Unravel The Logic Behind Who Succeeds And Who Doesn't.

Instinct Is The Gift Of Experience. The First Question You Have To Ask Yourself Is, 'on What Basis Am I Making A Judgment?' ... If You Have No Experience, Then Your Instincts Aren't Any Good.

Economists Often Talk About The 80/20 Principle, Which Is The Idea That In Any Situation Roughly 80 Percent Of The “work” Will Be Done By 20 Percent Of The Participants. In Most Societies, 20 Percent Of Criminals Commit 80 Percent Of Crimes. Twenty Percent Of Motorists Cause 80 Percent Of All Accidents. Twenty Percent Of Beer Drinkers Drink 80 Percent Of All Beer. When It Comes To Epidemics, Though, This Disproportionality Becomes Even More Extreme: A Tiny Percentage Of People Do The Majority Of The Work.

Acquaintances Represent A Source Of Social Power, And The More Acquaintances You Have The More Powerful You Are.

It Is Those Who Are Successful, In Other Words, Who Are Most Likely To Be Given The Kinds Of Special Opportunities That Lead To Further Success. It’s The Rich Who Get The Biggest Tax Breaks. It’s The Best Students Who Get The Best Teaching And Most Attention. And It’s The Biggest Nine- And Ten-year-olds Who Get The Most Coaching And Practice. Success Is The Result Of What Sociologists Like To Call “accumulative Advantage.

To Become A Chess Grandmaster Also Seems To Take About Ten Years. (only The Legendary Bobby Fisher Got To That Elite Level In Less Than That Amount Of Time: It Took Him Nine Years.) And What's Ten Years? Well, It's Roughly How Long It Takes To Put In Ten Thousand Hours Of Hard Practice. Ten Thousand Hours Is The Magic Number Of Greatness.

The Single Most Important Thing A City Can Do Is Provide A Community Where Interesting, Smart People Want To Live With Their Families.

The Rule Of 150 Says That Congregants Of A Rapidly Expanding Church, Or The Members Of A Social Club, Or Anyone In A Group Activity Banking On The Epidemic Spread Of Shared Ideals Needs To Be Particularly Cognizant Of The Perils Of The Bigness. Crossing The 150 Line Is A Small Change That Can Make A Big Difference.

Starting Epidemics Requires Concentrating Resources On A Few Key Area. The Law Of The Few Says That Connectors, Mavens, And Salesman Are Responsible For Starting Word-of-mouth Epidemics, Which Means That If You Are Interested In Starting A Word-of-mouth Epidemic , Your Resources Ought To Be Solely Concentrated On These Three Groups. No One Else Matters.

The Values Of The World We Inhabit And The People We Surround Ourselves With Have A Profound Effect On Who We Are.

Working Really Hard Is What Successful People Do.

I Always Resist Seeing My Own Personal Motivation In My Work, But I Guess It Must Be There On Some Level. And I Do Feel Very Much That My Life Follows The Kinds Of Things I Talk About In My Books. I've Always Thought Of Myself As An Insanely Lucky Person, So Perhaps The Success Of My First Two Books Led Me To Want To Examine This Phenomenon On Some Unconscious Level.

Every Cop Will Tell You That Their Real Job Is Being A Social Worker. That's What They Do All Day. The Large Majority Of Police Officers In This Country Never Even Draw Their Gun, Let Alone Fire It. They Do Conflict Resolution, Right? And If That's Their Job, Why Do They Need To Look Like They're An Occupying Force?

Ideas And Products And Messages And Behaviors Spread Just Like Viruses Do.

Re-reading Is Much Underrated. I've Read The Spy Who Came In From The Cold Once Every Five Years Since I Was 15. I Only Started To Understand It The Third Time.

You Can't Concentrate On Doing Anything If You Are Thinking, “what's Gonna Happen If It Doesn't Go Right?

People Are Experience-rich And Theory-poor.

There Will Be Statues Of Bill Gates Across The Third World. There's A Reasonable Shot That - Because Of His Money - We Will Cure Malaria.

Achievement Is Talent Plus Preparation

Character Isn't What We Think It Is Or, Rather, What We Want It To Be. It Isn't A Stable, Easily Identifiable Set Of Closely Related Traits, And It Only Seems That Way Because Of A Glitch In The Way Our Brains Are Organized. Character Is More Like A Bundle Of Habits And Tendencies And Interests, Loosely Bound Together And Dependent, At Certain Times, On Circumstance And Context.

If You Want To Bring A Fundamental Change In People's Belief And Behavior...you Need To Create A Community Around Them, Where Those New Beliefs Can Be Practiced And Expressed And Nurtured.

In Order To Get One Of The Greatest Inventions Of The Modern Age, In Other Words, We Thought We Needed The Solitary Genius. But If Alexander Graham Bell Had Fallen Into The Grand River And Drowned That Day Back In Brantford, The World Would Still Have Had The Telephone, The Only Difference Being That The Telephone Company Would Have Been Nicknamed Ma Gray, Not Ma Bell.

The Sad Thing About Doping Is How Much It Obscures Our Appreciation Of Greatness.

We Spend A Lot Of Time And Effort Trying To Figure Out Who's Going To Be A Good Nfl Quarterback, And We Do A Very Bad Job Of It. We Don't Really Know. And We Also Spend A Lot Of Time Trying To Figure Out Who Will Be A Good Teacher, And We're Really Bad At That Too. We Don't Know If Someone Is Going To Be A Good Teacher When They Start Teaching. So What Should We Do In Those Situations In Which Predictions Are Useless?

We Need To Be Clear When We Venerate Entrepreneurs What We Are Venerating.they Are Not Moral Leaders. If They Were Moral Leaders, They Wouldn't Be Great Businessmen.

As A Writer, I Know That - You Write A First Draft And Then Put It In A Drawer. The Longer I Can Put It In A Drawer, The Better Off I Am. So I Structure My Writing So That Things Can Sit.

If Everyone Has To Think Outside The Box, Maybe It Is The Box That Needs Fixing.

There Can Be As Much Value In The Blink Of An Eye As In Months Of Rational Analysis.

The Ipod Is Clearly A Tipping Point (and I'm Not Quite Sure It Is A Wholly Positive Development), Because It Is A Revolution In The Way That We Consume Creative Property, Which I Would Call Art. It Has Radically Changed The Relationship Between The Artist And The Audience, How Money Changes Hands, And How Much Money Changes Hands. Music Was The First, And Books Are Coming Next. The Kindle Or Some Form Of Electronic Book Is Clearly Inevitable, And It Will Massively Reshape How Books Are Sold, Who Pays For Them, And How They're Consumed. It Is Going To Be Really Fascinating.

It's Very Hard To Find Someone Who's Successful And Dislikes What They Do.

Policy Is Driven By More Than Politics, However. It Is Equally Driven By Ideas.

Did They Know Why They Knew? Not At All. But The Knew!

..... It Would Be Interesting To Find Out What Goes On In That Moment When Someone Looks At You And Draws All Sorts Of Conclusions.

It Takes Ten Thousand Hours To Truly Master Anything. Time Spent Leads To Experience; Experience Leads To Proficiency; And The More Proficient You Are The More Valuable You'll Be.

A Prediction, In A Field Where Prediction Is Not Possible, Is No More Than A Prejudice.

Radio Stations Have Constructed A Narrow Door[way], And That's Because They Don't Understand How Complex And Paradoxical Our Snap Judgments Are. It's Hard To Measure New Songs.

We Learn By Example And By Direct Experience Because There Are Real Limits To The Adequacy Of Verbal Instruction.

...if You Work Hard Enough And Assert Yourself, And Use Your Mind And Imagination, You Can Shape The World To Your Desires. (151)

I've Always Been Baffled By How Much We Over-rate The Statistically Insignificant Differences That Separate Competitors At The Top End Of The Distribution.

There Are Lots Of Issues More Important Than Where Billionaires Donate Their Money.

The Particular Skill That Allows You To Talk Your Way Out Of A Murder Rap, Or Convince Your Professor To Move You From The Morning To The Afternoon Section, Is What The Psychologist Robert Sternberg Calls "practical Intelligence." To Sternberg, Practical Intelligence Includes Things Like "knowing What To Say To Whom, Knowing When To Say It, And Knowing How To Say It For For Maximum Effect.

What Is Learned Out Of Hard Work And Trial Is Inevitably More Powerful Than What Is Learned Easily.

My Point Is That The Great Challenge Of An Artist Is To Balance Those Two Things: To Be Strong Enough To Have Your Own Personal Vision That You Will Put On The Page Or The Canvas Or The Screen, No Matter What People Say, But It Requires A Radical Sensitivity. You Have To Be Completely Open To What The World Is Telling You, To What Your Audience Tells You. And Balancing Those Two Things Is Nearly Impossible.

The Face Is Not A Secondary Billboard For Our Internal Feelings. It Is An Equal Partner In The Emotional Process.

The 10,000hr Rule Is A Definite Key In Success

You Need To Have The Ability To Gracefully Navigate The World.

Those Three Things - Autonomy, Complexity, And A Connection Between Effort And Reward - Are, Most People Will Agree, The Three Qualities That Work Has To Have If It Is To Be Satisfying.

It Is Those Who Are Successful, In Other Words, Who Are Most Likely To Be Given The Kinds Of Special Opportunities That Lead To Further Success.

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.

A Fan Is Always An Outsider. Most Sportswriters Are Not, By This Definition, Fans. They Capitalize On Access To Athletes. They Spoke To Kobe Last Night, And Kobe Says His Finger Is Going To Be Fine. They Spent Three Days Fly-fishing With Brett Favre In March, And Brett Says He's Definitely Coming Back For Another Season.

Now I Basically Just Read Spy Stories Because They're About Solving A Puzzle Within The Constraints Of History. It's The Tick Tock, The Clockwork That I'm Interested In.

Nothing Frustrates Me More Than Someone Who Reads Something Of Mine Or Anyone Else's And Says, Angrily, 'i Don't Buy It.' Why Are They Angry? Good Writing Does Not Succeed Or Fail On The Strength Of Its Ability To Persuade. It Succeeds Or Fails On The Strength Of Its Ability To Engage You, To Make You Think, To Give You A Glimpse Into Someone Else's Head—even If In The End You Conclude That Someone Else's Head Is Not A Place You'd Really Like To Be.

The Hope With Tipping Point Was It Would Help The Reader Understand That Real Change Was Possible. With Blink, I Wanted To Get People To Take The Enormous Power Of Their Intuition Seriously. My Wish With Outliers Is That It Makes Us Understand How Much Of A Group Project Success Is. When Outliers Become Outliers It Is Not Just Because Of Their Own Efforts. It's Because Of The Contributions Of Lots Of Different People And Lots Of Different Circumstances.

If We Think About Emotion This Way - As Outside-in, Not Inside Out - It Is Possible To Understand How Some People Can Have An Enormous Amount Of Influence Over Others. Some Of Us, After All, Are Very Good At Expressiing Emotions And Feelings, Which Means That We Are Far More Emotionally Contagious Than The Rest Of Us.

I Should Point Out That I Have A Picture Of Asbel Kiprop As The Screensaver On My Phone. Is That Embarrassing?

Asian Culture Has A Profoundly Different Relationship To Work. It Rewards People Who Are Persistent.

And My Advice For College Graduates Is Don't Reflexively Give Money To Your Alma Mater, Something Particular To Americans That I Find Extraordinary. Take Princeton, For Example - It Has More Money On A Per Capita Basis Than Any Educational Institution In The History Of Educational Institutions. There Is No Scenario Where It Can Spend All The Money Its Endowment Generates Every Year. If There Is Anyone Who Gives A Single Dollar To Princeton, They Have Completely Lost Their Mind. I Will Say That Without Reservation.

David Epstein, The Author Of The Best Book On Athletics In Recent Memory - "the Sports Gene" - Wrote To Me To Say That He Thinks I'm Being Overly Generous. He Points Out That, For Years, There Used To Be An "all-star Challenge" On Television, In Which The Best Professional Athletes From A Variety Of Sports Competed In A Kind Of Makeshift Decathlon.

I Write My Books To Challenge My Own Feelings And Theories. Perhaps Most Surprising Was What I Learned About Rice Farming. It Was Really Interesting To Think Of How Different Asian And Western Cultures Are As A Result Of The Kinds Of Agricultural Practices That Our Ancestors Used For Thousands Of Years. The Life Of A Chinese Peasant In The Middle Ages Was So Dramatically Different From The Life Of A European Peasant - Night And Day Different.

A Book, I Was Taught Long Ago In English Class, Is A Living And Breathing Document That Grows Richer With Each New Reading.

That Is The Paradox Of The Epidemic: That In Order To Create One Contagious Movement, You Often Have To Create Many Small Movements First.

The Ethics Of Plagiarism Have Turned Into The Narcissism Of Small Differences: Because Journalism Cannot Own Up To Its Heavily Derivative Nature, It Must Enforce Originality On The Level Of The Sentence.

I'm A Purist: I Start To Wrinkle My Nose When The Cold War Ends.

The Lesson Here Is Very Simple. But It Is Striking How Often It Is Overlooked. We Are So Caught In The Myths Of The Best And The Brightest And The Self-made That We Think Outliers Spring Naturally From The Earth. We Look At The Young Bill Gates And Marvel That Our World Allowed That Thirteen-year-old To Become A Fabulously Successful Entrepreneur. But That's The Wrong Lesson. Our World Only Allowed One Thirteen-year-old Unlimited Access To A Time Sharing Terminal In 1968. If A Million Teenagers Had Been Given The Same Opportunity, How Many More Microsofts Would We Have Today?

We Prematurely Write Off People As Failures. We Are Too Much In Awe Of Those Who Succeed And Far Too Dismissive Of Those Who Fail.

Does That Mean We Should Give Up? Probably. But There Are Two Issues Worth Considering. The First Is - Is It Really True That Drugs Destroy The Integrity Of The Game?

Success Is Not A Random Act. It Arises Out Of A Predictable And Powerful Set Of Circumstances And Opportunities.

Nobody Accomplishes Success By Themselves.

Choking Is About Thinking Too Much. Panic Is About Thinking Too Little. Choking Is About Loss Of Instinct. Panic Is Reversion To Instinct. They May Look The Same, But They Are Worlds Apart.

If You Don't Contradict Yourself On A Regular Basis, Then You're Not Thinking.

When The Students Were Asked To Identify Their Race On A Pretest Questionnaire, That Simple Act Was Sufficient To Prime Them With All The Negative Stereotypes Associated With African Americans And Academic Achievement. If A White Student From A Prestigious Private High School Gets A Higher Sat Score Than A Black Student From An Inner-city School, Is It Because She’s Truly A Better Student, Or Is It Because To Be White And To Attend A Prestigious High School Is To Be Constantly Primed With The Idea Of “smart”?

You Can Learn As Much - Or More - From One Glance At A Private Space As You Can From Hours Of Exposure To A Public Face.

The Best Example Of How Impossible It Will Be For Major League Baseball To Crack Down On Steroids Is The Fact That Baseball And The Media Are Still Talking About The Problem As "steroids.

If You Look At The Careers Of Great Entrepreneurs And You Look At The Moment They Took Their Plunge, The Plunge Is Rarely A Great Financial Or Material Risk, It’s A Social Risk. At The Moment They Started Their New Businesses, Everyone Around Them Said ‘you’re An Idiot’.

Once A Musician Has Enough Ability To Get Into A Top Music School, The Thing That Distinguishes One Performer From Another Is How Hard He Or She Works. That's It. And What's More, The People At The Very Top Don't Work Just Harder Or Even Much Harder Than Everyone Else. They Work Much, Much Harder.

Whenever We Have Something That We Are Good At--something We Care About--that Experience And Passion Fundamentally Change The Nature Of Our First Impressions.

First Impression

What Happens When Two People Talk? That Is Really The Basic Question Here, Because, That's The Basic Context In Which All Persuasion Takes Place.

It's Not How Much Money We Make That Ultimately Makes Us Happy Between Nine And Five. It's Whether Or Not Our Work Fulfills Us. Being A Teacher Is Meaningful.

Those With Health Insurance Are Overinsured And Their Behavior Is Distorted By Moral Hazard. Those Without Health Insurance Use Their Own Money To Make Decisions Based On An Assessment Of Their Needs. The Insured Are Wasteful. The Uninsured Are Prudent. So What's The Solution? Make The Insured A Little More Like The Uninsured.

Jenny Simpson Loses Her Shoe In The Women's Fifteen Hundred, With A Lap And A Half To Go, Destroying Her Chances To Repeat As World Champion, And She Gives The Most Gracious Interview Afterward About How She's Had A Wonderful Career Already. Great For Jenny Simpson. Bad For The Sport! We Need Drama!

We Overlook Just How Large A Role We All Play--and By 'we' I Mean Society--in Determining Who Makes It And Who Doesn't.

Hard Work Is A Prison Sentence Only If It Does Not Have Meaning.

Activism That Challenges The Status Quo, That Attacks Deeply Rooted Problems, Is Not For The Faint Of Heart.

Our First Impressions Are Generated By Our Experiences And Our Environment, Which Means That We Can Change Our First Impressions... By Changing The Experiences That Comprise Those Impressions.

First Impression

Extreme Visual Clarity, Tunnel Vision, Diminished Sound, And The Sense That Time Is Slowing Down. This Is How The Human Body Reacts To Extreme Stress.

Truly Successful Decision-making Relies On A Balance Between Deliberate And Instinctive Thinking.

The Sense Of Possibility So Necessary For Success Comes Not Just From Inside Us Or From Our Parents. It Comes From Our Time: From The Particular Opportunities That Our Place In History Presents Us With.

What We Do As A Community, As A Society, For Each Other, Matters As Much As What We Do For Ourselves. It Sounds A Little Trite, But There's A Powerful Amount Of Truth In That, I Think.

Flom Had The Same Experience...he Didn't Triumph Over Adversity. Instead, What Started Out As Adversity Ended Up Being An Opportunity.

Science Fiction Annoyed Me Because It Was Like, "why Is The World As It Is Not Enough For You?"

The Poorer Children Were, To Her Mind, Often Better Behaved, Less Whiny, More Creative In Making Use Of Their Own Time, And Have A Well-developed Sense Of Independence.

Trump Is An Innovator Who Has Shown How Out Of Step The Political Establishment Was. Which I Think, Probably, In The Long Term Will Be Healthy. We Have To Figure Out How To Reinvigorate Our Political Institutions And He's Demonstrating To Us The Urgency Of That Task.

Sometimes Constraints Actually Create Success. Not Being Able To Swim Made Me Run. And Running Taught Me The Discipline I Needed As A Writer.

Success Is Deeply Rooted In Time And Place. You May Have The Drive To Read Tons Of Books On Biology. But If There Are No Books On Biology In Your Library, And The Library Is Never Open, Your Drive Is Meaningless.

We Have The Kind Of Self-made-man Myth, Which Says That Super-successful People Did It Themselves.

Consistency Is The Most Overrated Of All Human Virtues... I'm Someone Who Changes His Mind All The Time.

I've Been In Auditions Without Screens, And I Can Assure You That I Was Prejudiced. I Began To Listen With My Eyes, And There Is No Way That Your Eyes Don't Affect Your Judgement. The Only True Way To Listen Is With Your Ears And Your Heart. (p.251)

Often A Sign Of Expertise Is Noticing What Doesn't Happen.

Visionaries Are Limited By Their Visions.

The Tipping Point Is That Magic Moment When An Idea, Trend, Or Social Behavior Crosses A Threshold, Tips, And Spreads Like Wildfire.

You Don't Manage A Social Wrong. You Should Be Ending It.

Do You See The Consequences Of The Way We Have Chosen To Think About Success? Because We So Profoundly Personalize Success, We Miss Opportunities To Lift Others Onto The Top Rung...we Are Too Much In Awe Of Those Who Succeed And Far Too Dismissive Of Those Who Fail. And Most Of All, We Become Much Too Passive. We Overlook Just How Large A Role We All Play—and By “we” I Mean Society—in Determining Who Makes It And Who Doesn’t.

You Don't Want To Be First, Right? You Want To Be Second Or Third. You Don't Want To Be - Facebook Is Not The First In Social Media. They're The Third, Right? Similarly, You Know, If You Look At Steve Jobs' History, He's Never Been First.

Bad Improvisers Block Action, Often With A High Degree Of Skill. Good Improvisers Develop Action.

Superstar Lawyers And Math Whizzes And Software Entrepreneurs Appear At First Blush To Lie Outside Ordinary Experience. But They Don't. They Are Products Of History And Community, Of Opportunity And Legacy. Their Success Is Not Exceptional Or Mysterious. It Is Grounded In A Web Of Advantages And Inheritances, Some Deserved, Some Not, Some Earned, Some Just Plain Lucky - But All Critical To Making Them Who They Are. The Outlier, In The End, Is Not An Outlier At All.

Have You Ever Wondered... How Religious Movements Get Started? Usually, We Think Of Them As A Product Of Highly Charismatic Evangelists... But The Spread Of Any New And Contagious Ideology Also Has A Lot To Do With The Skillful Use Of Group Power.

People Are In One Of Two States In A Relationship,” Gottman Went On. “the First Is What I Call Positive Sentiment Override, Where Positive Emotion Overrides Irritability. It’s Like A Buffer. Their Spouse Will Do Something Bad, And They’ll Say, ‘oh, He’s Just In A Crummy Mood.’ Or They Can Be In Negative Sentiment Override, So That Even A Relatively Neutral Thing That A Partner Says Gets Perceived As Negative.

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