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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.

-Malcolm Gladwell

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People Are In One

Malcolm Gladwell

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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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Look At The World Around You. It May Seem Like An Immovable, Implacable Place. It Is Not. With The Slightest Push - In Just The Right Place - It Can Be Tipped.

Occasions When You Can Change Your Mind Should Be Cherished, Because They Mean You're Smarter Than You Were Before.

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.

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

Incompetence Is Certainty In The Absence Of Expertise. Overconfidence Is Certainty In The Presence Of Expertise.

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.

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

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

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

Living A Long Life, The Conventional Wisdom At The Time Said, Depended To A Great Extent On Who We Were-that Is, Our Genes. It Depended On The Decisions We Made-on What We Chose To Eat, And How Much We Chose To Exercise, And How Effectively We Were Treated By The Medical System. No One Was Used To Thinking About Health In Terms Of Community.

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

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.

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.

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.

I Don't Like Things That Aren't True.

To Be Someone's Best Friend Requires A Minimum Investment Of Time. More Than That, Though, It Takes Emotional Energy. Caring About Someone Deeply Is Exhausting.

People Are Experience-rich And Theory-poor. I Help People Organize / Make Sense Of Their Experiences.

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.

The Great Accomplishment Of Jobs's Life Is How Effectively He Put His Idiosyncrasies - His Petulance, His Narcissism, And His Rudeness - In The Service Of Perfection.

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

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.

We Have, As Human Beings, A Storytelling Problem. We're A Bit Too Quick To Come Up With Explanations For Things We Don't Really Have An Explanation For.

So Long As The Stereotype Is Used As A Way Of Understanding How To Fix The Problem As Opposed To Demonizing A People Or Writing Them Off, Then I Think It's Ok.

People Who Are Busy Doing Things - As Opposed To People Who Are Busy Sitting Around, Like Me, Reading And Having Coffee In Coffee Shops -don't Have Opportunities To Kind Of Collect And Organize Their Experiences And Make Sense Of Them.

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.

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.

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?

I Suspect People Who Are Indecisive Are People Who Are Far Too Enamored Of Analysis In All Settings And Are Destroying Their Ability To Make An Instinctive Judgment Through Over-analysis And That's Dangerous.

Visionaries Are Limited By Their Visions.

We Don't Know Where Our First Impressions Come From Or Precisely What They Mean, So We Don't Always Appreciate Their Fragility.

There Is This Tremendous Body Of Knowledge In The World Of Academia Where Extraordinary Numbers Of Incredibly Thoughtful People Have Taken The Time To Examine On A Really Profound Level The Way We Live Our Lives And Who We Are And Where We've Been. That Brilliant Learning Sometimes Gets Trapped In Academia And Never Sees The Light Of Day.

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.

Outlier Are Those Who Have Been Given Opportunities-- -and Who Have Had The Strength And Presence Of Mind To Seize Them.

Presence Of Mind

The People At The Top Don't Work Just Harder Or Even Much Harder Than Everyone Else. They Work Much, Much Harder.

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

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

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’.

So, It's A Very, You Know - Maybe We're Wrong In - You Know, We Go Around Thinking The Innovator Is The Person Who's First To Kind Of Conceive Of Something. And Maybe The Innovation Process Continues Down The Line To The Second And The Third And The Fourth Entrant Into A Field.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

The Injunction To Be Nice Is Used To Deflect Criticism And Stifle The Legitimate Anger Of Dissent.

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 Don't Go To An Office, So I Write At Home. I Like To Write In The Morning, If Possible; That's When My Mind Is Freshest. I Might Write For A Couple Of Hours, And Then I Head Out To Have Lunch And Read The Paper. Then I Write For A Little Bit Longer If I Can, Then Probably Go To The Library Or Make Some Phone Calls. Every Day Is A Little Bit Different. I'm Not Highly Routinized, So I Spend A Lot Of Time Wandering Around New York City With My Laptop In My Bag, Wondering Where I'm Going To End Up Next. It's A Fairly Idyllic Life For Someone Who Likes Writing.

We Vary Greatly In The Natural Advantages That We've Been Given. The World's Not Fair

Six Degrees Of Separation Doesn't Mean That Everyone Is Linked To Everyone Else In Just Six Steps. It Means That A Very Small Number Of People Are Linked To Everyone Else In A Few Steps, And The Rest Of Us Are Linked To The World Through Those Special Few.

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.

My Highest Compliment Is When Someone Comes Up To Me To Say, "my 14-year-old Daughter, Or My 12-year-old Son Read Your Book And Loved It." I Cannot Conceive Of A Greater Compliment Than That - To Write Something That As An Adult I Find Satisfying, But Also That Manages To Reach A Curious 13- Or 14-year-old.

If You Think Success Is About So Many More Things And Is So Much More Arbitrary, Then You Can Be Much More Open To The Idea That You Can Be Ben Fountain And Publish Your Great Book At Forty-nine.

I Think Actually The Marketing Community Is Approaching A Crisis: There Are Just Too Many Messages Competing For Too Little Attention. That Is The Fundamental Problem.

Achievement Is Talent Plus Preparation

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.

If You Are Going To Do Something Truly Innovative, You Have To Be Someone Who Does Not Value Social Approval. You Can't Need Social Approval To Go Forward. Otherwise, How Would You Ever Do The Thing That You Are Doing?

Success Has To Do With Deliberate Practice. Practice Must Be Focused, Determined, And In An Environment Where There's Feedback.

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.

When People In Authority Want The Rest Of Us To Behave, It Matters-first And Foremost-how They Behave.

The People Who Stand Before Kings May Look Like They Did It All By Themselves. But In Fact They Are Invariably The Beneficiaries Of Hidden Advantages And Extraordinary Opportunities And Cultural Legacies That Allow Them To Learn And Work Hard And Make Sense Of The World In Ways Others Cannot. It Makes A Difference Where And When We Grew Up.

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.

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.

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.

If You're In Business It's Both A Promise And A Warning. It Says That Sometimes Little Things Can Cause Some Little Guy To Have An Overnight Success.

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

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.

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.

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

Working Really Hard Is What Successful People Do.

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.

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

Shortly After The Birth Control Pill Was Approved For Public Distribution, One Woman Wrote To John Rock, Its Inventor, "you Should Be Afraid To Meet Your Maker." Rock, Despite Being Catholic Replied, "my Dear Madam, In My Faith, We Are Taught That The Lord Is With Us Always. When My Time Comes, There Will Be No Need For Introductions."

The Kinds Of Errors That Cause Plane Crashes Are Invariably Errors Of Teamwork And Communication.

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.

Our Unconscious Is Really Good At Quick Decision-making - It Often Delivers A Better Answer Than More Deliberate And Exhaustive Ways Of Thinking.

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 Entire Principle Of A Blind Taste Test Was Ridiculous. They Shouldn't Have Cared So Much That They Were Losing Blind Taste Tests With Old Coke, And We Shouldn't At All Be Surprised That Pepsi's Dominance In Blind Taste Tests Never Translated To Much In The Real World. Why Not? Because In The Real World, No One Ever Drinks Coca-cola Blind.

I Became Convinced That Knowing Lots Of People Was Kind Of Skill, Something That The Diligent Can Overcome.

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

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.

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.

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

What Interests Me About Fiction Is Plot. And What Interests Me About Plot Is Whether Someone Tells A Story That Moves Me Within The Constraints Of Storytelling. And I Have Narrowly Defined Storytelling.

Innovation-the Heart Of The Knowledge Economy-is Fundamentally Social.

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.

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.

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.

Poverty Is Not Deprivation, It Is Isolation.

Nobody Accomplishes Success By Themselves.

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

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

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.

I Don't Want To Be Like The Angry Old Guy In The Corner Who Is Always Ranting And Raving About The Same Things - But I Don't Mind Doing That Just A Little Bit!

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.

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.

Change Your Mind About Something Significant Every Day.

Changing Your Mind

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

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.

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

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.

What Track Needs To Figure Out: How To Engage Us Between The Races. Instead, The Entire Off-the-track Conversation Is About Doping. This Is How You Kill A Sport.

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

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.

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

When Writing, You Can't Break Physical Rules. You Can't Have People Come Back From The Dead. That's Cheating. I Am A Kind Of Narrative Fundamentalist In Many Ways.

Understanding The True Nature Of Instinctive Decision Making Requires Us To Be Forgiving Of Those People Trapped In Circumstances Where Good Judgment Is Imperiled.

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.

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

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.

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.

We Tend To Credit Those Who Create An Idea, Not Those Who Perfect It, Forgetting That It Is Often Only In The Perfection Of An Idea That True Progress Occurs. Putting Sixty-four Transistors On A Chip Allowed People To Dream Of The Future. Putting Four Million Transistors On A Chip Actually Gave Them The Future.

The Nature Of Athletic Celebrity Is Increasingly Moving Away From The Actual Field Of Play.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Cultural Legacies Are Powerful Forces. They Have Deep Roots And Long Lives. They Persist, Generation After Generation, Virtually Intact, Even As The Economic And Social And Demographic Conditions That Spawned Them Have Vanished, And They Play Such A Role In Directing Attitudes And Behavior That We Cannot Make Sense Of Our World Without Them.

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

Arousal Leaves Us Mind-blind.

Emotion Is Contagious.

The Religious Paradigm And The Science Fiction Paradigm Are Different. Apologies To Science Fiction Fans, But The Paradigm There Is To Create A New World And Describe It With A Kind Of Specificity That We Describe The World We Inhabit. Religiosity, On The Other Hand, Does None Of That.

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.

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.

Our Acquaintances—not Our Friends—are Our Greatest Source Of New Ideas And Information. The Internet Lets Us Exploit The Power Of These Kinds Of Distant Connections With Marvellous Efficiency.

It Is The New And Different That Is Always Most Vulnerable To Market Research.

Track Is Full Of The Absolute Nicest And Most Polite Athletes In All Of Sports, And Where Does It Get Us?

I'm Totally Engaging In Cultural Stereotyping, No Question About It. But I Think It's Ok Because I'm Doing It For A Reason, For A Good Reason.

You Don't Start At The Top If You Want To Find The Story. You Start In The Middle, Because It's The People In The Middle Who Do The Actual Work In The World.

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.

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

I Don't Think People Are Averse To Thinking About Things In A Deep Way, But We Have Limited Time And Opportunity To Think About Things In A Deep Way. I Think That's Why There Is An Appetite For Non-fiction - It Gives People The Opportunity To Reexamine Ordinary Experience And Be Smarter About It.

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

To Build A Better World We Need To Replace The Patchwork Of Lucky Breaks And Arbitrary Advantages Today That Determine Success--the Fortunate Birth Dates And The Happy Accidents Of History--with A Society That Provides Opportunities For All.

Happy Accidents

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?

I Interviewed One Of The Most Powerful Lawyers In The World And He Told Me, "at The Time, It Was The Worst Thing In The World Not To Be Able To Get A Job At A Fancy Law Firm, But It's The Greatest Thing That Ever Happened In My Life." It Was A Humble Acknowledgment Of How Forces Much Larger Than Himself Shaped His Career. I Really Wanted To Bring That Point Home.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Hard Work Is A Prison Sentence Only If It Does Not Have Meaning. Once It Does, It Becomes The Kind Of Thing That Makes You Grab Your Wife Around The Waist And Dance A Jig.

If There Is One Thing I Learned By Reading Epstein's "the Sports Gene" It Is That World-class Athletes Are, By Definition, Abnormal: That Is, The Kind Of Person Capable Of Competing At That Level Is Necessarily Very Different From The Rest Of Us Physiologically. They Are Outliers.

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

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

Through Embracing The Diversity Of Humans Beings, We Will Find A Sure Way To True Happiness.

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

An Aggressive Drug-testing Program Would Cut Down On Certain Abuses, But Its Never Going To Catch Everyone - Or Even Close To Everyone.

If We Are To Learn To Improve The Quality Of The Decisions We Make, We Need To Accept The Mysterious Nature Of Our Snap Judgments.

Decisions We Make

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

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)

If Your Parents Are Billionaires, That Might Actually Be An Obstacle To Your Own Happiness And Self-development. If You Go To Oxford Or Harvard, That Might Actually Thwart Your Desire To Graduate With A Science Or Math Degree.

There's No Idea That Can't Be Explained To A Thoughtful 14-year-old. If The Thoughtful 14-year-old Doesn't Get It, It Is Your Fault, Not The 14-year-old's.

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!

Our World Requires That Decisions Be Sourced And Footnoted, And If We Say How We Feel, We Must Also Be Prepared To Elaborate On Why We Feel That Way...we Need To Respect The Fact That It Is Possible To Know Without Knowing Why We Know And Accept That - Sometimes - We're Better Off That Way.

The 10,000-hours Rule Says That If You Look At Any Kind Of Cognitively Complex Field, From Playing Chess To Being A Neurosurgeon, We See This Incredibly Consistent Pattern That You Cannot Be Good At That Unless You Practice For 10,000 Hours, Which Is Roughly Ten Years, If You Think About Four Hours A Day.

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.

I'm Convinced That Ideas And Behaviors And New Products Move Through A Population Very Much Like A Disease Does.

Do I Think That American Democracy Ends If Trump Is President? No! I Think, There Are Plenty Of Checks And Balances In Place. I Think He Would Do Some Damage To The Country But We Would Recover. The Office Of The Presidency And American Democratic Institutions Are A Lot Stronger Than One Person. So If He Wins, Our Job Is Just To Keep The Office Strong, Right? And Hope He'll Be Replaced By Something Better!

There’s This Powerful Phrase In The Legal World, “difficult Cases Make Bad Law.” The Exception Is The Difficult Case. You Can’t Generalize Them By Definition. So Although They Are Fascinating, They Don’t Solve Any Problem Because They’re So One Of A Kind.

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

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

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.

Father: 'anything But Journalism.' I Rebelled.

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.

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.

If A Window Is Broken And Left Unrepaired, People Walking By Will Conclude That No One Cares And No One Is In Charge. Soon, More Windows Will Be Broken, And The Sense Of Anarchy Will Spread From The Building To The Street On Which It Faces, Sending A Signal That Anything Goes.

Being Able To Act Intelligently And Instinctively In The Moment Is Possible Only After A Long And Rigorous Of Education And Experience

Performance Ought To Improve With Experience, And Pressure Is An Obstacle That The Diligent Can Overcome.

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.

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

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

Success Is A Function Of Persistence And Doggedness And The Willingness To Work Hard.

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

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?

An Incredibly High Percentage Of Successful Entrepreneurs Are Dyslexic. That's One Of The Little-known Facts.

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

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.

What Does It Say About A Society That It Devotes More Care And Patience To The Selection Of Those Who Handle Its Money Than Of Those Who Handle Its Children?

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

A Lot Of What Is Most Beautiful About The World Arises From Struggle.

People Who Bring Transformative Change Have Courage, Know How To Re-frame The Problem And Have A Sense Of Urgency.

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.

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

There Are Some People, Who I'll Charitably Call Snobs, Who Are Dismissive Of Any Conversation That Doesn't Begin With The Full Level Of Complexity. That's Just Not How The World Works.

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John Quincy Adams

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