Outliers

Outliers, The Story of Success is the title of a book I just finished this morning. The fact that I started it yesterday should tell you it was a good one! The author, Malcolm Gladwell, argues the true stories of success in a variety of people. He reveals that you don't just get to the top by intelligence and ambition. There are more important factors in the recipe, such as: birth date, family backgrounds, culture, economy, opportunity, and good old-fashioned luck (combined with the will to work really hard). In summary, he says, "Success is a gift. Outliers are those who have been given opportunities-- and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them."

He gives the Paul Harvey "rest of the story" version of many people we've heard of: Bill Gates, the Beatles, and why Asians are good at math. He makes suggestions on parenting style affecting the success of your children, why athletes born in certain months excel in their particular sport, and many other research-filled information about success in groups of people. There was a great paragraph about what makes work satisfying: autonomy, complexity, and connection between effort and reward. "It is not about how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It's whether our work fulfills us." Tell me if you disagree with that!

This book was super-interesting to me! Definitely a two-thumbs-up recommendation.