Outliers

Outliers: The Story of Success

Malcolm Gladwell

Little, Brown and Company (November 18, 2008)
ISBN-13: 978-0316017923

When I grew up, elders told stories of famous and successful people in the history. Quickly, we learned the pattern: this calligrapher filled the whole room with his used-up brushes; that poet produced the master piece only after decades of studying; that martial artist bitterly practiced for decades and became the hero of his era. Very few Chinese historical heroes were gifted. The lessons were imbued into our bones: work hard and thou shall succeed, fail only because you were lazy. “I am not gifted at that” would simply meet “then you must practiced more.”

10,000 hours is so simple yet so depressing. A full-time work-year has about 2,000 hours. This means a reasonably healthy or smart person can become expert if he or she works on it for 5 years. There aren’t that many 5-years in my life. Let alone I already have a full-time job. I will need to choose what I want to be an expert of and there isn’t probably a second chance.

I told youngsters that life is a series of filters. Early on, the lower IQ crowd was filtered out. Later, the lazy disappeared, followed by those with low EQ. When one reaches 40 years old, all peers are smart, hard-working, and communicative. How would one get ahead then? The answer must be the choice of what to invest the 10,000 hours.

I never thought of the pronunciation of numerals gave me an advantage. It always puzzled me that Americans are so bad at arithmetic. English is the culprit! Yep, when I learned this part of English, I was lost at the logic behind the design. Guess there was not any. In fact, linguistically, Chinese is so much more logical and easy. But I had that debate and Melanie made the final judgment already.

Cultural Dimensions (ISBN-13: 9780071439596) was an interesting topic. There came the Power Distance Index (PDI). I learned to take advantage of it, as a Chinese living in the USA or an American in Beijing, without really knowing about it. Now I know the theory of my maneuvers. The concept of the transmitter vs. receiver oriented communication is so insightful. That explains so much of the cross-pacific communication difficulties.

I highly recommend this book. It is an easy and the stories are entertaining.

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3 Responses to Outliers

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