English Essay: How Malcolm Gladwell Redefines Success and Potential

This essay critically examines Malcolm Gladwell's perspectives on success, as presented in his book "Outliers: The Story of Success." The essay challenges conventional views of innate talent and explores Gladwell's argument that success is a product of various factors, including practice (the 10,000-hour rule), timing, circumstances, upbringing, and culture. It highlights Gladwell's analysis of successful individuals like Mozart and Bill Gates, emphasizing the importance of these external factors over inherent genius. The essay discusses how Gladwell's insights can reshape one's understanding of personal potential and offers practical applications for pursuing innovative ideas and cultivating skills. It underscores the significance of incorporating Gladwell's ideas into educational resources to foster a more nuanced perspective on achieving success. The essay references Gladwell's book and supporting academic sources, providing a comprehensive analysis of his key arguments and their implications.

Running Head: ENGLISH ESSAY
English Essay
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1ENGLISH ESSAY
How does Malcolm Gladwell provide new insight as to how we examine stories of success,
and how can we use his findings to make the most of human potential?
Through his book, outliers: The story of success, Malcom Gladwell has challenges
several traditional assumptions about the innate genius as well as natural born talent. The
insights of success provided by the mentioned writer highly differ from the conventional
methods of obtaining success in both personal as well as professional life. The author has clearly
mentioned that “In Outliers, I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of
success don't work”1. In order to explain his statement, the author had taken the help of the
speech given by Robert Winthrop about the hero of American independence Benjamin Franklin.
In his speech, Winthrop has stated that Franklin had rose from nothing and was unable to
evidence basic advantages during his early education. This fact contradicts with Gladwell.
According to him, behind the success of each and every individual there remains the contribution
of his or her parents, culture and patronage. Success of an individual gets highly impacted by
their background an early childhood2. The culture one belongs to along with the legacy passed
down by the forebears shapes the pattern of one’s achievement.
With the help of a good number of examples , the author have explained that the chief
reasons behind succeeds are timing, practice, circumstances, upbringing culture as well as
opportunities3. He has pointed out that those successful people we admire like Mozart and Bill
Gates were not born with natural talent. Instead of that, they were brought up rightly and were in
the right place at the right time. Not only that there hard works of 10,000 hours along with a few
1 Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The story of success. Hachette UK, 2008.
2 Wong, Nathan Colin. "The 10 000-hour rule." Canadian Urological Association Journal 9.9-10 (2015): 299.
3 Nakayama, Don K. "Getting to 10,000 hours." Journal of surgical education 71.2 (2014): 159-160.

2ENGLISH ESSAY
lucky opportunities are the chief reason behind their success. The distinguished is one of
Gladwell open a new way of thinking for me. Previously, the fact that successful people are born
with intent talent often disappointed me. However, after going through this book, I understood
the importance of hard work and practice which enhances the belief within myself that I also
posses the potential to gain success. In his writing, the author have chiefly focused on 5 factors
that has the potential to lead to success. The first factor on which success is highly dependent is
Practice. According to Gladwell, a good number of experts ensue about 10,000 hours of practice
before they develop their talent. For instance, the famous music band Beatles had to spend two
prolonged years in Germany playing 8 hours a day before they experienced success. Bill gates,
before he evidenced success, used to spent prolonged hours for programming. Even Mozart, who
is known to have god gifted talent have sent a huge amount of time practicing piano on other’s
composition before he was ready to create his owns4. Thus from this insight of the Author, I
understood that talent can only lead to success id it is sharpened with the help of practice.
The next factor that Gladwell explained to be crucial for success is Timing. In his book,
he had related a good number of examples of eminent people who are considered to be highly
successful since they possess the right skill at the right time. For instance, William Joy learned
programming just before it had gained popularity. Just about the time he accrued 10,000 hours of
programming practice, personal computing arrived, making the prospect ideal for someone with
his skill to make use of the market5. The third and four insight of Gladwell include culture and
upbringing. In order to explain the relation between culture and success, Gladwell have used the
4 Rauch, Marta. "Best practices for using enterprise gamification to engage employees and customers." International
Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2013.
5 Koyle, Martin A. "Repair and repeat: Comments on the learning curve for TIP urethroplasty." Canadian
Urological Association Journal 7.11-12 (2013): E795.

3ENGLISH ESSAY
story of a Colombian pilot who crashed a plane since, even with thinning fuel, he wasn't self-
confident enough to stand up to the threatening control tower agents and demand to land. Thus
he explained that culture that promotes passive submission to hierarchy may not be able to
experience success. When it comes to upbringing, goodwill explains how upbringing shapes the
characteristic of an individual which can either open or hinder his or her way to success6. For
instance, a child who have been taught to ask questions whenever he or she feels to is more
likely to gain success compared to a child who have been taught too suppress their concerns.
While going through the book, I found it impossible for me to read it without looking
closely at my own story of success. The insights provided by the author had made me understood
the chief reason behind my past failure. Not only has that, the new explanations of success also
provided me the track on which I should run in order to achieve success in future. As per my
opinion, the chief purpose of the author behind composing the book is to demolish the popularly
held beliefs that prevail in the mind of the youth which often hinder their way to success. His
book has the potentiality to break the rigid thoughts and involve them more in practicing their
skills in order to achieve their ultimate goal. In order to apply the idea of Malcolm in our
personal life the first step that should be taken by us includes pursing ‘insane’ ideas. We all
posses ideas about how can we make our life better but majority of us often resist ourselves from
executing the same due to the far of failure. However, from the new insight gained, people
should be encouraged to pursue their innovative ideas followed by extreme and prolonged hours
of labors. When it comes to labor we must follow the 10,000 hours practice theory of Gladwell7.
Not only should that, parenting lessons should be provided to “would be” parents where they will
6 Hoerr, Thomas R. "Principal connection." Educational leadership 3 (2013): 86-87.
7 Kovacs, George. "Airway management:“the times they are a-changin”." Canadian Journal of Emergency
Medicine 15.6 (2013): 317-320.

4ENGLISH ESSAY
be taught to appropriately up bring their offspring so that they can obtain all the skills that will be
needed by them in order to gain success. Finally, as per my opinions, the insights of the author
must be incorporated in the study resources of students so that their perspective of success gets
changed in a positive way.

5ENGLISH ESSAY
Reference List
Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The story of success. Hachette UK, 2008.
Hoerr, Thomas R. "Principal connection." Educational leadership 3 (2013): 86-87.
Kovacs, George. "Airway management:“the times they are a-changin”." Canadian Journal of
Emergency Medicine 15.6 (2013): 317-320.
Koyle, Martin A. "Repair and repeat: Comments on the learning curve for TIP
urethroplasty." Canadian Urological Association Journal 7.11-12 (2013): E795.
Nakayama, Don K. "Getting to 10,000 hours." Journal of surgical education 71.2 (2014): 159-
160.
Rauch, Marta. "Best practices for using enterprise gamification to engage employees and
customers." International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. Springer, Berlin,
Heidelberg, 2013.
Wong, Nathan Colin. "The 10 000-hour rule." Canadian Urological Association Journal 9.9-10
(2015): 299.