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| V V: The Sweet Smell of Success | |
| V V / New Delhi January 03, 2009, 0:36 IST | |
“A (Success) = X(Work) + Y(Play) + Z(Keep Your Mouth Shut)”
- Albert Einstein
All things being equal, why do some people achieve much more than others? Is it because they have extraordinarily innate talent? Or they have worked harder? Malcolm Gladwell who has written two bestsellers, The Tipping Point and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, believes, to quote Shakespeare, “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” But this raises the question, why do some people ride the crest of the wave, while others are “bound in shallows and miseries?” Is it sheer instinct that takes an individual to the tipping point when a trend flips into irreversible change, for better or worse? Or, are there other factors such as luck and timing, that is, being at the right place at the right time, combined with an enormous capacity for dogged work which makes for success? In Outliers: The Story of Success (Penguin Books, Special Indian Price, Rs 399), Gladwell puts out his formula for success which has not just to do with luck, timing and an infinite capacity for work, but with much else besides.
Gladwell begins his Introduction by defining ‘Outliers,’ which is: (1) something that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body; and (2) a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample. Given this definition, Gladwell says that apart from work, luck and talent, which are, after all, a pretty commonplace formula, there are other “cultural factors” at work. He elaborates his thesis by dividing his study into two sections: Part One or Opportunity which consists of five chapters or case studies; Part Two, Legacy or the cultural baggage we bring with us, with four chapters.
Part One is really case studies of outsiders who have made it big. There are ice-hockey players who get into big league because they are born in the first quarter of the year — nothing to do with astrological predictions but with the fact that the top talent is picked at the beginning of the year. And then there are the others like Bill Gates who had luck on his side: Born at the right time in the right family, which means they cared for him and gave him the opportunities to do what he wanted to, without let or hindrance.
It is the second half of the book, the cultural inheritance and how it helps and/or hinders growth that would be of real interest to us. Gladwell takes off with some odd examples: The effect of cultivating rice for thousands of years on developing a mathematical aptitude. Growing rice requires a farmer to make complex calculations: Dividing the land into equitable plots and working on them all through the year from dawn to dusk that cannot fail but make the family rich. It is an interesting hypothesis but doesn’t quite explain how it sharpens mathematical skills.
A more plausible explanation would have been to examine how the grammar of certain languages, German and Russian for instance, helps develop mathematical and scientific skills at an early age. Or why in three intellectual pursuits — music, mathematics and chess—human beings have performed major feats before the age of puberty. Was this just the luck of the genetic draw or were there other cultural factors at work?
Gladwell talks about a chain of publicly funded American schools called KIPP (‘Knowledge for Power Program’) that started operating in the poorest neighbourhoods of New York City. The KIPP schools were largely made up of Afro-American and Hispanic kids from single-parent families, unlike middle and upper-class children from stable homes who didn’t need extra tuition. But simple hard work and intensive drills paid dividends, especially in mathematics, which is considered one of the tough options in the school curriculum.
All said and done what is the formula for success? What is required in any walk of life is the stamina for long-distance running. Which really boils down to work, day after day till the last syllable of recorded time. Why some have this stamina and others drop out early in the race is a mystery that no one has been able to figure out. Einstein came close to it, but only just.
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