OUTLIERS

September 3, 2025

Good afternoon,

Book number 7 of my Top Ten: Malcolm Galdwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success . The book was written in  2011. It is the most recent book written in my top ten. I think I made the list in 2012, maybe ?

I appreciate Gladwell’s writing style. He is readable as he discusses complex concepts and problems. And I think he is a great storyteller. In Outliers, he tells stories, and then recaps his thesis, and then tells more stories, and then recaps his thesis once again. Here is his final recap near the end of the book:
” It is impossible for a hockey player or Bill Joy or Robert Oppenheimer or any other outlier for that matter, to look down from their lofty perch and say that with truthfulness, ‘ I did this all by myself.’ 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 deserve , 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. ” ( page 285 )

Many successful ( and what is success ? ) people state with pride ‘ I am self-made ‘ . This is not true. For tomorrow’s blog, I will name some of the things that I believe have made me a success (?). But how do you measure success, and why does it matter ?  Two examples in the book became most quoted by others. Gladwell says you must work 10,000 hours to master some skill. The second one is that most successful hockey players are born in the first three months of any year. I was born in November ,and so I did not have a chance. Ha ha ha !!!

How do you define success ? Is faith related to success at all ? In Christian theology, we are saved by grace, but how we act with all the advantages we have been given is important too.

Praying everyday for women and men of peace and non-violence, to rise up in the world for reconciliation all over the world. AMEN

Fred

black and white shadows

crush humanity’s freedom

am I complicit ? MPL 2025

black and white shadows

crush humanity’s freedom