Review: Outliers–Malcolm Gladwell

I know. No one needs a review of a book published in 2008. But some tweets between me and several friends led to an accidental discussion on Gladwell’s idea about a story of success, which made me rethink of my own opinion of the book; why I found the idea makes sense. Therefore I feel the urge to write a review of this ancient book. Long live the social media!

Firstly, I was a bit annoyed that some people categorize it as a self-help book. Maybe because of the title; Outliers: The Story of Success. It does sound like a title of a self-help book, doesn’t it? But considering Gladwell’s bibliography, as any critics agree, this book falls in the pop-economic group, a genre that became popular among non-fiction books since 2005, after the publication of Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Although Kemp is aware of the development of pop-economic into a self-help sub-genre, it’s still important to note that pop-economic focuses on an empirical deduction, sometimes economically or mathematically, to explain daily social phenomenon and break conventional wisdom, such as “the reason for falling crime is the increased economic growth,” or “the key factors of success are intelligence and talent.”

In Outliers, Gladwell presents the idea that the reason for high-level of success is the supporting environment, family, culture, as well as historical and geographical background. The most important factor is the 10,000-hour rule; the amount of time the high achievers practice their talent before reaching for success. How come Bill Gates, not every body else, invent Microsoft? Why did The Beatles became famous worldly in the age of early 20s? Because they have all those supporting keys to practice their talent for 10,000 hours in a very early age; Gates with his computer, and Beatles with their unpaid gigs at night clubs and pubs. 

The greatest critics for this idea are; oversimplified generalization of success, which is in fact a complex social phenomenon, and – in an unsecular and non-capitalist world – oversimplification of the definition of success, which is not only a matter of money. Successful person might be Mahatma Gandhi or Dalai Lama or The Pope, who might have much money from donation or enjoy themselves in the sparkling world, but they chose to live the other part of the material life and inspire many people.

I will start with critic number two first. I think Gladwell’s flaw is already clear in the title; Outliers: The Story of Success. By using the term outliers, he wants to point out his focus on people with high-level of success, so extraordinary that they don’t belong with everybody else. Therefore they are outliers, as Time magazine said, “exceptional people; smart people, rich people, successful people, and people who operate at the extreme outer edge of what is statistically possible.” They are not the common successful people. They are beyond success. That means although we consider Mandra successful and has done something for the society, without undermining his action, we cannot say that he is an outlier. Not to say my parents, who have successfully raised four children and prepared them with moral values necessary to face hardships in their lives, which, although not perfect nor wealthy, are decent and better than millions other Indonesians. Benjamin S and Rhoma Irama are more likely to be outliers, regarding their outstanding creations within a certain short range of time. Someone who makes history, an outlier is. So, the book is about outliers, not the story of success.

The common misperception about the success of the outliers also bothers me. People perceived those people are great because of their money. It’s not completely wrong, I think. In the capitalist world success is defined by creation and innovation, contribution for the better of the society, where an abundance of wealth resulted. But I think the greatness of Bill Gates is not in his being the richest man in the world for several years, but for his invention of computer operating system that has been helping mankind until today. Neither the greatness of Beatles in their copyright jackpot their offspring inherit, but for giving a new meaning to music in the form of rock and roll. Too bad that they invent in the laissez-faire era where everything is copyrighted and success is defined by how much they sell.

For critics number one, I have to agree with that. It’s unfortunate that most social phenomenon are so complex that most empirical observation falls to oversimplification. Even social science easily falls to this trap. The fact that Gladwell picks only a handful of very very successful people doesn’t help to counter the criticism. Statistical analyst Jeff Sauro proves that Gladwell’s claim about most exceptional software millionaires born around 1950s are not completely correct. But he confirms that historical and geographical background are indeed critical in an era of big invention, that someone like Bill Gates can take advantage of the PC’s introduction during major economic shift, as well as Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Mark Zuckerberg in a fast development of internet. He saw Gladwell’s claim as more of showing some patterns in the background of the outliers, rather than a pursuit of verifiable fact.

Being aware of this oversimplified pattern, I found it’s not a surprising claim from Gladwell, regarding his journalism background. Journalistic style is so visible in most Gladwell’s books. Journalists have to write in the way most understandable by the readers, using sequential or chronological plot, although the facts he discovered during reportage are not as complete nor perfectly arranged. The journalists may not find the facts in the same order the story told. Most often the hard news are some piece of plot happening in the middle of the story, much like the one in a detective novel. Readers are introduced to a situation where someone is murdered. But in order to find the murderer and understand the reason, readers are brought back to the past, the background of and the relations with the people close to the victim, in the other hand also updated about the post-murder events, in order to recognize preventive steps taken by the murderer to save himself from the ongoing investigation. In the conclusion, sequential description from the pre- to the post-murder events presents one perfect story of, for example, a broke young man in great needs of his rich aunt’s inheritance, a greedy business partner in a multimillion dollar company, or desperation of an unrequited love.

Journalistic reportage are pretty much the same. Unfortunately it’s not as easy as reading detective stories. In gathering data before writing, facts do not always present themselves to fit the logical plot perfectly; several might be missing or misfit in the story. This explains why news are sometimes called lies, because journalists and editors will have to eliminate several facts unfit in the plot, or add-up some notion (which are usually perceived to be the truth) to make the plot perfectly logical.

In case of outliers, I don’t doubt the fact that outliers have gone through the 10,000-hour practice supported by their environment. But I’m sure that each outlier has other factors supporting them in making history, such as hardship and endurance (come to think of it, endurance might include the 10,000-hour practice. who said that 10,000-hour practice is fun? how could people cope with boredom and distraction of other things? the geniuses, I guess, are people with many talents). But those other factors are eliminated because it might “distract” the plot of the story and insignificant to the logical argument Gladwell made. He might as well wrote about all the success stories of American parents raising their kids, but that would be insignificant and too ordinary to be a social phenomenon.

This doesn’t mean that journalistic style writing completely distorts reality. Some of Gladwell’s ideas are based on researches which, inevitably, are simplification by nature, but statistically and mathematically valid. The journalistic approach is also useful. Freakonomics wouldn’t make a best seller if Dubner, the journalist, hadn’t cooperated with Levitt, the economist, to translate those academic researches into readable daily stories for common people. Tim Harford, who wrote The Undercover Economist and The Logic of Life, is an economist as well as columnist for The Financial Times. Naked Economics’ author Charles Weelan was a correspondent for The Economist and some other economic magazines.

Finally, although refusing to call Outliers a self-help book, I can’t avoid imagining to implement the 10,000-hour practice to my future kids, hoping they will invent something important during an economic boom and unwarlike world. I can also implement that to myself – rather a late bloomer than prodigy like Gates and Beatles – since it is possible to create a masterpiece in the age of forties. The “story of success” is indeed motivational, compared with other pop-economic chapters such as the habitation of drug dealers and the statistics of suicide.