Gladwell’s Outliers: Bill Joy, Bill Gates, the Case for 10k Hours & Adapting

by Jenny Ambrozek

December 19, 2008 at 12:27 pm · Filed under Talent Management, Web 2.0

Anyone else read/reading “Outliers“, Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, and #1 on the NYTimes Non fiction list, (2008-12-14)?

I’m only at page 256 but it’s Gladwell’s case for doing the work, and logging 10,000 hours of effort for being exceptional, that’s intriguing me. Gladwell tells stories of Bill Gates’ and Bill Joy’s early computing experiences. For Gates computer programming began in 8th Grade at Lakeside School in Seattle and for Joy at the University of Michigan, 1971. The author argues that their success is understandable in light of the sheer number of computing hours they logged.

I thought about Gladwell’s Gates and Joy stories reading the December 15 eWeek reviewing 2008. Articles reference the challenges both Microsoft and Sun face striving to offer products and adapt to a Cloud Computing world.

It occurred to me that logging 10,000 hours may make you a successful “outlier”. However, the capacity to continue to “look around”, as John Seely Brown counsels in The Social Life of Information, and adapt are also critical to ongoing success.

If you’ve read (or are reading) “Outliers”, I’m interested in your take on the book. Did Gladwell’s case for 10, 000 hours persuade you? What other aspects of the book resonated or not?

~ Jenny Ambrozek

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While I haven’t yet started the book, Nathan Fosse started a conversation over on Amazon with his review of Outliers. You might want to take a look over there. While he’s a little tough on Gladwell, he does make some in depth points about the content Gladwell’s arguments.

Jenny, I haven’t read Outliers, and won’t comment on the book itself until I read it.

However, I think there’s a lot to be said for the idea of putting intense effort into something — logging 10,000 hours (or even 2,000 hours).

I have always thought that putting in extra hours goes a long way toward success. I am reminded of an interview once with Jim Cramer (the self-made investor of Mad Money fame). One of the points he emphasized was that if someone wanted to be more successful, they should get up an hour earlier and get to work an hour earlier. He attributed that in large part to his success. It sounds “easy-for-you-to-say” glib, but there’s something to that.

I’ve found it to be true that there’s a direct correlation between the hours you put into a business or your life’s work, and how successful it tends to be. Not always, of course. But the more attention you pay to something, the more likely you are to be successful at it.

You’re thinking about it all the time, more likely to come up with creative ideas, more likely to execute on those ideas.

Usually when people complain about being overworked, if you look underneath all too often they’re getting to work (or to their desks) late. They fool around and don’t get started until 10 am and then waste lots of time surfing the Web, lunch hours routinely extend to an hour and a half or two, etc. — and they can’t understand why 5 PM rolls around and they haven’t gotten much done. Why their business is not a success, why they don’t get that promotion, etc.

Usually it’s because they don’t like what they are doing. So my advice to them is always to find something you like where you can’t wait to get back to it each morning by 7:00 or 8:00 am at the latest. And you’ll be amazed at what you get accomplished by noon.

AND — you’ll be amazed at how much more likely you are to be a success at whatever you are doing. Maybe more hours doesn’t GUARANTEE success, but it sure makes it more likely.

In these days of flexible work hours where we cherish independence, it’s not popular to talk about getting up early and getting to work early and putting in the hours — but honestly, that has a big impact on how much someone accomplishes in a day, in a week, in a month, in a year.

Chip, your Amazon link is a serious find not just for the content ,but also the volume of wide ranging comments. I also found exploring the review author’s background intriguing. It appears Nathan Fosse is a Harvard sociiology PhD student doing important work in poverty and health.

Anita, your observations about dilly-dallying at work and then finding spending late hours in the office brought back a conversation with an Australian who came to work in a NY publisher’s office. She found colleagues disproving of her leaving at 6pm but made the case she accomplished more each day than some who worked to midnight as she arrived early and focused during the day. An interesting reflection in light of your post.

What I neglected to include in my post above is a critical success element to which Gladwell alludes but fails to sufficiently credit IMHO. That is, the power of the network.

Gates valuable ties are alluded to with his attending Lakeside, an elite Seattle private school that VERY early gave him access to a computer.

More compelling however is hearing from a colleague that Bill Gates mother sat on the United Way board with IBM CEO John Akers. It’s my understanding it is through that connectiont Gates was introduced to IBM, and DOS emerged.

I did read Outliers. It was just the right kind of read for the 2.5 hr flight between Boston and Chicago. I also read Nathan Fosse’s review on Amazon and just finished slogging through all the 90+ subsequent commentaries. Although Fosse has some valid points, I think he misses the value of Gladwell’s Outliers. Yes, there are many more scholarly and well researched books available on Gladwell’s topic areas related to achieving success( read fame and monetary rewards) in our public acclaim. But the value of Outliers as I see it is that Gladwell presents a tapas of ideas, an appetizer and teaser that invites the reader to question some of our conventional assumptions as to what portends success, such as whether it takes an immersion of about 10,000 hrs to be adequately prepared for grabbing a gold ring (my own non-scientific observations are mixed in this regard. It would seem so for myself I think and for some others I know but not all and I would add that none of us are anywhere close to the monetary success of Bill Gates or other famous examples in Outliers).

I was particularly intrigued by Gladwell’s claim that a birthdate in the first quarter of the year improved the likelihood that given some raw ability one could become a star NHL player (this has been questioned by some who have run numbers differently than those Gladwell cites). Or, does the linguistic construction of numbers in Chinese made it easier for young Chinese students than for English speaking students to grasp arithmetic, ie. in Chinese, 20 is represented linguistically by 2 10″s and the English counterpart, twenty, does not contain either the 10’s or the 2 exactly. Is this a valid claim? I don’t know. So far I have asked only one dual speaking Chinese-English person and she wasn’t sure although she reported that math was always easy for her.

Beyond Gladwell’s anecdotes though, he got me thinking once again about and questioning some assumptions of cause and effect I had fallen into accepting without critical examination. As Fosse points out, Gladwell has lumped his anecdotes with little connection between one section and another. In life though it is up to each of us to look for patterns and connections, to discern what is useful from the messiness and seemingly irrelevance that surrounds us. And prompting an interruption in the oblivion of our day-to-day getting along is worth the read in and of itself.

So those of you who read Outliers (and to be inclusive, also those who do not), I invite you not only to question your own assumptions about how the world is, but to watch how your habits of perception influence what you believe to be possible. I would also invite you to look beyond obvious connections to include within your thinking our essential interdependence that has played out through history and I expect will continue ad infinitum.

The 10,000 hours phenomenon sounds plausible at first read. The specific number of hours of immersion are, I think, not of primary importance. It does seem reasonable that among highly talented and highly intelligent people, those who have had the opportunity to practice their craft starting at an earlier age and for a longer time than their peers would have a distinct advantage. I was particularly intrigued by how this applied to the Beatles. Less convincing for me was the applicability to Bill Gates’ success, since his accomplishments seems to have been more of a business nature than of a technical nature… not sure how spending 10,000 hours programming contributes to one’s success as a technical entrepreneur.

Knowing you Linda as a “The Sustainable Enterprise Fieldbook”* co-contributor and your writing about Mental Models, how appropriate that you push us to question our. “assumptions about how the world is, but to watch how your habits of perception influence what you believe to be possible.”

As for your point about not being “sure how spending 10,000 hours programming contributes to one’s success as a technical entrepreneur”. I will bow to fellow TheAppGap contributor and network analysis guru Patti Anklam on this but it seems to me Bill Gates entrepreneurial success had much to do with his personal network, his mother sitting on a board with John Akers, then IBM CEO. It’s my understanding that connection opened the door for Gates to create DOS and load on IBM PC’s. If there is an IBM historian in our midst perhaps they can add insights, please.

I am currently in the middle of Outliers. Regarding the 10,000 hour rule I think one thing Gladwell strategically semi-disregards is the fact that those who are willing to put in the 10,000 hours are those who are already naturally talented in the field. For example, I wouldn’t put thousands of hours into violin unless I already had some kind of natural talent that sparks my interest to commit to the activity. Thoughts?

” I think one thing Gladwell strategically semi-disregards is the fact that those who are willing to put in the 10,000 hours are those who are already naturally talented in the field.”

Great point. It’s interesting isn’t it how to make our cases, and a good read as Gladwell did in “Outliers”, how in focusing on key themes inevitably the complexity of any topic is understated.

I think that doing the 10 000 hours puts you at place (like Gladwell says) to take advantage of the opportunity given or to shine and be noticed. This is true with Gladwell’s stories of Bill Gates and Joy. The thing is, he is not saying do your 10 000 hours and then that’s it. He is saying do the the 10 000 hours to be noticed. After that it comes down to the individual and their character – to keep on growing and creating.

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