Outliers: Creating Your Own Advantages

Posted: January 10th, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Philosophy | Tags: , | 6 Comments »

Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell: brilliant book. Go read it. I’m not going to discuss the content of the book at all here, but rather make a few observations and share my thoughts about Gladwell’s closing remarks, where he sums up his thesis.

Gladwell writes:

We are so caught in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth… To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages that today determine success – the fortunate birth dates and happy accidents of history – with a society that provides opportunities for all.

Obviously, that Utopian society is ideal. But I don’t believe our society will ever allow opportunities for all, with no arbitrary advantages. Advantages are just woven into the structure of society today. Sure, they change – it’s now favourable in many cases to be from an ethnic minority, for example – but there will always be advantages to certain individuals or groups.

Considering that the society Gladwell envisages is unfeasible, I want to focus on how we may create our own advantages.

The key point I want to make is that I believe advantages come from placing ourselves in situations where opportunities may arise. If you never open yourself up to opportunities, then you have very little chance of gaining an advantage.A personal example of my own: Almost a year ago, I was reading Idealog magazine and read a small article about something called the yMedia Challenge (basically a competition where marketing students have to develop a social media campaign for a non-profit organization). It clearly said “for university students”, and yet I felt a strong connection with the idea of the challenge and decided I would try to sign up anyway. I took five minutes to write an email to yMedia, explaining that I wasn’t at university but wanted to sign up anyway. A day later I got a reply from one of the co-founders of yMedia, who isn’t involved in the day-to-day running of the venture anymore, but is still strongly involved.

The founder of yMedia, Adele Barlow, has helped me so much in the past year to define my goals and start getting where I want to. She’s helped me find further opportunities, and encouraged me to try and get into a school offering the International Baccalaureate Diploma (because completing that diploma will help me reach my goal of getting into a top university). She’s someone I trust to give me advice based on my interests, with no personal motivations. I can’t even really explain how much I look up to her.

The point I’m trying to make is that if I hadn’t taken five minutes to write an email to yMedia, even though I wasn’t allowed to join the challenge, I never would have got in touch with Adele. From meeting her, I’ve learned so much, and have been opened to many further opportunities.

I try to look at life with a pair of “Opportunity Lenses” on. When I have them on, opportunities start popping out at me from everywhere, and pursuing even half of these with my spare time allows me to learn huge amounts and move closer to being where I want to be in life. Perhaps “Opportunity Lenses” is a cliché, but it’s a way of saying how I have learned to try and look for opportunities everywhere.

Gladwell’s final paragraph discusses how a poor girl in the South Bronx didn’t need a fancy school, or lots of money, or high-profile parents. “Marita just needed a chance. And look at the chance she was given!” (Gladwell is referring to the fact that Marita gained entrance to a KIPP Academy school).

I do believe Gladwell that success can be attributed to a large degree of luck (or randomness – read Fooled By Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb). But in some ways, I don’t agree that people need to be “given” chances. I think that successful people are those who can best expose themselves to opportunities that lead them to advantages.

You’re not going to get anywhere by waiting for a lucky break, or wishing you’d been born on a different day. More than anything, Gladwell showed me that society isn’t fair, but it’s up to us to find opportunities for ourselves.

  • http://twitter.com/studip101 Ethan

    I agree with your basic conclusion, i.e. that we should all actively look for opportunities to get ahead.

    But I think you write off Gladwell’s utopian society too easily. We may never eliminate all arbitrary opportunities, but there’s a lot we can do to minimize them (e.g. progressive income taxes). And I think the affirmative action programs you alluded to are good examples. (You say they’ve gone too far, such that ethnic minorities are now actually the ones with an advantage, but I highly doubt that, at least in the US.)

    Also, you have one minor error in paragraph two: where you say “how we may give ourselves arbitrary advantages,” you should remove/change the word arbitrary; I understand the link you were trying to create, but if we can cause these advantages, they’re by-definition not arbitrary.

    Overall, good article!

  • http://mmoorejones.com Michael Moore-Jones

    Thanks heaps for sharing Ethan – great points you make.

    At least from what I’ve noticed, there very much is a shift towards advantages being given to some people from ethnic minorities (here in New Zealand). I wasn’t trying to say they’ve gone too far with that, but rather highlight the fact that advantages move amongst individuals and groups.

    Also, thanks for pointing out that mistake :) Appreciate it!

  • http://twitter.com/codyboyte Cody Boyte

    You may enjoy the book Talent is Overrated. I found it to be a fair bit better than Outliers and it seems like it would match your personality better. I think that Outliers comes from the perspective of attempting to mold society in a way that leads towards everyone having perfectly equal opportunities (will never happen, luck strikes in different ways) whereas Talent is Overrated is much more about how individuals can become amazing almost irrelevant of their starting position.

  • http://mmoorejones.com Michael Moore-Jones

    Brilliant, was wanting some more summer reading so will add that to my list! Thanks for the suggestion :)

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