Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-Hour Rule Essay

Malcolm Gladwell makes the case for the10,000-hour rule in Outliers, that in order to be successful all one needs to do is practice anything for a period of 10,000 hours, have an abundance of lucky breaks, and the right circumstances fall into place. By comparison, he equates success on the world-renowned level as being the same as 10 years of practice because “it's roughly how long it takes to put in ten thousand hours of hard practice” (41). Therefore, the old saying, practice makes perfect, could be the tenet by which he stakes his belief.
An Outlier is one that achieves the ultimate success through much persistence and dedication to his cause. Gladwell’s persuasive slant gives the reader an interesting take on the epitome of success through his use of stories about famous figures who have made it in life and the parallels that connect them. He also throws in examples from his own life for good measure. Couple that with the level of research he has conducted to prove his point and it is difficult to think success can be attained any other way unless it comes by Gladwell’s depiction.
In one such example, he shares the story of the Beatles and how their fame and success was found from playing “an estimated twelve hundred times” (50), over a period of a year and a half in Hamburg, Germany. Gladwell arrives at this number by calculating the number of hours performed per night and concluded that “most bands today don’t perform twelve hundred times in their entire careers” (50).
Bill Gates was another known Outlier who achieved great success and wealth in his founding of Microsoft. He discovered a love for computers while in the eighth grade that became a full-blown obsession, “eight hours a day, seven days a week” (52).
Gladwell makes the comparison of the Beatles, Bill Gates, and other well-known success stories as all having incredible talent, but talent alone was not what made them successful. Rather, it was “their extraordinary opportunities” (55) that contributed to their mark of success. This supports Gladwell’s point that one cannot become an Outlier through his own efforts but instead by one’s set of circumstances that plays a pivotal role in their success.
Gladwell goes to great lengths to prove to the reader that he has done his research to support his theory. He covers a vast array of subjects and scenarios containing well-known people in a case by case basis to illustrate that his theory is not rooted in any one particular category of irony. He even goes so far as to give the reader a list of the seventy-five wealthiest people in all of history. Gladwell supports his claim that opportunity equals success by pointing out that nine of the people on the list were born within nine years of one another. What is remarkable is not their age demographic or their immense “vision and talent” (63) but rather the level of opportunities afforded to each that weighed in on their success.
If history is any indication, perhaps Gladwell knows what he is talking about. The most successful people in the world have extraordinary stories that precede their success. Their stories tell of amazing circumstances and windows of opportunities that gave them the breaks in life to not just get ahead but to stay there. Maybe a 10,000-hour rule is not so much the premise upon which success is measured and built. Perhaps all one needs is a chance and then the sky becomes the limit.

Reference

Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2008. Print.