A not-so-successful book for success
Table of contents
Success the topic
Success is a topic that interests people all over the world. In China, if someone is labeled successful, it probably means they have a significant amount of money or political privileges. This post is a book review of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success. The stories in this book provide a fresh perspective on success. You may be familiar with some of the protagonists in the stories, such as Bill Gates, but the author gives a different point of view by digging into the behind-the-scenes stories and backgrounds.
The entire book is divided into two categories, the first one is Opportunity. In this section, Malcolm clarify through several stories that the success is not simply the result of hard work or individual talent but is also heavily influenced by external factors such as background (culture, family), opportunity (timing).
Each of us has his or her own distinct personality. But overlaid on top of that are tendencies and assumptions and reflexes handed down to us by the history of the community we grew up in, and those differences are extraordinarily specific.
10,000-hour Rule
One of the main themes of the book is the “10,000-hour rule”, which suggests that anyone can become an expert if they put 10,000 hours of practice or learning into a particular area. Indeed, practice is one of the key points to become an expert, but what I want to say is you need to find a way to keep yourself interested in this field. Imagine if you spend a week studying and learning something without any results, I believe it will be difficult for you to stick to it. My suggestion is to periodically write down or record what you achieve and post it on the Internet, just like I did with this post.
English
The story that impresses me the most is how one of the airlines with the highest air crash rate miraculously turned into being as safe as any other airlines in the world. It begins with the air crash Korean Air crash in Guam, the airplane departed from Seoul-Kimpo International Airport in very bad weather, finally crashed into Bijia Peak about 3 nautical miles short of the runway. A theory is introduced when talk about the power of cockpit, which is called Power Distance Index, it can be used to represent society’s level of inequality that is defined from below rather than from above. A country with high value means it is unequal for its ordinary people to live in the country. I think you can guess what this index was like in South Korea at that time. The power that captain had at that time let himself be unquestionable especially when his first officer suffered due to a mistake.
“Captain hit First Officer with the back of his hand for making the error.“
Before reading this book, I had never thought that languages could be classified in the way below:
- Transmitter oriented
- Receiver oriented
Western communication has what linguists call a “transmitter orientation” - that is, it is considered the responsibility of the speaker to communicate ideas clearly and unambiguously. But Korea, like many Asian countries, is receiver oriented. It is up to the listener to make sense of what is being said.
So, as the author said, the accident was caused by a mixture of factors, and the power of language was still sufficient to be the most crucial condition among them. It was also because of the fundamental replacement in aviation terminology that eventually led to the transformation of Korean Air.
What I achieve
This book has given me not only the knowledge and theories that I had never known before, but I believe the most important aspect of it comes from the second part of the book, “Legacy”. We are not just ourselves, we represent our families, the culture we belong to, the experiences we have had. These are all closely related to our success. When we feel discouraged by failure, we should think about these things. Do what we love, rather than chase fame and fortune, and amplify our strengths. This may be the greatest gift that this book has given me.
Thanks
Thanks to YouTuber Ray and his channel MoneyXYZ.