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I've read a lot of the books you guys mention, but I cannot for the life of me figure out why <b>"Outliers"</b> has so many good reviews.<br />
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No offense to the author, or anyone here that liked it, but I did not like it<i> at all</i>. I bought the audio version which was<i> very</i> long. I wanted to turn it off half-way through because it was so boring, but kept listening and telling myself to give it a chance, because maybe he would say something important in the middle, or near the end. Nope.<br />
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When I got to the end of the darn thing (took a few days), I felt like I had just wasted 10 hours of my life (and $30+ !). I was so disappointed that I almost wanted my money back.<br />
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All I got out of all that hoopla, was that you need 10,000 hours of training in something to become an expert, a prodigy.<br />
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He could have said that in one sentence.<br />
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Oh, and the other thing that baffled me - he spent an hour or so near the end teaching me about the mental gymnastics and mechanics of being an airplane pilot. ???<br />
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I wasn't in flight school. Maybe it helped someone else but it didn't help me at all. I gave it away.
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I just finished it the other day, and finished tipping point today.<br />
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The book wasn't about getting 10,000 hours out of something to become a prodigy I don't think. It was more about how cultural influence,timing,hard work/practice all come in to play to make someone an outlier. The 10k part was just part of the equation. There was a part at the end that talked about how he would describe himself as an outlier, and he said he went to a farm school in a farm city, and he went on to college while other people stayed to work the fields. His break came when one of his friends got him a job at new york times, and a few other things that led up to him being an outlier. It was all about the timing, things that led up to that point. I don't think he actually put 10k hours in. I think in his book he is just examining some extreme cases, and the airplane bit is just about cultural influence playing a role in some other cases.</div>
