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I know, you don’t think you have the time and there are other and more important books to read at the moment, but be warned, you do need to read this book.

There are a number of ways I can tell a book will be good; one of those ways is if Graham has recommended it to me (how am I going to cope without our lunches together, mate?). And there is basically one way for me to I know that I’ve really enjoyed a book, and that is if I keep telling people about it over and over again. Well, not since Predictably Irrational (also recommended to me by Graham) have I gone on and on about a book to people. First to Ruth over lunch, then to mum on the phone, and then the kids after they had just gotten out of bed in the early hours of the afternoon � my poor children, I’ve told them virtually the entire book.

Now it is your turn.

As a culture we tend to believe that people who are successful (people like Mozart, Bill Gates, The Beatles) all are ‘self-made-men� and have risen to the summit of achievement on the basis of some incredibly special power they have and that we do not. It is a comforting thought, in some ways. If we have not done as well we are hardly to blame, because we just didn’t have that certain something. We don’t have the thing that sets them people apart from the crowd. And in this cult of celebrity we even get a chance to live vicariously in the reflection of their glory. Perhaps we can never all be Lady Di, (at least, not in public) but we can all attempt suicide with a pate knife and get into colonic irrigation. John Safran talks somewhere about a guy he knows saying to him that the only reason John made it and he didn’t was because John was Jewish. John then talks about how much hard work he had to put in to becoming successful, none of which relied on the mythical leg up he would have gotten from some secret Jewish conspiracy.

This book isn’t about Lady Di, but it is about a series of biographies of people who have become incredibly successful. The biographies are generally told twice. The first time in a way that confirms all our prejudices about self made men and then in a way that makes sense of the success in ways we may find much more uncomfortable. I really struggled with this book � I loved every minute of it, but I still felt remarkably challenged by it. It was very hard not to think of my own life while reading this book. And this did not make me feel comfortable.

I guess we are all fairly predictable, and one of the things that makes us especially predictable is that we generally like to have our prejudices confirmed. We buy books that tell us over and over again what we already know and believe. The Left Behind series is just one such example, as are most self help books. And I’m as guilty of this as anyone else. But there is a much better sensation we can get from a book, although this is much more rare. It is when the person you are reading starts telling you the deeper reasons why your beliefs are valid and not just based on prejudice. I have always believed talent is another (although, less apparent and all too vague) word for hard work. I’ve also believed that we are products of a range of different variables too complex to know in any real detail. This book confirms those prejudices.

First he talks about ice hockey and a fascinating fact about the birthdays of the best players. They are all born at around the same time of the year. It is as if there is a cut off date for when you will be a professional ice hockey player � and, in fact, there is. The short version is that if you are born on the wrong side of the date they use to group kids into age levels you are likely to be a year younger than the other kids you are playing ice hockey with and therefore a year smaller than them too. That is going to make them look like they are better players than you are � and they will be too. A year at 10 is a huge difference, a huge advantage. And then we compound that advantage, by giving the older kids more practice, more experience in games and then more experience and more practice until there is no way the kid who happened to be born on the wrong side of the cut off date has any chance of catching up.

The point he makes strongly here and repeatedly in the first part of the book is that there are other factors to success that are more than just ‘natural ability�. In fact, he does not believe in ‘natural ability� � only in effort and time. Essentially he shows that if you put in 10,000 hours on any task you will be highly proficient at that task. Innate ability does not exist and ability is actually a function of effort expended. This is both liberating and incredibly challenging. Liberating because success is related to the effort you put in (and I think you should believe that is true even if it isn’t � it is the myth of Sisyphus, the only way we can really cope with the world is to believe our efforts have meaning). Challenging, because ultimately we are responsible for our own success as we are directly responsible for how much effort we are prepared to put in.

The second great theme of this book is that where you come from matters. The culture that we are from has a remarkable impact on the rest of our lives. For example, if you are from a working class background you are much less likely to approach life with an attitude of ‘entitlement�. When people in authority speak to you, you are probably less likely to question them. In fact, you might believe you should defer to them. You are probably more likely to believe rules exist for a reason and that rules can’t be changed and can’t be moved. People from the middle class are much more likely to see rules as things that can be shaped or changed or ignored to make their life more easy or rewarding. Having come from the working class, even a particularly radical end of it, I can still see aspects of this deference in my own character and this was perhaps the most challenging part of the book for me.

The other challenging bit was the part about the Hatfields and McCoys. As a Northern Irish boy, even if I’m not as obsessed with ‘honour� as I might have been, this does make sense of things I have wondered about for a long time. The solution might be a little too neat, but the Irish, particularly the Northern Irish, are far too likely to feuds that are intractable and recognising that that might have cultural roots beyond the excuse of religion is utterly fascinating to me.

The lessons of this book can be put into a brief sentence: success depends on a series of cultural and other factors that are mostly beyond your control � however, the thing that is totally within your control about success is how much effort you put in. And the more effort you put in the more likely you will be successful. They are directly proportional and we should all praise work as the key thing that really makes us human.

I loved this book. I noticed that Ginnie points to a pilot who disputes some of what Gladwell says about culture and plane crashes, but this is a minor point. His bigger point about culture and plane crashes still stands and is remarkable. If you have kids, read this book � it will give you hints on how to bring them up with perhaps a modest sense of entitlement � it could make all of the difference. Ginnie also has a link to an article with a photo of the man himself � I was saying to the kids yesterday that I would give a couple of toes to look nearly as cool as he does, but I think it would take more than just toes.



Look, what can I say? Read this book, it is life altering. Well, maybe not life altering, but a delight nonetheless.