Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

I've been reading the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. It's been interesting. His thesis is that timing is everything from when you were born, the month you were born down to how many hours you practice a skill.

There is some truth to what he says, but he tends to neglect the idea of passion as a driving force. Bill Gates would not be who he was without a driving interest in computers.

Three takeaway tidbits:

1. Birth month plays into sports performance when sports programs are organized by age. 2/3 of professional hockey players were born in January, February or March. Simply because they are the older 3 or 4 or 5 years olds starting out in hockey which puts them ahead physically compared to their peers. Since sports cull out the best and brightest, the younger players get left behind at a startling rate. This birth month bias holds true across multiple sports.

2.It's not talent, it's how much you practice. Researchers found that the difference between a performance musician and a music teacher is the hours of practice. Music teachers are competent, but not elite musicians because they don't practice as many hours as professional musicians.Musicians practice at least 10,000 hours to master their instruments and that is how they become stage ready. So the recommendation is that anything must be practiced for 10,000 hours in ordered to be mastered.

3.In the US school system, gifted tracks start early. As with sports, young 5 year olds, born later in the year, may be left behind as their more developed, early birthday peers outperform them. By the time younger peers catch up, it's too late, the best and brightest have already been selected and there's no real second selection period for gifted programs (although, in my experience, High School has some flexibility). This gives some credence to the idea that parents should not push children into school early.