Chapter 1
The main idea of “The Matthew Effect” is that people frequently attribute success to individual characteristics that they consider to be rare, such as genius or talent. However, oftentimes the real explanation for that success has to do with advantages that are not accessible to the public. The analogy that he provides has to do with the factors that create the tallest tree in a particular forest. It is true that the tree came from a quality seed, but that seed (and sapling) did not have any other trees blocking its sunlight, and the seed was planted in fertile soil. Without those external circumstances, the seed would not have become the tallest tree.
When I was in high school, I noticed that some of the smartest people in my class often got the worst grades, and many of them were in danger of not graduating at all. Many of them came from homes that struggled with poverty, and many of them only had one parent influencing their lives. The chaos that was often at work in their personal lives had taken a toll on their ability to succeed academically, and the result was a great deal of frustration with school. Many of them saw school as a nuisance or a place where judgment would happen to them, rather than as a place of opportunity. It occurred to me that grades are just numbers that don’t reflect intelligence. Instead, they reflect how environment allows intelligence to gain recognition.
Chapter 2
In this chapter, Gladwell argues for the importance of practice. He claims that a person needs to spend 10,000 hours doing something in order to become an expert at it. This is true, he argues, whether one is learning to install electrical outlets or composing operas. Even Mozart had to compose concertos for a decade before he wrote his masterwork. He finished that masterwork at the age of 21, which is a prodigious age to complete something that significant, but that also means that he started at the age of 11. The works that he wrote in childhood are significant – but also still quite raw. Expertise requires an unusual level of opportunity so that one has the time to put in that practice.
As a teenager, I wanted to become a professional golfer. I would watch the golf tournament on television on the weekends, and my parents sent me to a couple of clinics when I was younger, in the hope that I would be able to gain the sort of expertise that might win me a golf scholarship. Unfortunately, despite the clinics and the lessons, I did not do well enough to make myself part of the high school golf team, and so my interest faded relatively quickly. If I had been more disciplined and stuck with it, I might have been able to make it the next year because I would have had time to develop the expertise. This requires a significant level of internal motivation.
Chapter 3
In this chapter, Gladwell points out that there is a difference between a genius and a success. He points to a study by Lewis Ternan that tracked kids with high IQs and found that, once the IQ passes 120, there is no more direct correlation between IQ and success. So there is a point where one needs to be smart enough for success to become something that is expected, but above that point, there is no continuing curve of probability that increases. He uses the analogy of the basketball player who is 6’5” and thus is tall enough to be a quality player; after that, going up to 6’8” or 6’9” does not provide a significantly greater benefit.
In elementary school, our counselor performed what she called “GT” testing. What I later found out was that these tests were what determined whether you could gain access to special experiences as a “gifted and talented” student. My parents nominated me for GT testing as a first grader. I remember there being a pair of tests for me to take. I breezed through the first one and was told that, since I passed, it was time to take the second one. However, I did not do as well on that one, apparently, and so I did not qualify for the special group. I had friends who did make it, though, and I always wondered what they got right that I didn’t.
Chapter 4
In Chapter 4, Gladwell writes about the importance of practical intelligence as a difference maker for people who are extremely gifted. He differentiates between Chris Langan and Robert Oppenheimer; Langer had to leave college because he missed a financial aid deadline, while Oppenheimer only went on probation when he tried to poison one of his tutors. The difference was that Oppenheimer had the savvy to talk his way into probation as a consequence. Langer did not have the savvy to get the exception that he needed to get approval. Gladwell talks about the importance of learning how to deal with difficult practical situations so that one can move forward in life. Without that savvy, one can glide through life unnoticed and unrewarded because one simply does not know what (or whom) one should ask.
I have a friend in college who is extremely shy. If she runs into a difficulty at a store, for example, she will sometimes just leave the store and go buy what she needs somewhere else, rather than asking for assistance. She has a difficult time approaching people and asking for what she wants. She grew up with a mother and a stepmother who were all extremely critical of her and did not think that she could accomplish much. She accepted their opinions as her own, and so she had very little assertiveness and often ended up missing out on a lot of different opportunities. I’ve encouraged her to be more assertive (and she will send an assertive email or two when necessary) but this is still an area of growth for her.
Chapter 5
The main thrust of this chapter is that it is often a confluence of environmental factors that end up producing success, rather than any intrinsic element on its own. This is the story of Joe Flom, who ends up a partner at a law firm that brings in over $1 billion a year, and it just so happened that he was born in the 1930’s, when people were having fewer kids (because of the Depression), and his father was in the garment industry, working exhausting hours but working his way up to owning his own company. That combination of a work ethic and being born in a time when fewer lawyers would grow up to enter the work force helped Flom considerably.
A friend of mine is playing Division I golf for a school in the Pac-12 conference. Growing up, her father told her that there would be a lot of scholarship opportunities for girls who pursued golf, simply because not many girls played golf in middle and high school. As a result, she pursued it assiduously, going to junior clinics and taking part in youth tournaments. She did possess some talent at it, but it was the fact that Title IX provisions made colleges open more positions for female athletes and the fact that so few young women go into golf that combined to make it easier for her to earn a scholarship.
Chapter 6
Gladwell asserts in this chapter that it is impossible to understand the way culture works in the here and now if we do not understand the antecedents of different cultural trends. He talks about the fact that honor feuds happening all over a small Kentucky town in the 1800s actually date all the way back to Scotland and Ireland, where the herdsmen would fight with each other – and then their descendants came to live in Applachia. Because cultural legacies have such power, it is necessary to understand how they interact when we try to understand what is going in our own time. Without that sort of understanding, we cannot always grasp what is going on in a particular situation.
One phenomenon that has confused me about the 2016 Democratic primaries is the vast number of African-Americans who have voted for Hillary Clinton, despite the fact that Bernie Sanders promoted policies that are more liberal and promise to do more for the poor than what she proposes. If you combine that with the crime bill and welfare reform that she supported when her husband was in office – two laws that ended up harming the black community, especially those in poverty – then this support is even more surprising. One analysis I read opened my eyes, though. The promises that blacks have heard from the days of Reconstruction have fallen through, time and time again, and the fact that Bill Clinton was able to act genuinely sympathetic to the concerns of blacks made them loyal to him. Sympathy was actually more powerful than the harsh consequences of Clinton’s policies, because sympathy brought more votes than promises, which many blacks assumed to be empty.
Chapter 7
This chapter explores the differences in rules about speaking and interpreting that exist from one country to the next. There are some countries in which ambiguity is not only tolerated but expected, and other countries in which people are expected to acknowledge and follow rules. Some cultures have strict rules about how one should talk to one’s elder or superior in a situation, while other cultures do not. This proved to be a major factor in the KAL 801 crash, because the pilots came from a culture with strict rules, while the air traffic controllers at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York are notorious for their curtness. That boundary led in part to a tragic crash.
I had a friend growing up whose parents owned a donut shop about 10 miles from his house. They were of Asian origin, and my friend was expected to get up well before dawn on school days and help out before it was time to leave and go to school. This meant that he had to come home, do his homework and go right to bed so he could get up on time. There was a time in our junior year when we were invited to a lock-in activity at school, but he couldn’t go because he would have to leave at 3:00am in order to help his dad. This was the closest I ever saw to him arguing with his father, because he really wanted to go, but he didn’t. When he graduated from high school, though, he moved out into his own apartment and never went back to the donut shop.
Chapter 8
In this chapter, Gladwell talks about how success at math does not come from school environment or intelligence. Instead, it comes from willingness to finish tasks with a great degree of care. He talks about growing up in a culture such as China, where so many people farm wet rice and have to exercise extreme diligence in order to yield the sort of crop that will sustain them. Without that care, they would starve. Because they cultivate that care, they do well in tasks like math that also require extreme care.
Given the amount of multitasking that takes place in so many Western societies, one wonders what the long-term effect of the difference between a detail-oriented culture like the Asian ones and those that are more affective in nature, like the ones in the West, will turn out to be. When we lose sight of importance to detail, then it is possible for us to overlook a lot of different things, and then we could end up relying on people from those detail-oriented cultures. Ultimately, it seems like this could cost us a great deal of our independence.
Chapter 9
This chapter discusses the importance of seizing opportunities and putting them to work for you if you want to become an outlier. Gladwell uses the example of Marita, a middle school student who starts her day at 5:30 every morning and does not get home until 5:00 in the evening. She then moves to homework, eating dinner in front of her textbooks, and often works late into the evening. Her family lacks the means to provide her with educationally enriching activities during the summer, and so she attends a KIPP school, which is designed to fill those empty hours with more access to instruction. This makes her more likely to succeed.
This is a lesson that anyone can learn in their own lives. The vast amount of time that so many of us spend surfing social media, watching Netflix and the like could be spent on betterment in so many ways. Outliers are the ones who put those opportunities to work for them, while the rest of us simply settle into the couch, scrolling through Facebook while the outliers are moving toward changing the world. Reading this makes me want to see how much of an outlier I can become.
