the sum of the story is that 9 times out of 10, putting in the time, effort, work, passion, etc is what makes someone successful, but also having help along the way

as an actor, for years i’ve researched every time a new “up and coming break through” star is named, and 9 times out of 10, if you look to their FIRST role, it was most likely 10 years before the “breakthrough”

I seem to recall that Darwin was also a mere birdwatcher.

I really wonder if you have spent time reading the bios of the people you talk about or know anything about the discoveries they made or how genius works?

Even a casual reading of the wiki entries for these people, and a little knowledge about Ruf Level 5 kids, just blows your thesis out of the water.

Watson was an omnibus genius who covered more ground before he was 20 than most people cover in their lifetimes. He entered college at 15, got his PHD at age 22. He started work on DNA at age 19 and worked on his PHD directly under the chief proponent of DNA. He made his discoveries when he was 24. He was fortunate to do much of his undergrad work at the University of Chicago and post-grad at Indiana U which had a lot of experts on Nuclear Physics and Molecular Biology. In other words – he was at the right place at the right time and grew up in that place. He easily got his 10,000 hours in from the age of 19 to the age of 24 in the field of DNA research.

Watson fits Gladwell’s thesis to a T.

Did you know that Luis Alvarez won the Nobel Prize for Physics LONG before he published the findings on the K-T event?

That he was 70 years old at the time?

Did you know his paper has NOTHING to do with paleontology per se and is all about nuclear chemistry of samples?

The Alvarezes knew that the Irridium signature was not Terrestrial because they knew geology and nuclear chemistry. They found the signature because one was a geologist and the other a Nobel physicist and had a long training as such. They worked in a location where they could get access to tools and resources to test their ideas.

Anyone who peruses the Alvarez’ bios can see that they both put in 10,000 hours in MANY subjects. The K-T event was tailor made for their talents to find it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Walter_Alvarez

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-T_boundary

The Alvarezes fit Gladwell’s thesis to a T.

If you scroll down to the bottom of this list, you will see what I mean by Ruf Levels. A level 5 is able to do things at 15 that most adults can never do. Watson was clearly a level 5. Put in the right environment, which he was, there is nothing these kids cannot learn. Heisenberg followed the same trajectory as Watson and had the same level of support at home as well as in his schooling.

http://www.dirhody.com/discanner/levels.htm

Your examples are “discoveries”, which occur when someone challenges conventional thinking in an existing field, and sees things in a entirely new way. This contribution is almost necessarily made by (or with the help of) someone who doesn’t already know everything about the subject.

Gladwell talks about individuals whose lives are completely immersed in a specialized area for such an extended period of time that they become master musicians, garment makers, programmers. If their expertise happens to be rare, and required at an opportune time, in a different but RELATED field, these individuals are alert, confident, and ready to take action because of their experience. They become history’s greatest songwriters, business people, software pioneers – because they understood better than lay persons what it took to become so.

The 10,000 hour rule is about mastery, but I don’t think Gladwell is saying that anything less condemns us all to mediocrity. Of course major contribtuions can be made with less time.

I hope readers continue to be inspired to read Outliers (with a skeptical eye, as you advocate) because there’s so much more to the book than the theme discussed in your article.

Happy New Year!