Charlie Rose Last Friday

My notes from looking at TIVO

7:27 AM 12/24/2008
notes on Charlie Rose 12/19/2008

Malcolm Gladwell


"Outliers"
The Story of Success

Also wrote The Tipping Point and Blink, both on nyt best seller list. Writes for New Yorker.

Fascinated by performance…and success

Own phenoneminal success…grandmother

Nature of the lucky break
Bill Gates
Walks into 8th gr at lakeside acad seattle; computer term linked into downtown computer; 1968
Basically spends entire teenage yrs programming
With paul allen – mainframe at univ of wash..2-6am. Free
Extraod desire + living 2 miles from a mainframe that’s avail 2-6 in the morning

Beatles

Same thing. Cog complex activities; 10 years; 10,000 hours; always

1st in a cohort to reach 10,000 hours

Tiger Woods

Very good circumstances
deliberate practice...focused, intensive, with an eye on your failures

Michael Jordan as a 16 year old...practices in a different way...what am I not doing well? Why am I not doing it well?
His game changes throughout his career.
not great outside shooter when he starts...added to his arsenal

Charlie summarizes:
access to deliberate practice...over 10,000 times

how to help people achieve their potential:

give them opp to work harder

extend school day, extend into summer

what separates kids who want to work hard?

Can’t work hard unless there’s a school to do it.

Jewish lawyers Bronx and brooklyn

'30s and '40s
end up top of legal prof in New York

because were forbidden to work at the downtown white shoe firms

practiced.....for many years in unfashionable area of corporate law called "takeovers."
later when the demand was there they were in the forefront
NYU

“sleights” are or can be of great importance ... Jordan doesn't make his team at age 9

Colvin says he did not have a sleight.

Talent does not exist…it’s all application.

Beatles went to Hamburg in the '50s...willing to play 8 hr sets a day, 7 days a week, in the nastiest of circumstances

Obama

second part of my book deals with "culture"
how diff cultures have diff strengths
asian kids are better at math tests...huge difference

we know it's not genetic

they work harder...why?

ans: patterns of ag practice; rice.

My father’s European ancest wheat fields of northern england; drunk in winter; worked only 1000 hrs a year
Chinese: 3000 hrs a year; infinitely more labor intensive than western ag

1500 years…doesn't go away

makes you good at math

no one has a better theory

what is your gift?

I'm a child of a mathematician and a therapist

father...highly specialized complex math

mother...communication with people at basic emotional level
(autism).
my writing shuttles back and forth between obscure and how to communicate to a mass audience

my mother is a beautiful translator and my writing role model...she's also a writer

“All good writing must have clarity.”

My mother: having extraordinary mother of her own
Daisy
Jamaican culture
Mom ends up upper middle class in Canada.
Her success…a function of …privileged brown-skinned Jamaican class. Not sent back into slavery as they were in the American South.

lifted out of slavery; Irish plantation owner takes as his concubine
(Daisy)
Colin Powell is my cousin and from the same privileged Jamaican class

Must know about Jamaican history and tangled class…


Charlie:

seeing that goal and wanting to get to that goal

Malcolm

Bill Joy

his time undergrad at Michigan

computer room

we writes the rules on the internet

I have a chapter on Jewish lawyers

parents off the boats...have a sense..my child will end up meaningful...propels kids

Hunter College..one of first gifted programs

kids are basically of genius level

what they end up doing...not that impressive...happy lives but nothing spectacular

kids were so smart that they understood what it would take to be good and decided not to do it!

Paradox of Genius

how completely unimportant is high IQ

our society is obsessed

need to be "smart enough"

iq matters up to 120

have coffee with Nathan Bilbow(?)

ask him any ques..."It is impossible that his answer will not be useful in some way."

He has this ability to construct this network of fascinating people

who gets curiosity and who doesn't?

meaningful work?

(1) autonomous (no one's looking over your shoulder)
(2) complex
(3) rela between work and reward

garment industry is all these things ie meaningful

explicitly enterpreunerial

rela between work and reward

Mexican workers picking fruit in California...not meaningful in any way

what if Jewish had gone to central valley in Calif and Mexicans had gone to New York?

if you are convinced that the thing you are doing is meaningful, then there's no "cost" to it.

most people do not have the time to organize their experiences...I (Gladwell) do

I work (write) in public...coffee houses, book stores. I'm a product of the wash post..newsroom...loud and noisy

in a quiet office i almost lost my mind



Geoff Colvin, author

"Talent is Overrated"


research...what is the source of top-level, world-class performance?

what does seem to be explan... a particular type of hard work

"deliberate practice"

starting young is very helpful...can accumulate more hours...parts of your brain will be affected

areas of your brain take over

can happen at any age; effect is greater when you're a kid

takes 10 years to get good at anything

doesn't matter what field

to get world class

Exh A

Tiger Woods

father put golf club in his hands at age of 7 mos

practiced at age of 2

professional teachers at age of 4

working hard for 17 yrs with proffesional teachers so in his late teens he's way ahead

focusing on something that is critically important

training has to be designed for this moment in your development

Tiger going to sand trap and drop ball so it's fully covered; practicing 200 times; not because he will encounter this a lot, but when he does he will have a feel for what to do.

Chapter 7

applying principles in our lives

practice...will give you finely-tuned instrument



got that way...weren't born that way

understanding your business is critical...some people think that all you need is management skills

you need deep knowledge of what you are doing

what about child prodigies?

mozart

remarkably parallel with story of tiger woods

1st world class work at age of 21

training under his father

refers to Malcolm Gladwell

circumstances

yes, the supporting environment

can be family

larger sense

what's gong on in the civilization around you

where you are born