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