Gladwell is the author of THE TIPPING POINT as well as a book on intuition called BLINK. I've read both of them and found them provocative and informative.
This one, which purports to be THE STORY OF SUCCESS is also interesting (the man's a very good writer) but there's something about his theory that's really bugging me.
He posits the idea that success is more a matter of birth circumstances than personal initiative. This strikes me as another form of the theory of predestination, that your fate is written before you are born.
This has always struck me as one of the gloomiest philosophies on the planet. I mean, if everything that happens to you is already planned, then why get up in the morning?
But I can't completely deny Gladwell's point that where you're born and when you're born and what your family's culture is like has an impact on the person you become. What bugs me is his all-but-total negation of personal initiative's place in that becoming. I think his theory is too simplistic if taken just on its own because no one's life is an either/or situation.
He does make one point that really grabbed me, however, and that comes under the general heading of "practice makes perfect."
In one chapter, he looks into the backgrounds of several successful people including the Beatles and Bill Gates, pointing out that virtuosos of very stripe become virtuosos because they practice their craft. Gladwell states that it takes very successful people—no matter the field—10,000 of practice to master their skills.
I can attest to that just based on my experience with this blog this year. I set out on my birthday, May 18, with the express purpose of writing in this space every single day for a year. I have missed two days—one when I was with my Mom in June and another in October after a very long day when I crawled into bed close to midnight and realized I had not written.
But I expect that when I reach May 18, 2011, I will have composed 363 posts here.
And you know what has happened among those mini-deadlines? My writing has improved. The flow of my work moves even easier than before. I'm excited about my craft again, recovering from a period of staleness over the past few years. I'm nearly done with my book on publishing—Your Book, Your Way—and I'm deep into another novel and working on some non-fiction projects.
I've used my pen to effectively protect my Mom in her last months in the nursing home from the carnal profit lust of the corporation that owns that facility. I've plunged myself into the joyous creative experience of starting a program that I hope will bring hundreds of comforting quilts to people with Parkinsons disease.
In other words, I am writing again, and I'm loving it. And it started with this blog.
Now Gladwell might contend that I owe this to the folks who created blogs, who created the web, to Virginia Hegvig who got me excited about writing in junior high, to my parents who raised us in New England at a time when the schools were decent, in a town with a quality library, etc. And to a point that is all true.
But who's responsible for taking advantage of that library? Of following up on Miss Hegvig's lessons by writing and dreaming of becoming a professional writer? Who signed me up to do this blog?
Me. My personal initiative.
We are the sum of our parts. But what we do with those parts once we become aware enough to understand that there are choices to be made is up to us.
Sorry Malcolm, I just don't buy it. But that stuff about the family feud culture in Harlan, Kentucky is fascinating!
No comments:
Post a Comment