Social Skills and Success Essay

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outlier, an extraordinarily successful person, I hope to be one someday. Therefore, encountering Gladwell's book Outliers was helpful in illuminating the circumstances under which people become exceptional at something. There are two seemingly contradictory predictors or facilitators of success, according to Gladwell: the 10,000-hour rule, and the importance of luck and/or circumstance. The situational variables that create advantageous social situations, including race and gender, are important and show why hard work alone does not lead to success. If that were so, anyone who worked hard at something could achieve their dreams. Structural inequalities and prejudices cause some hard workers to be systematically overlooked and therefore discouraged. The 10,000-hour rule would seem to contradict the situational variables Gladwell discusses in Outliers, but actually, Gladwell does note that the access to early practice is what really matters. A person who can practice 10,000 hours of any activity before anyone else is more likely to become an outlier than a person who either practices less or practices after that activity has become commonplace.

Using the principles from A Rulebook for Arguments, I would argue generally in favor of the 10,000-hour rule but with some caveats. As Baer (2014) and Skillicorn (n.d.) point out, Gladwell may have overstated the results of the research that led to the 10,000-hour rule.

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A more recent study than the one Gladwell cited in Outliers showed that deliberate, regular practice accounted for "just a 12% difference in performance in various domains," (Baer, 2014). Moreover, the number 10,000 was arbitrarily chosen, not a "magical" number (Skillicorn, n.d.). Practice alone is also insufficient. Circumstances and also the right kind of practice are necessary. One does not necessarily develop transferable skills, either. Although learning a language might help one's cognitive powers generally, learning a language will not enhance one's ability to do math. Therefore, practice is important to success but success is also dependent on the individual's ability to take advantage of good timing and other circumstantial variables.

Many successful people are successful only because of their connections and because of luck. On the other hand, there are successful people who can show that their success was due to deliberate practice and determination above all. Those individuals do seem to prove that the 10,000-hour rule has merit. Practicing anything for 10,000 hours is bound to make a person more confident about their skills at the very least. Unfortunately, the skills….....

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