Just finished Outliers by Malcom Gladwell and I loved it. One of the best books I’ve read in a while. It’s practical but motivating, which sometimes seem to undermine one another. Interestingly Gladwell is able to inspire by simple, real examples; truly a feat if you ask me. Many people can’t see the connection between others’ success and their own.
Go poofy haired guy! He looks like a mix between Christopher Walkin and Zach de la Rocha from Rage Against the Machine.
After work today I was feeling like a walk so that’s what I did. I cruised around my hood and decided to visit The Great Janie Thompson because I haven’t seen her since my NY trip. I just love visiting that woman. She’s always full of smiles, stories, and laughter. On my way back she called me and said she had a book she wanted to give me. It was “Women of Character, stories of 100 Prominent LDS Women” by Susan Easton Black. Janie signed inside the cover of this book for me and it says this:
Recently I gathered all the books I had started and not finished and put them on my desk in a small stack. On top was Think and Grow Rich which I was reading for the 3rd time and after that was MBA Admissions. It feels great to finish what you started. I’m now reading Outliers by Malcom Gladwell and it’s good so far. I’ve read his two big ones: The Tipping Point and Blink.
Gladwell just revealed something amazing about modern internet rich folk. They were all born within roughly a year of 1955!! Crazy, huh? I guess it was the perfect time because you weren’t so old that you already worked for IBM and had a narrow mindset about these new-fangled personal computers and weren’t too young to not be aware of what was going on. Here’s the list:
Microsoft
Bill Gates- Oct 1955
Paul Allen- Jan 1953
Steve Ballmer- Mar 1956
Apple
Steve Jobs- Feb 1955
Google
Eric Schmidt- Apr 1955
Sun Microsystems
Bill Joy- Nov 1954
Scott McNealy- Nov 1954
Vinod Khosla- Jan 1955
Andy Bechtolsheim- Sept 1955
Crazy, huh? It’s kind of like how 14 of the early 20th Century’s billionaires were born within 9 years of one another around 1830. Nifty stuff. I sometimes chide business writers who haven’t started a business themself but Gladwell’s data rocks so I chide not.
I finished a book by Malcom Gladwell called The Tipping Point a little over 2 years ago and today I finished his next book “Blink”. Both very good! Here’s one of the ideas from Blink:
In the early 20th century women were discriminated against in the classical music scene. It was thought that they didn’t have the lung capacity for brass nor the hand strength for strings. Less than 5 percent of musicians were women. Then something very simple but profound happened; they did blind auditions. The performer would walk on stage via carpet (so heels wouldn’t clink) behind a sheet so those listening could only hear the music, not see distractions. By the end of the century about 50% of those performing in the nation’s major symphonies were women.
Cool, huh! How you sound should be, after all, the only determining factor in a symphony orchestra. If you’re singing pop you should probably be a hottie with a body who can shake it all over, but if you can wear black and be still then hey classical is for you!
Gladwell spoke at Harvard Law about 2 years ago and proposed we practice criminal law using this principle. Surprisingly he was well received. The author was trying to correct the injustice of racial prejudice in sentences. It’s a fact that black convicts are 27 to 54 times more likely to get jail time for drug offenses than equivalent white offenders. Great idea I say. Why not level the playing field?
Parker Planners