Self reflection profile essay

¶ … 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. 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 that are being practiced need to be meaningful in order to lead to success. To achieve academic goals, 10,000 hours of practice might be enough. However, to achieve career goals, a more diverse set of skills will be necessary. It is not about simply performing well on tests and essays. In the real world, success is based on the ability to network with people in the field. Depending on the field, ancillary skills that were not practiced during those initial 10,000 hours might become important. For example, if I want to be a top psychologist, I cannot simply perform 10,000 hours of clinical work and expect to be an award-winning outlier who develops radical new theories of human consciousness. I would have to give speeches and seminars at major international conferences. Therefore, public speaking skills become critical and if I had not been practicing public speaking then I would not receive the level of success that I expected.