Monday, January 31, 2011

Time and Chance - Lessons from Outliers

Hi everyone, and Happy (kinda belated) new year.


The last few months on the previous year had me questioning my definition of personal and career success. At the beginning of the year, I tried to make a list of books (non-tech) I had to study in the first half of this year.


Blink - Malcolm Gladwell
Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell

The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell

Freakonomics - Steve Levitt

Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Taleb

Good to Great - Jim Collins


I spent most of the last weekend reading outliers, where Malcolm Gladwell makes some salient points on the story of success.

While I am still considering making a detailed review of this book, I can summarize most of the book into the words of Solomon from the scriptures in Ecclesiastes chapter 9 vs 11


"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race [is] not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."

The role opportunity (being at the right place at the right time) plays in success is too huge to be neglected.

Well, even at that I still believe success is not entirely a function of chance, we must be able to recognize the opportunities and adapt so we can take advantage of them. The ability to do this is an extremely crucial factor in determining if we would be successful.

I think Outliers was a good read. Up next is Blink.

On the techy note, I'm considering picking up Juniper skills as a form of horizontal development as opposed to studying for another CCIE. Lets see how that goes.

Cheers!
Amplebrain.


1 comment:

  1. Juniper?! U have issues! Technical issues! Lol. Still enjoying the book though.

    ReplyDelete