What precedes success? We often assume personal qualities of the successful – personality, lifestyles, special talents – explain how individuals have reached the top.

In the book Outliers, written by Malcolm Gladwell, these myths are debunked: people don’t rise from nothing.

Instead, we should look beyond the individual and understand they are beneficiaries of hidden advantages, extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies. These allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.

What are the lessons? We are often too in awe at those who succeed and too dismissive of those who fail. We overlook how large a role society plays in determining who makes it and who doesn’t.

How communities go about things – from practicing mathematics, setting schooling schedules to selecting sports teams – has a real impact on determining the future of its citizens. Support networks and setting good examples set are just as important.

Here are examples from Outliers which provide food for thought: of opportunities seized and cultural legacies continued.

 

Opportunity: Sport

It took a lot of research to discover that the majority of players on Canada’s best hockey teams – at all levels of the game – were, surprisingly, born early in the calendar year – January, February and March, etc. It has nothing to do with astrology or magic, but with the eligibility cut-off point for age-class hockey: 1 January to 31 December.

For instance, a boy who turns ten on 2 January could be playing alongside someone who doesn’t turn ten until the end of the year. At that age, in preadolescence, a 12-month gap in age represents an enormous difference in physical maturity.

Like other sports, when a player is chosen to play at a higher level he or she receives better coaching, their teammates are better and they play more games a season; they practice twice, even three times more than they would have otherwise.

In the beginning, advantage comes from being a little older. With the benefit of better coaching and extra practice they really are better.

 

Opportunity and practice: The Beatles

And practice makes perfect. By the time The Beatles arrived in the United States in 1964 they had performed live an estimated 1,200 times. Most bands don’t perform 1,200 times throughout their entire careers.

Explaining this, band members say opportunities like trips to Hamburg, Germany to practice in front of crowds for hours on end certainly helped. They gained stamina and discipline, experience playing together and playing lots of numbers – like cover versions of songs across music genres.

 

Opportunity and obsession: Bill Gates

Bill Gates’s story of dropping out of college and going on to spearhead Microsoft is legendary, but we don’t hear so much about the certain opportunities that came his way.

With help from his school, local parents and business he was lucky to gain access to a computer centre which others simply didn’t during the 1960s. He gained programming experience and practice, and from there it became his obsession.

In Outliers, what distinguishes the histories of the hockey players, The Beatles, Bill Gates and others is not their extraordinary talent but their extraordinary opportunities.

 

Legacy: The culture of counting

If you speak English you have a 50% chance of remembering a sequence of, say, six numbers perfectly; if you’re Chinese, you’re almost certain. Why? Because of the time it takes for humans to memorise digits. The difference between number-naming systems is crucial.

In English, we say fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, but not oneteen, twoteen, threeteen, and fiveteen. We use a different form: eleven, twelve, thirteen, etc.

Chinese numbers are briefer and can be uttered quicker: for instance, 4 is “si” and 7 is “qi”). Eleven is ten-one. Twelve is ten-two. Twenty-four is two-tens-four. The memory gap is much smaller.

Gladwell assesses that the difference in counting methods means that Asian children learn to count much faster than Western children.

Four-year-old Chinese children can count, on average, to forty. American children at that age can count only to fifteen, and most don’t reach forty till they’re five.

By the age of five, then, American children are already a year behind their Asian counterparts in the most fundamental of math skills.

The myth might have it that others are naturally better than us at doing things when, really, others might just have a better way of doing things.

 

Does success follow a predictable course?

Outliers provides examples of business tycoons, lawyers, pilots and delves into legacies such as culture, mannerisms and approaches to life and work.

Opportunities, legacies, hard work, practice and passion are visible throughout all the cited stories of success.

What if all of us were provided the same opportunities, and had the same strength and presence of mind to seize them?

What if we sought to replace the “patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages” that today determine success – “the fortune of birth dates and the happy accidents of history” – with a society that provides opportunities for all?

It seems success in education, the workplace and sport is brought about not just by brains or physical ability but by providing someone with a chance.