How to become an Outlier!

I really am not trying to turn my blog into a book report blog but I did wanted to post on another book that I have been thinking a lot about, Outliers the story of success.

First, this book is no average book, I loved reading it and would recommend it to everyone and anyone. The book does a phenomenal job of analyzing what the factors are that help create an outlier.

Lke my last post, this is not a book summary post but my thoughts regarding the topic.

Outliers are formed just as much by the external environment than their God given talent internally. With that being said, lets first look at the internal talents.

Everyone has talents and everyone has developed those talents to different degrees. Potentially, I might have the same God given talent as someone else but because of my focus on that talent, I far exceed the mastery of that talent than the other person. Everyone has a spectrum in which they are able to develop their talents. In the same sense, I might not have as much innate talent as someone else but because I work at it and maximize my spectrum, I am actually better at the talent than that other person.

The first important step in becoming an outlier is understanding how wide of a spectrum you have in a given talent and then choosing which talents you are going to maximize versus those that you will not. I think the most important part of this process is to understand the spectrum you have with a talent rather than just understanding which talents you have.

The next thing is the external environment. You might have all of the talent in the world to become a great basketball player but if you don't live in a place where people play basketball, you will never become a great basketball player. On the flip side, if you have all of the talent in the world and you don't utilize the fact that you are in an environment that allows you to develop that talent, you will never become a great basketball player. Millions of people have talents, it is the few that have the right external environment that become great!

So what does this mean to any young person hoping to make a name for themselves? First, understand your talents and your faults and maximize your talents. Second, America is a country where you can seek out your environment so once you identify your talent, do EVERY thing you can to put yourself in an environment that is going to help maximize your talent. This is the way to game the system and become an outlier.

This book gives case after case where people had to have both external and internal stimuli to become outliers. If you want to become an outlier, read the book and focus on both external and internal stimuli!