This book was interesting, but infuriating at the same time. The author wrote this book to tell how successful people became successful, claiming that talent doesn't decide if someone becomes successful or not. That I agree with, talent without effort equals nothing.
The author claims in the first section of this book that success is a product of luck. To prove his point he cites the Canadian hokey recruiting habits and the birthdays of the professional hockey players in the country. The system in Canada for picking out talent makes coaches separate kids into groups at the age of 10, the best group gets more training and games to hone their skills with. The problem is that the cutoff date makes it so that kids born in the early months of the year are still technically 10 years old, but they are a year older and have grown more, so they look better than the possibly more talented 9 year old kids who are 10 only in name. So the early month birthdays get put in the top group, and then they get better coaches, more practices, more games, and a few years later that slight edge they had has become a major advantage.
So if you're a hockey playing kid in Canada who has the ill fortune of being born in October, it is next to impossible for you to become a professional hockey player.
The whole theory makes sense and its backed by statistics, but then the author applies it to American education, where the cutoff dates make a kid who is 5 share a class with a bunch of kids who are practically 6. Again those born in the later months of the year are at a disadvantage, the older kids do better and become the favorites who get more opportunities. So again if you are born in the late months you are doomed to fail.
That's where my blood boiled over. I am born in October and if what this author says is true then other kids my age who were born at the beginning of the year are all going to be more educated and talented than me. That is quite possibly the greatest insult imaginable to me, even putting me in the same league as most other kids my age is serious slander in my book, to say that they are better than me just because they were born in a certain month? To claim that the group of kids so stupid that they could ask me with a straight face what 100-25 equals will be successful but I am doomed to fail? I was practically breathing fire from my nostrils with rage at the insult. It still makes my blood boil to type this paragraph.
The author fails to state any possibility of an exception to his theory, he speaks in absolutes as if his word is law. His idea to break the classes up by birth months as well as age has merit, because his theory IS backed by logic and statistics, but at this point I was already too furious to give him credit for it.
The rest of the book tells about how a person's background contributes to success and how luck plays yet another role in many cases by providing the opportunity to practice something for 10,000 hours. The whole hours of practice to become a master at something is nothing new to me, I heard about that years ago. The fact that luck and opportunities are crucial is also a given, there is a certain aspect of luck in everything, but we can create our own luck too.
This author doesn't really detail any new ideas after his first few chapters, and the first few chapters were what made me seethe with rage. So as a whole the book was less enjoyable than other books that were just as interesting.
On a bright note this motivates me even more to become successful, that way I can take my success and shove it in the author's face and tell him to put THAT in his book. Revenge is such an effective motivator, and now I get some for myself. The fact that my pride being injured is such a huge issue that creates a desire for payback this strong is somewhat disturbing though...
Well that wraps things up for this blog post, see you all next time.
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