Currently I'm reading Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. It's an interesting book (when I get around to dipping into it) in which Gladwell argues that our society has brought us up to believe that success it purely a matter of talent and hard work while in reality many other factors unrelated to natural talent influence who is successful and who is not. This is not to say that talent, brains and hard work do not play into success. There is no doubt that an athlete needs to be good at their sport to make it to the professional level or that original leaders of the PC industry knew their stuff. What Gladwell argues is that talent is a necessary condition for success but it is not sufficient. It wasn't enough that Bill Joy, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were all very intelligent individuals. They also were some of the few people in the world in the 1970s who had access to a computer, all for different reasons, on which they could practice the new skill of programming. It was this access to computers, in addition to being just the right age to be willing to break out into the uncharted waters of personal computers, that set these men apart from the rest of the field.
Similarly, in professional athletic leagues, a disproportionate number of athletes have birthdays that are at the beginning of the year. The difference between a child who is 9 years and 10 months old and another child who is 9 years and 2 months old is small. The older child has had slightly more time to practice the sport in question, he may be a little more coordinated and also a tiny bit bigger. This slight advantage will translate into coaches and leagues choosing, on average, the older children (i.e. those born at the beginning of the year so they are old for their age group). These children will then have access to better coaching, get more time playing in games. Over the years it takes them to get onto the track into the professional leagues, these advantages will translate into an increase in their skill level. Being older and being chosen ahead of younger children turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy where they actually do become better than the younger players.
Some people might be disheartened by this news, taking it as a sign that even if they may be talented, they probably won't end up with success. I, instead, take it as a sign that our life experience is giving us tools for life. Since everyone's life experience is different, we are all gathering different skill sets, different sets of contacts and when an opportunity arises, we will use everything at our disposal to make the most of it.
One of the most interesting things that Gladwell writes is that '...autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward--are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.' I don't believe I have ever heard happiness in the workplace put so succinctly and coherently. It is so obvious: you need to have some independence, it needs to be interesting and you need to have an incentive to work hard. Here we have an explanation for why almost any job can seem great in the beginning when everything is new and interesting. 6, 12, 24 months later you could do the job with your eyes closed and are sometimes tempted to do so. In addition, after that amount of time in one office, you become aware of the politics of the office: who slacks off, who the boss has a soft spot for and the result is that the relationship between effort and reward becomes murky giving you a disincentive to take care with your work.
As someone who is still trying to find her 'calling' in life, I felt the need to share Gladwell's insight with the greater worldwide web. It might be an answer for those questioning their life's purpose, but it is a road map of sorts. To close, I will just share another of Gladwell's gems: 'Hard work is only a prison sentence if it does not have meaning.' Thank You Malcolm!!