Literatur - Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell

The book where the famous 10,000 hour of practice come from. Its about 10 years of full devotion to (any) topic which makes you a master.

"What is the question we always ask about the successful? We want to know what ther´re liek - what kind of personalities they have, or how intelligent they are, or what kind of lifestyles they have, or what special talents they might have been born with. And we assume that it is those personal qualitites that explain how that individual reached the top.
(...) I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success dont work. People dont rise from nothing. we do owe something to parentag eand patronage.
(...) In fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural lagacies that allow them to learn and work hard."

"It is the richt who get the biggest tax breaks . Its the best students who get the best teaching and most attention. and its the biggest nine- and ten-year-olds who get the most coaching and practice. Success is the result of what sociologists like to call 'ACCUMULATIVE ADVANTAGE'."

"the striking thing about Ericssons study is that he and his colleagues couldnt find any 'naturals', musiscians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time theier peers did. Nor could they frind any 'grinds', people who worked harder than everyone else, yet just didnt have what it takes to break the top ranks. Their research suggests that once a musician has enough ability to get into a top musich school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she worksl That it. And whats more, the people at the very top dont work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. Tey work much, much harder."

"General Intelligence (IQ) and Practical Intelligence (knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect) are 'orthogonal': the presence of one doesnt imply the presence of the other."

"In the end, only one thing mattered [in a quantitative research] (difference between A-kids, successful, and C-kids, unsuccessful): family background."

"Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunites. (Ex-post nachvollziehbar, ex-ante unpredictable)"

"Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds. (...) Countries whose students are willing to concentrate and sit still long enough and focus on answering every single question in an endless questionnaire are the same countries whose students do the best job of solving math problems."