Malcolm Gladwell on Outliers: The Story of Success--Exclusive Extras

Additional excerpts from our interview with the author who studies the anatomy of success.

Here, exclusive extras from our conversation with author Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers: The Story of Success (Little, Brown).

Also, check out the original interview with Malcolm Gladwell.

RD: Do you feel pressure after the first two books to have a so-called hat trick?
GLADWELL: No. If anything, I feel less pressure. There's a universe of people who bought the last books and who like the things I write. I think there's far more pressure when you're unknown and you're completely unsure about whether you can break through the clutter. So, in keeping with the themes of the book, I would say no. I'm aware of the advantages of my position. I am three books in.

RD: What's the down side of success?
GLADWELL: For me. personally?
RD: For you, personally.
GLADWELL: Well, here's what's a bit sobering: You have to work extremely hard to be successful and that never ends. People think if you're a successful writer, writing eventually comes easier to you. In fact, in many ways it means it's even harder. No matter what field you're in, you want to make sure your work is growing, evolving. I didn't want this [new] book to be a carbon copy of Blink or The Tipping Point, so I had to really push myself. I lost count of how many hours I spent on research or how many drafts I did. If there's a key to my success, is that's I work much harder now than I did when I was 24.

RD: What about nurturing success in our children? What's the difference between recognizing a child's passion for something and encouraging that, or actually going far beyond that and creating a sort of "monster" child?
GLADWELL: I know that if I ever have children, I'll actually think twice about letting them pursue various kinds of things. I was watching the Olympics over the summer. And now that I know how much time it takes to be a good gymnast, do I really want my kid to be a gymnast? I don't think I do, actually. If it was something he or she could do as a kind of hobby, I would be happy with it. But to understand that it would consume every single free waking hour of their lives from the age of 5 until the age of 18—to me, that's too high a price. Nor would I want my kid to be a swimmer, an Olympic swimmer.
RD: Or Mozart. Would you want your kid to be Mozart?
GLADWELL: At least Mozart was doing something he could do for the rest of his life. With athletes, it's over at age 23 or 24. Do I want my children to sacrifice their entire childhoods for something that ends when they're just out of college? It seems absurd.

RD: But that early commitment—that exclusive thing where you're inside practicing the piano all day to the exclusion of your friends and the outside world—that's the trade-off for success, right?
GLADWELL: Well, that's the other thing. In all the stories I tell in the book, the sacrifices and the trade-offs are necessary to create success.

RD: I know this is a ridiculous question, but what did the success of your first two books do for your life? How did they change things for you?
GLADWELL: It means that now people return my calls (laughing). Also, I'm no longer anonymous. I get recognized a couple of times a week. You only have to be recognized once a week for it to make a difference in your life. But on the good side, it's a kind of validation that what I'm doing—the kind of writing that I've been doing—has an audience. That people are appreciative of it. That I'm on the right track. That gives you a lot of confidence when you tackle something new.