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I've always been baffled by how much we over-rate the statistically insignificant differences that separate competitors at the top end of the distribution.

Malcolm Gladwell

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Malcolm Gladwell
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: September 3
Journalist
Screenwriter
Sociologist
Writer
Malcolm Timothy Gladwell
Always
Competitors
Insignificant
Distribution
Separate
Rate
Differences
Ends
Statistically
Much
Baffled

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A book, I was taught long ago in English class, is a living and breathing document that grows richer with each new reading.
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To become a chess grandmaster also seems to take about ten years. (Only the legendary Bobby Fisher got to that elite level in less than that amount of time: it took him nine years.) And what's ten years? Well, it's roughly how long it takes to put in ten thousand hours of hard practice. Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness.
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I don't really collect books. I tend to lose interest in them the minute I've read them, so most of the books I've read are left in airplanes and hotel rooms.
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We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.
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There are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them.
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Activism that challenges the status quo, that attacks deeply rooted problems, is not for the faint of heart.
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You can learn as much - or more - from one glance at a private space as you can from hours of exposure to a public face.
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Our world requires that decisions be sourced and footnoted, and if we say how we feel, we must also be prepared to elaborate on why we feel that way...We need to respect the fact that it is possible to know without knowing why we know and accept that - sometimes - we're better off that way.
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What we do as a community, as a society, for each other, matters as much as what we do for ourselves. It sounds a little trite, but there's a powerful amount of truth in that, I think.
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