Success

In his runaway bestseller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell showed how ideas and products catch fire; in Blink, he explained why gut decisions are often better than well-thought-out responses. In his new book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Gladwell probes what separates the highly successful from everyone else.

What matters: Talent, yes. Timing and opportunity—crucial. And not surprisingly, good old-fashioned hard work and discipline. "What surprised me most were the ordinary methods successful people use to achieve all they achieve," he says. Success is the steady accumulation of advantages.

Gladwell himself is intimate with hard work and discipline. He grew up in rural Elmira, Canada, a place best known for its maple syrup festival. When his dad, a civil engineering professor, refused to drive young Malcolm 20 miles each morning to swim practice, the boy turned to running and became a high school champion. "Sometimes constraints actually create success," Gladwell says. "Not being able to swim made me run. And running taught me the discipline I needed as a writer."

Gladwell's Five Steps to Success

1. Find meaning and inspiration in your work.


2. Work hard.


3. Discover the relationship between effort and reward.


4. Seek out complex work to avoid boredom and repetition.


5. Be autonomous and control your own destiny as much as possible.