Remember when you saw an 8th grader in high school date a 10th grader? You were probably shocked! “He’s 2 years older than her, that’s insane!” – I still remember the comments, it was a huge deal in our school. Lesson 2: Being born in the wrong month can put you at a disadvantage. Why?īecause once you’ve reached a certain level of legal expertise, other factors start to take over and influence your career, like social skills, how good your network is, and even catching a lucky break. They make the same valuable contributions, get paid just as much and receive as many honors as their peers. Some law schools lower their admission requirements for racial minorities, and even though these students tend to perform worse than their non-minority peers both before and in law school, this gap completely disappears once they graduate. Gladwell also looked at law school students and their performance. Even if you grow to be 7′ tall, those additional inches won’t give you a huge advantage over other players. As it turns out, once you cross a certain threshold with your skills and abilities, any extra won’t do you much good.įor example, since the 1980s, the average height of an NBA basketball player has been 6′ 7″. Of course practice matters, and so do genetic predispositions in sports, but there are limits to their influence. To debunk the myth of the “self-made man”, which might be the most popular myth of our time, Gladwell first looked at how much your skills really influence where you end up in life. If you want to save this summary for later, download the free PDF and read it whenever you want.ĭownload PDF Lesson 1: After you cross a certain skill threshold, your abilities won’t help you.

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