Malcolm Gladwell is a really smart guy

There are smart people.

And there is Malcolm Gladwell.

I only recently heard of Gladwell. Yes, I live under a rock. But Gladwell’s rise to literary acclaim is no secret to those who have been reading his work in The New Yorker magazine since 1996 and The Washington Post before that.

He’s gained the most fame since 2000, as the author of Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers and What the Dog Saw – his latest.

Put simply, Gladwell’s writing and ideas make people think. You may not agree with his ideas. But he’ll get you thinking.

Of Tipping Point, Gladwell said it’s “that ideas and behavior and messages and products sometimes behave just like outbreaks of infectious disease. They are social epidemics.”

In Blink, he says quick decisions and reactions might be best: “There are lots of situations – particularly at times of high pressure and stress – when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgments and first impressions offer a much better means of making sense of the world.”

And in Outliers he made the case that success might not all be attributed to an individual’s hard work. He says he hopes the book “makes us understand how much of a group project success is. When outliers become outliers it is not just because of their own efforts. It’s because of the contributions of lots of different people and lots of different circumstances – and that means that we, as a society, have more control about who succeeds – and how many of us succeed – than we think. That’s an amazingly hopeful and uplifting idea.”

And his concept of the “10,000-Hour Rule” to reach greatness, essentially requiring you to do 10,000 hours of practice in your craft to get great at it. 20 hours a week for 10 years. Got that kind of time?

The great ones do.

Heck, put in 5,000 and you’ll still get pretty good, right?

But you also need people around you. It’s not just individual effort.

Again, as Gladwell says, “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.”

I haven’t yet read any of Gladwell’s books fully, but I’m intrigued by what I’ve read from others who have.

Which brings me to the real point and inspiration of this post.

This week, I got a chance to hear and see Gladwell in person at a legal technology conference in Manhattan. The topic of the talk focused on the wealth of information at a professional’s fingertips and the importance of intuition. When he spoke, the packed ballroom hung on his every word. He’s clearly got “it” going right now and has built a reputation for his intellect that will no doubt carry him to future best-sellers and notoriety. He’s not “over your head” smart in his presentation and speaking style. He’s conversational. Engaging.

Just plain smart.

But what Gladwell said at the end of the talk, about how he likes to search for information in a library, struck me as so simple yet profound. He said that yes, he’ll start his search on a topic on the computer database and read the summaries of their content. But sometimes he just likes to go to the particular section of the library to look at the actual books themselves.

I suppose, to see the titles on the spines and the physical look of the books. I often do the same thing. Even though yes, you can’t judge a book by its cover. But a cover can lead you to a good book. And lead you down a path toward teaching you something new. Helping you see something you hadn’t seen before, no matter what the topic.

I encourage you to look up many of the videos and articles featuring Gladwell all over the Web. It’s time well spent.