Dylan Emerson

Dr. Hirschfeld
MGMT3900 Sec. 003
12 September 2020
Principles
Introduction
● The earlier an activity is practiced the higher the likelihood of success for the one who
performs the activity.
○ I derived this principle by examining the story of Tiger Woods and how he became an
anomaly in the golf scene. Before the age of four, Tiger was already a golfing prodigy
because of the help from his father who drove that passion for golf. By practicing
since he was a toddler, Tiger was able to perfect his technique before he was old
enough to compete in the majors, allowing him to be considered one of the best
athletes of all time. This same principle can also be applied to other famous examples
of childhood prodigies like Mozart, who composed his first written piece at the age of
five.
● Knowledge in a broad subject increases proficiency in a specialized subject.
○ This principle was derived from the idea of practicing many different specialized
activities under one broader activity in order to apply what has been learned in said
activities to be better at a specialized activity. So, by practicing several sports -
soccer, tennis, football, etc. - an athlete is able to take the hand-eye coordination they
learned from tennis to be better at catching in football, enabling them to be elite
running backs. The introduction provides further evidence of this principle when
examining how doctors who formerly specialized in treating cancer have begun
treating cancer in specific organs, making them much more specialized and proficient
in their field.
Chapter 1
● Nurturing a child to succeed leads to more successful opportunities than a child born into
success.
○ I derived this principle from the section of Chapter 1 that discusses Laszlo Polgar and
how he bred his children to be chess champions since the days they were born, which
resulted in policies in major chess tournaments and the defeat of the Soviet Union
during the women’s Chess Olympiad. This extreme example acts as a proof of
concept, but other examples can be observed in anyone’s day-to-day life. For
example, a child that grows up in a musical environment with access to instruments
and support from their parents will grow up to be an elite musician, even if music
isn’t something they pursue as a career.
● People are more successful in a field their family has prior success in.
○ While the book supports this principle with the story of the Polgar family, I primarily
derived this principle from an anecdote one of my professor’s told me and linking this
to the story of the Polgar family. In summary, he became a great lawyer because his
 family consisted of lawyers that exposed him to law at a young age, allowing him to
be more familiar with the field of law than his peers that were just beginning to learn
the semantics of law, and passing law school with flying colors. This same principle
can be applied to families of doctors, where the children of doctors grew up to be
much more successful in medical school than students who were experiencing
anatomy and nursing for the first time.
● Pattern recognition drives success.
○ I derived this principle from Klein’s observations of the most successful people in
their fields having high pattern recognition, such as firefighter chiefs who excel at
putting out fires because they recognize burn patterns and can confidently predict the
fire’s next move. Chess grandmaster Kasparov also attributed his success due to his
excellent pattern recognition skills and his ability to see a move and combination
almost instantly because he’s seen them thousands of times before.
Chapter 2
● As generations pass, newer generations grow smarter.
○ I derived this principle from reading about the phenomenon of the performance of
World War I soldiers compared to World War II soldiers at the beginning of the
chapter. As Flynn travelled around the world, every population he visited observed
how quickly the IQ scores of their populations were rising. This can be attributed to
advancements in technology, because newer generations have more access to a
variety of resources, allowing them to have more experience with the world around
them at a younger age.
● Knowledge is derived from experience.
○ I derived this principle from the experiment with the villagers in the Soviet Union.
Villagers that haven’t been faced with the industrialization from the Soviet Union
were unable to separate groups because, based off of their experiences, everything in
the broader group was related and relied on each other to accomplish a task; in the
industrialized villages, villagers had no problems discerning why a child doesn’t
belong in a group of three adults.
Chapter 3
● Individuals with the worst life experiences can make the best of their futures.
○ I derived this principle from the story of Vivaldi and his travelling orchestra of
disfigured women. The book talks about how most of the women in Vivaldi’s
orchestra were orphans, terribly disfigured from disease, or a combination of other
problems. Even with this horrible past, they were able to overcome their
shortcomings and become international celebrities in Europe. Even today, we see
examples of kids growing up in poverty without parents that grow up to make their
own businesses and become entrepreneurs.
● Sampling enables success.
○ I derived this principle after observing the case of Yo-Yo Ma, an elite cellist who
originally tried learning the violin and piano and determined he was more interested
in the cello. While analyzing more cases of sampling producing success, it’s easy to
see how experimenting and finding out what one is interested in provides a much
higher success rate because one will not be stuck on something they don’t have a
passion for. With retrospect to the introduction, the same situation happened with
Roger Federer, who played several different sports before he found his passion for
tennis.