How much people control their lives

The question of how much people’s lives can be controlled has been around since the

beginning of time. Throughout history, there have been many studies on this topic but none come

to a single conclusion. Two articles were written by two different authors trying to answer this

question. The first article was written by David Epstein and is titled “The Sports Gene”, the

second article is written by Malcolm Gladwell and is titled “Outliers”. While both articles have

compelling arguments, “Outliers” makes a stronger argument about how much people can

control their lives.

In the article “The Sports Gene”, author David Epstein makes the argument that people

only control a small percentage of their lives. The article tells the story of Donald Thomas who

started his high jumping career on a bet after the lead high jumper at his high school Carlos

Mattis, bet Thomas he could not jump six feet six inches. Thomas took on the bet and cleared

6’6, and then 6’8. Soon Carlos had enough and raised the bar to seven feet, Thomas cleared it

“Without a semblance of graceful high-jump technique.” Thomas went on to partake in the 2007

World Championships for high jump in Osaka. His main rival was Olympic Champion Stefan

Holm who was the favorite to win that year. Making his way to the last jump at seven-foot and

eight and a half inches Thomas threw himself over the bar and cleared it while Holm clipped it.

Thomas became the world champion. In 2008 a Japanese television station asked Masaki

Ishikawa who was a scientist at the University of Jyvåskylå to examine Thomas. Ishikawa noted

that Thomas’s Achilles tendon was bigger than the average but was not the “sole secret to the

jumping success.” The Achilles tendon plays a big role in how we jump as it is like a spring that

compresses and releases as we jump. Through this article, it was constantly reinforced that the
fact Thomas had so little training as well as his nonchalant attitude toward the sport with Thomas

being quoted saying that the high jump is “kind of boring.” After being in the professional circuit

for 6 years Thomas did not improve one centimeter. With these facts, Epstein proves his

argument that genes control most people’s lives. Even going as far as to say “[h]e seems to

contradict the deliberate practice framework in all directions.”

While Epstein goes into much detail about one person and how it proves his argument.

Malcolm Gladwell shows us a more broad perspective of the argument. In his article “Outliers”,

Gladwell takes a look at a study done in the early 1990s by K. Andres Ericsson and his two

colleagues from Berlin’s elite Academy of Music. They gathered violinists at three different

levels of skill, world-class, good, and average. They were all asked the same question, “how

many hours have you practiced?” Their studies showed that they all started at the same age but it

was the amount of practice that changed their skill. The world-class violinists totaled 10,000

hours in their lives, the good violinists about 8,000, and the average violinists 4,000. However,

one test was not enough. Ericsson and his colleagues did the same test with amateur and

professional pianists and the “same pattern emerged.” At the end of his studies, Ericsson found

he could not find any “naturals,” instead he found that world-class players don’t just work harder

than everyone else “[T]hey work much, much harder.” Ericsson and his colleagues also

concluded that they believe that the “magic number for true expertise: is ten thousand hours.”

Gladwell drives home the argument that practice can make people great at what they do. He uses

as many examples as possible, using five different sources of information. Combining these

sources with real-life examples such as Mozart he proves his point that genes do not play a big

role in humans' lives but instead practice can make anyone great at anything.
 Both authors provide solid arguments for their thesis. However, if everything is stripped

away from their arguments and the bare minimum remains it is clear that Gladwell has the upper

hand for one reason, that being he has more sources of information than Epstein. As mentioned

previously Gladwell showed a very broad perspective including in his article not only musicians

but athletes as well as having multiple points of view. While Epstein focuses solely on David

Thomas and his rise to the top. One of the most basic rules of trying to prove a point is to have a

large amount of data.