Success Literature

For a few months now, I have been eagerly sifting through ‘success’ literatures in search of that secret formula that all successful enterprises and more notably successful people use.

  One of the best & most inspiring sources was Stephen Covey’s classic ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’. The problem I noted to myself about this book back then was that its too open and too deep, meaning to say, its not something that I can read today and hope to enact tomorrow and be on my way to achieving success. ‘7 Habits’ is the kind of book that reminds us about the fundamental principles of life. To establish those principles, one needs a lifetime. And so my search continued…

I turned to Guy Kawasaki's ‘Art of the Start’, which was almost totally devoid of any ‘principles’ and thus soon forgotten. Michael E. Gerber’s ‘Awakening the Entrepreneur Within’ for all its recommendations was founds to be mildly inspiring at times but mostly self-adulation of a non-arguably successful man. Not great or recommendable.

Few more books aside, I stumbled upon Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Outlier’ in a bookshop in Lahore and decided to hear his argument. And wow, what an argument the man presents.

In a nutshell, Malcolm presents that no one in this world makes it alone, success is a cumulative of hard work, opportunity outside on one’s controls and events & circumstances (which are again outside one’s control.

If anything, this book rejuvenated my faith in Allah. There is so much one can do and at the end of the day its Allah who has decided what each of us gets. Hard work will be my way of staking a claim for his mercy.

I really could not be happier with the book. Its a wonderfully written, richly explained and all round a wonderful read. I love this. I intend to re-read this book (along with 7 Habits & Don Tapscott’s absolutely revelatory Wikinomics).