David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell





I finished this book in early March. I like it more than Outliers, although it's less well-known. I was trying to explain it to my mom, and after about ten minutes of rambling, she summarized it in one sentence: how can you turn your weakness into your strength?



It's a great question, although it needs a little revising. "How can you turn your disadvantage into your advantage?" is probably more accurate, since what counts as a "weakness" depends on the situation. Turning your disadvantage into an advantage means that you have two options: reframe your own disadvantage or reframe the situation.



Either way, my mom's summary is quite thoughtful. It has two basic premises: 1) every disadvantage can somehow be turned into a “strength” or unique advantage 2) but this shift is open-ended and requires a lot of thought (so the summary is a question rather than a statement). Both of these premises feel true to me.



We all feel insufficient and lacking at times, yet "what we lack" is what really shapes us. I’m reminded of this line from Anna Karenina: All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Weaknesses are our niche—we are weak and disadvantaged in different ways from others, while a lot of people probably have our same strengths (and are better at them, too.)



Our unique disadvantages force us to look at the world in a different way, and we misinterpret what is really a "weakness." More resources often create more wastefulness rather than better outcomes. This is an oversimplification of Gladwell's idea, but I think it's the main thread. At the very least, it won't hurt to try reframing disadvantage. If we're able to make some progress, we're already legions ahead.



There are lots of books that are secretly about this one concept. One example that comes to mind is Susan Cain’s Quiet. The book basically reframes the “weakness” of being an introvert. Introversion is seen by our culture as negative, but introverts are actually more likely to be thoughtful, emphatic, complex thinkers, acute observers, and so on.



I wish every nonfiction book had a manual at the end telling you how to actually apply it. In this case, it was really helpful for me to make a list of everything I saw as a disadvantage, and then list ways to reframe these into advantages. Many of these shifts were unattainable, but I got a lot of ideas. I also thought about spaces that are seen as disadvantaged, and if/how I can spend more time exploring these spaces. Maybe these can help you, too.

*****

Here are some of my favorite quotes from David and Goliath: We have, I think, a very rigid and limited definition of what an advantage is. We think of things as unhelpful that in reality leave us stronger and wiser.

• Personal experience: Growing up in Utah can feel really limiting. But it turns out Utah makes for a better story on every application I’ve written. Plus, it’s really taught me to search for resources and find my own spaces to grow

Citizens of happy countries have higher suicide rates than citizens of unhappy countries, because they look at the smiling faces around them and the contrast is too great. Students at “great” schools look at the brilliant students around them, and how do you think they feel?

• Imposter syndrome :-)

How you feel about your abilities in the context of your classroom shapes your willingness to tackle challenges and finish difficult tasks.

• Simple sentence describing confidence...but also a good reminder to myself

That’s strange, isn’t it? Normally we think that we are better at solving problems when they are presented clearly and simply. But here the opposite happened. “Listening is something I’ve been doing essentially all my life. I learned to do it because that was the only way that I could learn. I remember what people say. I remember words they use.” So he would sit in class at law school—while everyone else furiously made notes or doodled—focusing on what was said and committing what he heard to memory.

• Don’t furiously make notes or spend too much time making notes pretty, the ultimate goal is to get information to memory

“One of the things you tell a witness when you’re preparing them is take your time,” Boies said. “Even when you don’t need to. Because there will be some times when you need to slow down, and you don’t want to show the examiner by your change of pace that this is something that you need time on. So—when were you born?” He spoke carefully and deliberately. “’It…was…1941.’ You don’t say ‘ItwasMarcheleventh1941atsix-thirtyinthe-morning,’ even though you’re not trying to hide it. You want your response to be the same for the easy things as for the harder things so that you don’t reveal what’s easy and what’s hard by the way you answer.”

• I think this is what politicians do.

[…] being on the outside, in a less elite and less privileged environment, can give you more freedom to pursue your own ideas and academic interests.

• I didn’t have much homework at a Title One school → it felt like less learning, but it also gave me more time to do other stuff

Courage is not something that you already have that makes you brave when the tough times start. Courage is what you earn when you’ve been through the tough times and you discover they aren’t so tough after all. What Jaffe proved was that the powerful have to worry about how others think of them—that those who give orders are acutely vulnerable to the opinions of those whom they are ordering about.

• Oof

Later, he wrote: Even today I carry a death within myself, the death of my son, and I am like a decapitated pine. Pine trees do not regenerate their tops. They stay twisted, crippled. [...] They grow in thickness, perhaps, and that is what I am doing.

• To be resilient is to grow in thickness.

Resources ultimately become self-defeating It was not that the Viet Cong thought they were going to lose. It was that they did not think in terms of winning and losing at all—which was a profoundly different proposition. An enemy who is indifferent to the outcome of a battle is the most dangerous enemy of all.