How to Be More Successful Than 99% of People | Malcolm Gladwell
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Codie Sanchez
4.9 • 972 Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2026
⏱️ 66 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | You're way better off at a slightly lesser school where you can excel than you are at the greatest school where you're finished in the bottom of your class. |
| 0:07.0 | You want your aspirational targets to be far enough away that they're motivational, but near enough so that the goal is attainable. |
| 0:15.0 | If you want to get ahead of 99% of people, stop doing what 99% of people do. |
| 0:19.0 | Today's guest Malcolm Gladwell, he's dedicated his career to one message. Get off the beaten path before it beats you up. And we are going to go deep into this, things I've never heard him talk about, just for you. How do we tell people you need to do harder things without them going, okay, older people, you guys don't understand anything. The problem with the question, tell me the hardest thing you've done, is that the person we're most interested in wouldn't be able to answer that question because they wouldn't have perceived it as hard. Maybe a better question is, give me an example of something that makes you happy. Oh, interesting. Do you say something along the lines of, it's better to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond. And I'm wondering, do you think that is true that is better to be exceptional |
| 1:00.6 | in a less competitive market than to be sort of normal and a really competitive one? |
| 1:06.6 | In an academic context, there are real costs to being in the bottom third of your class. |
| 1:13.8 | It's a huge amount of research that just says when you're in the bottom third or the bottom |
| 1:18.4 | quarter, whatever, it's psychologically quite debilitating. |
| 1:24.5 | And if you're not a strong student to begin with, you're compromising your future, |
| 1:29.5 | if you put yourself in an environment where you get overwhelmed. So a good rule of thumb is |
| 1:34.6 | choose a place where you can be, comfortably be in the top 30-year class, right? So if you're |
| 1:42.4 | a brilliant student, then you, by all means, go to a big, big bond. I mean, you'll be fine, right? So if you're a brilliant student, then you, by all means, go to a big, big |
| 1:46.5 | bond. I mean, you'll be fine, right? If you have an IQ of 180, go to MIT, right? You're not |
| 1:51.9 | going to get overwhelmed. But if you're a normal person, then choosing the most prestigious school |
| 1:58.7 | possible is not a good strategy, right? |
| 2:01.7 | Because you're way better off at a slightly lesser school where you can excel |
| 2:06.4 | than you are at the greatest school where you're finished in the bottom of your class. |
| 2:11.5 | And I think that there is some intriguing evidence that if you're an employer and you're hiring, you're better |
| 2:20.7 | off choosing people who are at the top of their class, regardless of where that class was |
| 2:29.0 | situated, right? In other words, paying more attention to class rank than you do to the |
| 2:33.2 | prestige of the institution. |
| 2:35.9 | And there's a number of reasons for that, but it follows in the same logic that being overwhelmed |
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