Late Bloomers: The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed with Early Achievement

by Rich Karlgaard

The outcome of our obsession with measurement? Success today is represented by the high-IQ, high-SAT wunderkind test takers beloved of Bill Gates and other IQ farms like Goldman Sachs, Google, and Amazon. The most successfully measured among us make the most money, and they make it the fastest. Today IQ and data dominate academic sorting, which has put unprecedented pressure on kids to be early bloomers. And thanks to our pressure-cooker education system that picks “winners”—that is, students with high GPAs and SAT scores—generations of young women and men find themselves left behind before they even reach adulthood. Young adults, men especially, look at the adult world, reject it, and live in their parents’ house playing computer games for hours every day. We see it in binge drinking and opioid addiction—all manner of ways in which people seek relief from their confusing, stressful, and unsatisfied lives.