Daniel

Daniel was a prophet during the Babylonian captivity. He was carried to Babylon as a youth and eventually rose to high office in the courts of Nebachudnezzar and other rulers.

When the Babylonians occupied Israel and Judah, they carried forcibly resettled the aristocratic, wealthy and others they deemed valuable. Daniel was among these. He was brought to Babylon and trained to serve in the court of the king.

Daniel rose to prominence early on. He had a passion to serve God. He showed this by asking to be fed a diet of vegetables rather that the food from the kings table. This was probably food from sacrifices to Babylonian gods (though it may have just not been kosher). He must have been persuasive, for he prevailed. Because he and his friends were very healthy on this diet, he gained a reputation for wisdom.

His reputation grew when God began to show him interpretations of Nebachudnezzar’s dreams. In one of these dreams, Daniel saw the rise and fall of empires from the Babylonians to the time of Christ (the Roman Empire with the Persian and Greek empires in between). Much of his prophecies deal with the kingdoms to come from his own time to the first coming of Christ and the fate of Israel in that time.

The most famous story of Daniel is his survival of a night in the lion’s den. He was cast into it as a form of capital punishment for his devotion to God. This book also contains the story of Daniel’s friends Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego who were cast into the fire of a hot furnace for refusing to worship and idol, a statue in the image of Nebachunezzar. God brought them through unharmed.

Daniel is also mentioned in the book of Ezekiel.

Daniel. The Holy Bible. New King James Version. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

Lift by Daniel Kunitz

Trends in fitness in the 2000s have given to new sports, such as the CrossFit games, and new athletic entertainments in the form of American Ninja Warrior. Daniel Kunitz traces the rise of this new fitness culture, which he calls New Frontier Fitness or NFF, in his Lift.

 Kunitz goes back to the ancient Greeks, who revered physical beauty and fitness and considered it the obligation of citizens (only men were citizens) to keep themselves in good shape in order to serve and defend their nation. The Greek word for this training was askesis.

 The English word asceticism has it root in askesis. While we now associate it with self-denial, the Greeks associated it with purposeful self-discipline. Participants in NFF have embraced this old-fashioned asceticism, training purposefully with benefits that spill into all areas of life.

 As an aside, Christian asceticism is often associated with self-denial, sometime extreme, for the purpose of penance. When I read Paul’s writing on denial of self, I see it described in the context of disciplining oneself with the purpose of living a higher life. He even uses athletes as an example. He is not denigrating athletes for training for a worthless prize. He is reminding Christians that they have and even more important calling that deserves at least an equal commitment and effort.

 Of course, few cultures since then have reveled in physical achievement. Exercise at times has been considered dangerous to health. Weightlifting too much resembles labor, a task for lower-class people that wealthy and middle-class people were reluctant to embrace. Even when exercise became more acceptable, starting in the 1960s and taking off in the 1980s, the focus was often on appearance.

 NFF is not concerned with appearance. It is concerned with performance. If one trains to perform well, appearance will take care of itself.

 Because of this focus on function, NFF eschews many of the machines found in gyms. Exercises resemble tasks one might actually perform, though with greater intensity intended to push skill and physical capacity. NFF participants train like an athlete, constantly reaching to do better, not to look better but to live better. As Kunitz says several times, they are “training for life.”

 From a historical point of view, Lift covers a lot of the same ground as Making the American Body by Jonathan Black. However, Kunitz is specifically intending to give context to NFF and its influence on how people think about being fit today.

 Though Kunitz is a professional writer, he is also a fan of NFF. He practices CrossFit, which he discusses in the book, and Olympic lifting. He also talks to people who train in other functional regimes like parkour and sweatier forms of yoga.

 If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes

Mr. America by Mark Adams

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

The Real World of Sherlock Holmes by Peter Costello

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

 Kunitz, Daniel. Lift: Fitness Culture, from Naked Greeks and Acrobats to Jazzercise and Ninja Warriors. New York: Harper Wave, 2016.

Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen

Amen, Daniel G. Change Your Brain Change Your Body: Use Your Brain to Get and Keep the Body You Have Always Wanted. New York: Harmony Books, 2010.


Psychiatrist Daniel G. Amen explores the brain-body connection in his medical practice and in this book. In particular, Change Your Brain Change Your Body focuses on how taking care of the health of your brain can result in better health for your entire body.

In the early chapters of the book, Amen makes the case for brain health and how it can affect the health of the rest of the body. This is enhances by images from SPECT scans, which Amen uses in his practice to measure activity in different parts of the brain.

The subtitle of the book touts the brain as a means to get “the body you’ve always wanted.” For me, that includes getting my weight under control, and several chapters are devoted to the subject. There is no escaping a good diet and exercise, both of which get a chapter. What Amen adds is that an understanding of how one’s brain works can help on curb cravings and address brain deficiencies that may be roadblocks to sticking to a weight loss program. By addressing problems in the brain, one becomes more able to address problems with weight.

Good health is more than proper weight. It includes the skin, heart and glands. Good health is also a full life, which includes relationships, the ability worthy pursue worthy goals and the capacity to remember and savor our experiences. Each of these issues is addressed.

Amen doesn’t prescribe a single solution for everyone. Depending on your brain issues, the solution may be as simple as diet and exercise, it may include supplementation or even particular medications or therapies. Obviously, medical interventions should only be undertaken with the supervision of a physician and you should supplementation and physical fitness programs with yours.

The book doesn’t stick too close to traditional medicine. Amen thinks nutritional supplements can be useful and can reduce reliance on medications, but supplements can have issues of drug interaction and side effects that should be covered with a physician. He suggests meditation for stress management and has used hypnosis in his practice to address several issues including weight loss. (For those interested in meditation, Amen recommends The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson. Hypnosis is recommended in other weight loss books including I Can Make You Thin by Paul McKenna, which includes a self-hypnosis CD.)

In some ways, the book could say change your body change your brain. Many of Amen’s recommendations, especially related to diet and exercise are good recommendations for physical health. Throughout the book, he says that what is good for the heart is good for the brain. He even mentions a study that shows that physically active children perform better academically.

If your interested in this book, you may also be interested in
The Emotional Energy Factor by Mira Kirshenbaum
How Much Does Your Soul Weigh? by Dorie McCubbrey
I Can Make You Thin by Paul McKenna
Instant Self-Hypnosis by Forbes Robbins Blair
The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson with Miriam Z. Klipper

The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin

Modern life presents us with too much stuff and too much information to deal with. In The Organized Mind, psychologist Daniel J. Levitin explains how we can work with our mind, instead of against it, to handle information and make better decisions.

Attention is the critical resources for taking in information, making good decisions, and forming memories. The difficulty is that we only have so much attention to go around. Our attentional systems work to make us unconsciously ignore many of the signals that come our way; we would be overwhelmed if they did not. Our built in systems pay attention to change or to things that seem important. Our natural state is to have a wandering mind, broadly attentive to the environment, screening out the stable and safe, occasionally zooming in on something novel or critical.

We can also use the executive functions of our mind to focus attention where we want it. This can consume a lot of energy, but we can do it very effectively, sometimes focusing to the point where we lose track over everything else.

Both forms of attention have their strengths and limitations. In addition, it is costly to our attention bank to switch between modes or to switch focus from one subject to another. The load of information that we have to deal with can exhaust our attentional system, leading to inattention, poor memory, and bad decisions.

Levitin offers solutions to alleviate these problems and work with the strengths of our brains. The primary suggestion is to offload as much information as possible to the environment. The less we have to remember, and the fewer minor decisions we have to make, the better off we’ll be. Highly successful people use systems of habits, calendars, filing, labels, and standards to minimize the amount of information they have to carry in their memories. It is often not so important to know something as it is to be able to find it when you need it.

A related concept is to use categories and chunk up information. Our minds do this naturally. For instance, we typically don’t remember a telephone number as seven digits, but as two chunks of digits. We can apply a chunking strategy by breaking large jobs into doable tasks, or be grouping related tasks together. We can create scenes or stories in our mind (we do it anyway) to connect a string of events. Sleep seems to be important our natural chunking process, consolidating memories, connecting new information to old, and formulating new concepts.

Levitin presents many tools to organize information and things to make it easier on our brains. In my opinion, one of the most helpful tools is the fourfold table. This is a simple method to organize statistical information and assess the probabilities of certain outcomes. We have horrible intuition for understanding probabilities and assessing risks. Even people trained in statistics typically get probabilities wrong when they guess. The fourfold table, which Levitin describes in some detail with examples, allows one to break down the numbers and evaluate the most relevant probabilities.

The Organized Mind is not a how-to manual, though it has many strategies for organizing based on how the brain works. Levitin discusses the structure and function of parts of the brain, but is not excessively technical. A reader could skim these sections without too much loss. A reader could also focus on a particular aspect of organizing (business, time, and even social life) based on the way the book is organized, though the first few chapters have a lot of information that is background for the other sections.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan Lakein

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

The Thinking Life by P. M. Forni

Levitin, Daniel J. The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in an Age of Information Overload. New York: Dutton, 2014.

The Fifth Heart by Dan Simmons

Novelist Henry James seems like an unlikely partner to fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. Dan Simmons pairs them in his novel The Fifth Heart. James provides Holmes with access to the inner circle of American politics, where Holmes investigates the death of Clover Adams, wife of historian Henry Adams. Together, they thwart an attempt to assassinate President Grover Cleveland at the opening of the Chicago Columbian Exhibition.

In some ways, Simmons draws from the weakest of genre writing, such as the fortunate happenstance of James and Holmes meeting on the bank of the Seine, where the story begins. Simmons writing in this style is not weak, though. He also writes in more literary style, though not a densely written as James’ novels, and uses the likes of upper-class dinner parties to explore social customs and mores.

One of the ways Simmons creates a deep sense of the setting is by constantly dropping names. Many of the characters in the book, or their real counterparts, were famous or well-connected in their day and actually knew each other, such as Adams, the Hays, James, and Samuel Clemens. They also knew, or knew about, a lot of other famous or well-connected people, so the discussion of all these names seems natural. I started jotting down the names, and I recorded more than 100 (some are listed below). Some were fictional (like Hercule Poirot), but many were real people.

On the whole, the novel is a good adventure full of interesting characters. Simmons goes a little deep into philosophy in a consideration of what it means to be a real person, or the potential reality of fictional people (Holmes suspects he may be fictional). The book can be enjoyed without sweating that point.

In a sense, all the characters in the book are fictional, even if they are based on real people. The Holmes of this novel describes the symptoms that indicate he may be fiction, such as the fog he experiences between adventures, and the James of this novel experiences the same thing. Of course, many of us experience arriving home from work and having almost no recollection of driving, so some fogginess may be a natural part of memories and the way we form them (or don’t form them).

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Fic by Anne Jamison

The Peerless Peer by Philip Jose Farmer

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer

The Sherlockian by Graham Moore

Simmons, Dan. The Fifth Heart. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015.

Henry Adams

Marian (Clover) Hooper Adams

Irene Adler [fictional]

Alexander Agassiz

William Waldorf Astor

Henry Ward Beecher

John Bonfield

Paul Bourget

William G. Brock

Daniel Hudson Burnam

James Donald Cameron

Walter Camp

Enrico Caruso

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

Frances Folsom Cleveland

Grover Cleveland

Willkie Collins

Edward Compton

Stephen Crane

Captain Sir George Mansfield Smith Cumming

Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)

Montague Druitt (suspected of being Jack the Ripper)

Andrew L. Drummond

Edmund Gosse

H. Rider Haggard

Carter Henry Harrison

Adelbert “Del” Hay

Clara Hay

Helen Julia Hay

John Hay

Sven Anders Hedin

Mycroft Holmes [fictional character]

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Sherlock Holmes [fictional character]

Isabella Beecher Hooker

Edward Hooper

William Dean Howells

Victoria Woodhull

Henry Irving

Henry James

Francis Scott Key

Phillip Barton Key

Clarence King

Rudyard Kipling

Peter Kropotkin

Fritz Krupp

Louis Jean-Baptist Lepine

Henry Cabot Lodge

Robert McClaughry

George McClellan

Charles Macready

Errico Maltesta

William Melville

Sebastian Moran [fictional character]

James Nolan Moriarty [fictional character]

Richard Monckton Milnes

Carl Gottfried Neumann

Charles H. Pearson

Hercule Poirot [fictional character]

Henry Rathbone

Elisee Reclus

Henrietta Reubell

Henry Hobson Richardson

Edmund Rice

Elizabeth Robins

William Rockhill

Theodore Roosevelt

John Singer Sargent

Rudolph Schnaubelt

Heinrich Schliemann

William Seward

Daniel Sickles

Teresa Bagioli Sickles

Ainsworth Rand Spofford

Edwin Stanton

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Adlai E. Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Benjamin Tayloe

Annie Royle Taylor

Minnie Temple

Emile Jean-Horace Vernet

Carl Aver von Welsbach

A. B. Walkley

Fanny White

Garnet Wolseley

Constance Fenimore Woolson

Future Bright by Martin E. Martinez

Higher intelligence is linked to higher achievement. The demands of our world and culture are calling for higher achievement to address increasingly complex problems. As individuals and societies, we should strive to increase intelligence, which is possible, to arm ourselves to overcome these challenges. This is the opinion advanced by education professor Martin E. Martinez in his book Future Bright.

Martinez builds his case by starting with the link between intelligence and achievement. He cites studies that indicate that in school, work, and personal life, achievement is positively correlated to intelligence.

He moves on to describe what intelligence is, drawing on historic and current theories and research. A significant portion of the book is devoted to defining and understanding intelligence. The prevailing model is hierarchical. A single general intelligence is linked to achievement in all areas. There are also different types of intelligence that are linked to success in clusters of specific skills. Intelligence is affected by both genetics and the environment, and by both individual and cultural factors. If you are looking for a primer on intelligence that covers a lot of ground relatively briefly, you can find it in these chapters.

The hope that Martinez offers is that intelligence is, in part, learned, and it can be increased. Two major types of intelligence, most strongly related to general intelligence, are fluid and crystalline intelligence. Fluid intelligence is related to successfully dealing with novel situations. The heart of fluid intelligence is problem solving.  Crystalline intelligence is structured knowledge, such as is attained from formal education. It is not merely an accumulation of facts; it is an organized mental repository of useful information. The primary skill for crystalline intelligence is critical thinking, the ability distinguish credible, worthy, and useful ideas.

Problems solving and critical thinking are skills that can be learned and improved. Similarly, we can learn new information. By these means fluid and crystalline intelligence, and with them general intelligence, can be increased.

Intelligence is not the only determinant of success, for many intelligent people are not successful. Another important factor is what Martinez call “effective character.” These are personality traits that Martinez suggests can be learned or improved in most people. The critical trait is conscientiousness. Conscientiousness is associated with setting and pursuing goals, working with diligence, and seeking excellence.

Martinez offers several strategies for increasing intelligence. One that is in keeping with the motivation behind this blog is to increase crystalline intelligence (structured knowledge) by reading books. A work as long a book must be structured well to be coherent from beginning to end. In addition, effective written communication presents ideas in a manner that lends itself to analysis by critical thinking. Nonfiction books are especially useful for cultivating crystalline intelligence.

Though the strategies are aimed at the individual, he discusses how some of them are adaptable to parenting and schools. Because Martinez in the early chapters suggests societal benefits to higher intelligence, it makes sense that his book would also include suggestions for policy and cultural adaptions.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen

Double Your Brain Power by Jean Marie Stine

The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

How to Build an Android by David F. Dufty

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

No Excuses by Brian Tracy

One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer

Your Intelligence Makeover by Edward F. Droge, Jr.

Martinez, Martin E. Future Bright: A Transforming Vision of Human Intelligence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Prior to reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, I had seen it referenced by others in relation to the so-called “10,000-hour rule.” This is the concept that mastery of a complex skill takes about 10,000 hours of practice. This idea is not original to Gladwell, but his book popularized the concept.

That is not at all the point of Outliers. Instead, Gladwell takes on myths of success, especially the myths of genius and the self-made man. Certainly people of extraordinary achievement are intelligent and hard-working, but Gladwell shows that they also the beneficiaries of opportunities provided by their culture, sometimes very unique opportunities.

To start, Gladwell tackles our enchantment with intelligence (or talent). He describes research that shows that intelligence matters very little after it reaches some threshold. Once someone has enough intelligence to succeed at something, whether he succeeds for the degree of his achievement is not determined by intelligence. Other things are more important.

One of those other things is the amount of work someone puts into improving a skill (going back to the 10,000-hour rule). Even for a very motivated person, it is hard to put 10,000 hours into learning and improving any complex skill, especially while relatively young. Drawing from many cases (including Bill Gates and Mozart), high-achievers were enabled by opportunities provided by the culture (family, economic situation, law, technological development, etc.). In addition, they gained their mastery at a time when those abilities were highly valued (another cultural contribution that is often time-limited).

After establishing this foundation, Gladwell looks at other aspects of culture and success. Culture can contribute to success and hinder it. Cultures are persistent, yet some have found ways, at least in certain contexts, of overcoming limits to opportunities and opening the doors to success.

Culture matters. We like stories of the lone genius or plucky rag-to-riches go-getter. Without discounting their talent or effort, Gladwell shows that these stories typically veil the many opportunities and lucky breaks that were available to these successful people that very often were not available to others.

The implication is that we rely on luck to produced highly successful people, and luck doesn’t strike often. We could create cultures that provide more opportunities for more people. There are plenty of smart-enough people. Many of them are willing to work hard at something meaningful (itself something that is a cultural heritage). We might have many more successful people, and even more of those extraordinary performers, if we got serious about providing opportunities for everyone.

Malcolm Gladwell also wrote

Blink

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The First 20 Hours by Josh Kaufman

The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

Succeed by Heidi Grant Halvorson

Your Intelligence Makeover by Edward F. Droge, Jr.

Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008.

The Ultimate Weight Solution by Phil McGraw

McGraw, Phil. The Ultimate Weight Solution: The 7 Keys to Weight Loss Freedom. New York: Free Press, 2003.

Psychologist Phil McGraw, television’s Dr. Phil, began to build his national reputation as a jury consultant for Oprah Winfrey when she was sued for statements she made about beef. It turned out his psychological practice was broader than reading potential jurors, and included weight management. McGraw has laid out his approach to weight management in The Ultimate Weight Solution.

McGraw describes seven “keys” to weight management. They seem to cover every aspect of life that relates to food. They can be loosely divided into two categories.

The first category involves discovering and counteracting mental and emotional issues that drive or support become on staying overweight. There are many subtle ways people may be sabotaging their weight-loss efforts. Some may have psychological issues that may require professional help, but many can use McGraw’s strategies to change their thinking and use new ways of coping with emotions that are more consistent with good health.

The second category focuses on behavioral change. In general, the approach is to institute healthy behaviors that will supplant unhealthy habits. Each key contains specific actions one can take to make practical changes. These strategies touch on habits, environment and relationships.

McGraw devotes more ink to the behavioral part. Ultimately, if one is going to attain and maintain a healthy weight, one must behave in a way will result in it.

The overall philosophy is that people behave the way they do for reasons. They may not be consciously aware of those reasons. Those reasons might not make sense if they were evaluated rationally. Even so, in some way a person finds the advantages of their behavior to be greater than the disadvantages. Change involves reevaluating the payoffs and costs of old behaviors and implementing new behaviors that have more desirable and rational payoffs.



A secondary philosophy that comes through is that one shouldn’t rely exclusively on one strategy, or even just diet and exercise, and especially not willpower. The keys touch on thoughts, emotions, habits, relationships, environments, exercise and diet. The more supports you have, the more likely you are to succeed.

As you might expect from a book on weight management, there is also information on nutrition and exercise. Obviously, how much we eat, what we eat, and our level of physical activity is behaviors that greatly and directly affect our weight.

McGraw provides some brief explanations of the science behind his strategies, including a bibliography of the works to which he refers. The book is not very technical, though. It is a practical guide aimed at people seeking to control their weight, not a clinical manual or textbook.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen
How Much Does Your Soul Weigh? by Dorie McCubbrey
I Can Make You Thin by Paul McKenna

Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg

You may be like me in the sense of wanting to get more done and falling short. I realize I can’t do all the things I imagine I might do. There aren’t enough hours in life for it and I can let much of it go. However, there are some things that are important to me. It bothers me that I make so little progress on them.

Journalist Charles Duhigg considers this problem of productivity in Smarter Faster Better. Rather than turning to standard self-help fare, he sought out scientifically supported strategies.

For instance, there is a lots said in self-help books about motivation. Duhigg makes the interesting point that motivation can be learned. We can learn to push ourselves to make decisions and take action.

That is a neat concept. If you see motivation as a skill, you can quit beating yourself up and accept that you are not good at motivating yourself yet. Instead, you can focus on improving the skill. You can reward yourself for the effort—however imperfect—and seek lessons to do better next time.

You might start with Duhigg’s tip to think of what it feels like to be in control and how good it is. The memory, and the positive emotion attached to it, may be the boost that gets you moving. Also ask yourself why you are doing something; uncover why it is meaningful to you.

You can learn to pay attention to the right things at the right time, too. Productive people have good mental models that help them ignore the noise and see the details that make a difference. You can develop these models by telling yourself stories throughout the day about what you expect, why you expect it and how your experience matches or varies from the tale.

This imagination can help you make decisions. We can’t know the future, but if we accept uncertainty and imagine the possibilities—good and bad—we can make good guesses.

Another bit of advice from Duhigg is that when you learn something new, you should do something with it. In the last chapter of the book, he recaps by showing how he used the strategies to get his research and writing done.

Charles Duhigg also wrote The Power of Habit.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

A Mind for Numbers by Barbara A. Oakley

The Big Thing by Phyllis Korkki

Future Bright by Martin E. Martinez

The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

Get Smart! by Brian Tracy

Learn Better by Ulrich Boser

Level Up Your Life by Steve Kamb

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

Duhigg, Charles. Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets to Being Productive in Life and Business. New York: Random House, 2016.

Late Bloomers by Rich Karlgaard

The heroes of our age are young. Mark Zuckerberg, the man who made millions on Facebook while still in his 20s, is a notable example. Though Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak and Tiger Woods are no longer youngsters, they achieved fame and wealth early in life and that is at least one reason why they remain famous. Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard is concerned that our focus on early achievement is depriving our society of the untapped potential of many—probably most of us—who develop at a slower rate. He discusses his concerns, and what we can do about it, in Late Bloomers.

 An industry has developed around seeking early achievement. You have to do well in school and get great SAT scores to get into elite colleges. You have to go to elite colleges to get jobs with the best companies. You have to work for the best companies to get ahead in life. If you have the right stuff, you can skip some of these steps and create your own successful business in your 20s.

 Except it’s not really so. Becoming equipped to succeed on this narrow path, which depends on early achievement, does not necessarily prepare one to have sustained success or achievement in any other area of life.

 In addition, most of us don’t have the mental equipment to make wise choices and stick to them while where young. The brain doesn’t fully mature until we’re in our mid-20s. Though the brain starts to slow down after that, certain types of intelligence—based on knowledge—continue to increase into our 40s and can be sustained well into old age. This late-developing intelligence can more than make up for the slower processing speeds of older brains.

 Kalgaard shares the stories of some late bloomers. Martha Stewart started her catering business at age 35, and published her first book at age 41. Toni Morrison published her first book, The Bluest Eye, when she was 39. More up my ally, Raymond Chandler was 51 when The Big Sleep, his first book, was published. Karlgaard pulls examples from the arts, business, sports and other fields.

 Karlgaard describes himself as a late bloomer. He didn’t do well and struggled in dead-end jobs until he was 25, when his brain finally matured enough for things to start clicking. This was when he was able to get a job that most of us would consider  ordinary, and he still had a ways to go before his career took off.

 Late bloomers have several skill, some hard-won, that help them succeed in their own time. They retain curiosity; they do not specialize to early and they do no avoid failure they way early achievers often do. The have compassion for other and themselves; they’ve had to overcome failure. They are resilient; they have developed perspective and support networks. The have learned to stay calm. The have insight gained from varied experience. The have wisdom, the elusive quality that arises from a maturing brain and a wealth of experience. The have learned when to doubt themselves and when to trust themselves. They know when to stick and when to quit. They are patient.

 As a society, we need to recognize that early achievement is not the norm. People develop at different rates and may peak in different ways at different ages. If we want to enjoy the full potential of people, we have to value the contributions of late bloomers.  We also have to open pathways for them through life-long learning and late-career pathways that force people out just because there is no more ways for them to move up the corporate ladder.

 If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The First 20 Hours by Josh Kaufman

Future Bright by Martin E. Martinez

The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

Learn Better by Ulrich Boser

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Quiet by Susan Cain

Self-Love by Robert H. Schuller

Your Intelligence Makeover by Edward F. Droge, Jr.

 Karlgaard, Rich. Late Bloomers: The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed with Early Achievement. New York: Currency, 2019.