Confessions of a Late Bloomer

We have fixed notions about the time course of success and the nature of talent that encourage us to write off the very people who are most likely to (eventually) change the world.

By Scott Barry Kaufman, published on November 01, 2008 - last reviewed on October 21, 2009

For immigrants, success can be delayed because they must take the time to assimilate into a new culture. Nevertheless, they are frequently the major innovators of culture. Composer Irving Berlin was an immigrant, as are filmmaker Ang Lee and Madeline Albright, the first female Secretary of State. In a 1947 study of eminent Americans, statistician Walter Bowerman found that 45 percent were newcomers to the United States—an incidence rate seven times higher than among the native population. Time as an outsider may fuel the fire to succeed and free an individual for the new associations that underlie creative innovation.

Rethinking the Bloom

If in many fields, especially those that draw on many different brain circuits , early achievement is more the exception than the rule, what does it really buy you—aside from a gold star and a kiss from Grandma?

One might assume that such early accomplishments greatly increase an individual's chances for the highest levels of creative achievement. But evidence indicates otherwise. While early ability can certainly increase your chances of becoming an expert, when it comes to the very highest reaches of human potential—that top .00001 percent—it loses its power.

Take William Shockley, transistor co-inventor, Stanford professor, and controversial genetics theorist. As a child, Shockley had his IQ tested by noted psychologist Lewis Terman, but his score kept him out of Terman's famous group of gifted children. No matter. As Terman was following his elite sample of high-IQ (over 140) children, Shockley was earning a Ph.D. from Harvard and winning a Nobel Prize in physics—a distinction not one of Terman's gifted students achieved.

Above a reasonable score (high but not that high), IQ doesn't do a very good job of predicting lifetime creative achievement. There even appears to be an optimal amount of formal schooling after which schooling can deter creative achievement. Beyond that lies the danger of getting too entrenched in the traditional thinking .

For many great minds, passion leads to a great deal of self-teaching that might never show up on a report card, the products of which are only witnessed once the individual is ready to display his achievements to the world. "I consider that all that I have learned of any value has been self-taught," Darwin once wrote. Producing his monumental On the Origin of Species at the age of 50 may automatically qualify Darwin as a late bloomer. In reality, he spent many years carefully observing animals and plants. He needed the time to gather the evidence supporting his revolutionary theory.

Of course, early bloomers should be nurtured. There's no value to squandering ability. But nor should we dismiss the tortoise. At any given time, it's impossible to predict the extent to which a person will eventually blossom—and disastrously naive for "experts" (or parents or teachers) to decree limits on what that person can achieve. This is reason enough to treat everyone as if they have the potential to reach full bloom.