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Key points
- Results-orientation exists on a spectrum.
- Success addiction is at the extreme of the results-orientation spectrum.
- Starting in your 40s, you will find yourself lagging behind younger coworkers.
- Happiness depends on using your crystallized intelligence and accepting the decline of your fluid intelligence.
Most Psychology Today readers like to think of themselves as “results-oriented.” But results orientation exists on a spectrum. At the extreme is success addiction.
Are You a Success Addict?
Answer this question: if forced to choose between being happy or being special, which would you select? “Special” can mean any combination of wealth, task accomplishment, or admiration. According to Harvard Business School professor and former CEO Arthur Brooks (2022), success addiction represents a vicious negative cycle:
“(Success addicts) become successful by working more than others. They believe they have to keep up that pace to maintain their astronomical productivity. The initial positive rewards of productivity give way to fear of failing.
Soon enough, work crowds out relationships and outside activities. With little else, work is all that is left, reinforcing the cycle.”
The Bad News
According to Brooks, you will experience a decline in success much sooner than you think. At age 50, Charles Darwin published his crowning achievement, On the Origin of the Species, a best-seller explaining evolution. It made him a household name and changed science forever. But he never made another breakthrough beyond age 50.
By the world’s standards, Darwin was a success. By Charles Darwin’s standards, he was washed up after age 50. He lived another 23 years as an unhappy man.
In his 2022 book From Strength to Strength, Brooks states that creative decline begins between the late 30s and early 50s. Financial professionals reach their most creative between 36 and 40. Physicians appear to be most creative in their 30s. For most knowledge workers, decline begins between the late 30s and early 50s.
Regardless of how hard you work, by your mid-40s, you will be acutely aware that younger professionals are surpassing you. in creativity and accomplishment For the success addict, this feels slow walking down the road to irrelevance.
The Good News
"What got you here won’t get you there” is a common cliché in coaching: Your future success involves the ability to unlearn some of your past habits of success.
Brooks cites Raymond Cattell’s classic 1987 book on intelligence, Intelligence: Its Structure, Growth, and Action. Cattell suggested that there are two types of intelligence. The first type is fluid intelligence, the ability to think flexibly and solve novel problems. He stated that this type of intelligence is highest relatively early in adulthood and diminishes over time.
The success addict’s past success has been due to three factors: fluid Intelligence, hard work, and luck. As fluid intelligence declines, hard work and luck will not take up the slack. On the other hand, Cattell states, your crystalized Intelligence rises. It is defined as the ability to apply a stock of given knowledge.
According to Brooks, when you are young, you have raw smarts; when you are older you have wisdom. When you are young, you can generate lots of new ideas; when you are older, you have a better appreciation of the implications of new ideas.
The “cure” for success addicts is accepting the decline of fluid intelligence. It means embracing your emerging crystalized intelligence.
Specific Action Strategies
Brooks cites research showing that the oldest college professors tend to have better teaching evaluations than younger faculty in the same departments.
Teaching is not limited to classrooms. Many business leaders make the transition from business leaders to coaches, business consulting, or board work. That aggressive litigator may eventually become a wise mentor to new legal associates. Going from the most creative person in the room to the most supportive person is the path to take.
Conclusions
At the beginning of this post you faced a forced choice: Would you rather be happy or be special? For success addicts, the desire for success is never satiated.
You will not be successful in the future the way you were successful in the past. Such a loss is inevitable. And with its inevitability, you are once again given the option of selecting happiness over being special.
Selecting happiness means unlearning past habits of success as you embrace your emerging crystallized intelligence.
References
A.C. Brooks. From Strength to Strength. New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2022
R.B. Cattell. Intelligence: Its Structure, Growth, and Action. New York: North-Holland, 1987.
