This book is sort of preaching to the choir for me but I loved it nonetheless. It's well written and persuasive. A must read for parents, teachers and anyone worried about keeping up with the latest 18 year old billionaire.

I just needed this book because all the kids are becoming millionaires and I'm just figuring it out still almost a decade into my career and I just realized, with the help of this book that it's totally okay. A good book and affirming for an adult that wants to be great but is exhausted by adulting.

I feel like this book was written for me! I really enjoyed Rich Karlgaard's book and can't stop underlining sentences. While I don't know that I'm "blooming", I would say that I found so much to relate to in this book! The values of a late bloomer have always been mine and it hasn't been until the current generation where I felt like I had kindred spirits. (25 years is a long time to wait!)
I'm grateful for Karlgaard's book and use it as a pick me up if I feel like I"m comparing myself to others too much. A very uplifting read!

"The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed with Early Achievement" is the subtitle for LATE BLOOMERS by Rich Karlgaard which one of our administrators has been strongly recommending. There is a great deal to discover in Karlgaard's writing and beyond; he shares numerous anecdotes and devotes roughly a quarter of the text to notes and sources. He begins by looking at the potential consequences of how we measure and focus on achievement, especially for young people: "when so many people believe they are inferior based on a few narrow measurements made when they were children, society as a whole suffers." Karlgaard then shifts to a chapter on the strengths of Late Bloomers: curiosity, compassion, resilience, equanimity, insight, and wisdom are all illustrated with numerous inspirational examples. One memorable quote comes from a global consultant named Don Peppers who says, "Not being curious is not only intellectually lazy, but it shows a willful contempt for the facts. If you don't want to know the truth about something, then how moral can you claim to be?" Karlgaard also mused about the idea that almost everyone seemed to self-identify as a late bloomer and that perhaps some of the current, painful political discourse is a result of people feeling "unacknowledged, unappreciated and disrespected." He encourages employers to take advantage of that potential, parents to "enjoy your children as they are" and educators to better meet the needs of late bloomers. This past May, Karlgaard wrote a feature essay (adapted from his book) called "It's Never Too Late to Start a Brilliant Career" in The Wall Street Journal where he cited many examples including the recently deceased Toni Morrison who "published her first novel, The Bluest Eye, at 39 and won a Pulitzer Prize for Beloved at 56 and the Nobel Prize in Literature five years later." Reading LATE BLOOMERS may cause you to re-evaluate the path to long-term happiness for yourself and others.

Link in live post: https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-never-too-late-to-start-a-brilliant-career-11556896617

In the midst of the college bribery scandal, Rich Karlgaard’s book could not be more timely. The sense of desperation and angst that compel parents to resort to such tactics underscores the absurd quest to get their kids into the “right” school. It’s make or break and all the pressure is on the kids. The author documents the toll: not only unhappiness, but depression and sometimes suicide.

I need to promptly add, however, that the book has a broader appeal, the flipside of the pressure prodigy story: an opportunity for many of us to reflect on our paths as late bloomers. The author uses his own story as an example. History is full of great people who did not fit the conventional school mould or do well on narrowly construed IQ tests. They were seen as failures.

Winston Churchill is a good example. He was never good at math and was bored to death at the boarding school his inattentive parents shipped him to. In his memoir, “My Early Life,” he writes: “where my reason or imagination were not engaged, I could not or would not learn.”

I have sometimes pondered how contrarians such as Churchill, Picasso, or Beethoven might have been given Ritalin and had their genius destroyed for the sake of conforming to the prescribed schooling program.

The author Hermann Hesse is a stunning example of such a struggle.

He was highly repressed as a child by his hard-line parents. (Both his parents and grandparents were missionaries). They saw their son as obstreperous and thus to be brought to heel.

His father wrote:

"Hermann, who was considered almost a model of good behavior in the boys’ house is sometimes hardly to be borne. Though it would be very humiliating for us[!], I am earnestly considering whether we should not place him in an institution or another household. We are too nervous and weak for him, and the whole household [is] too undisciplined and irregular. He seems to be gifted for everything: he observes the moon and the clouds, extemporizes for long periods on the harmonium, draws wonderful pictures with pencil or pen, can sing quite well when he wants to, and is never at a loss for a rhyme."

The parents instilled tremendous guilt into their son for not conforming, a guilt which he never entirely escaped, but because of his free spirit and inability to go along with program, he went on to author many novels, such as Demian and Siddhartha, that are popular to this day.

The author has done prodigious research to powerfully underscore the scientific basis of his book. These items say volumes…

On Late Blooming....

• The executive function of our brains, which enables us to see ahead and plan effectively, doesn’t mature until age 25 or later. This isn’t tied to IQ, potential, or innate talent.

• The ability to evaluate complex patterns, including other people’s emotional states, doesn’t full blossom until we are in our 40s or 50s. Crystallized intelligence—accumulated facts and knowledge—doesn’t peak until we are in our late 60s or early 70s.

• Peak innovation age is in our late 40s, and the average age of U.S. patent applicants is 47.

• The average age of discovery leading to a Nobel Prize is 39.

• The average age of entrepreneurship is 47, and there are twice as many entrepreneurs over 50 as there are under 25.

On the potential effects of early achievement pressure on children and teens....

• The tutoring and test prep industry generates more than $1 billion annually.

• Rates of depression and anxiety among teenagers have jumped by 70% in the past 25 years.

• 70% of kids quit sports by age 13, many of them because “it’s not fun anymore.”

Sports scholarships.....

• Only 2% of high-school athletes will receive college scholarships in their sport, according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association. That includes awards well short of the “full ride” many parents covet.

• But in a 2019 survey on the cost of youth sports by TD Ameritrade, 40% of parents said they felt confident their child would get an athletic scholarship. They also said they were willing to cut back on spending, go into credit-card debt or delay retirement to fund their child’s sport.

(See my review of Outliers for more on this. Link below)

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This book offers essential, sane perspective for readers whose children are approaching the college application period.

And for those of us, like myself, who are beyond the college process, it is an enjoyable and inspirational read on our own experiences as late bloomers and what we might yet achieve.

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author quotes....

"Because I’m a late bloomer, I’ve always looked at the world through a late bloomer lens. In early 2015, I wrote my Forbes “Innovation Rules” column on late bloomers as the greatest undervalued resources in business. I mentioned F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wrong-headed line about Americans having no second acts. It was sadly true for Fitzgerald, who achieved fame at 25 and died at 44. But it was not true for Frank McCourt, who published his first book, Angela’s Ashes at 63 and who won the Pulitzer Prize at 66, or Daniel J. Brown, who published his breakthrough book, The Boys in The Boat, at 62"

Comment on STEM majors: "Any rules-based job is at risk from AI." To put it more colloquially, being replaced by a robot, including number-crunching and coding desk jobs in science, math and finance.

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Late Bloomers was a game changer for me. I read it just after I finished reading Normal Sucks (by Jonathan Mooney) which discusses normalcy with regards to learning ability and why we should reconsider our ideas of "normal." Karlgaard does essentially the same thing in Late Bloomers, but he focuses on early achievement. He takes us through the relatively short history of the race to do more, sooner and explains the potentially negative effects with regards to the workplace, the early achievers and the late bloomers. Essentially, he makes the same arguments most 20 to 30-year olds have been making for years, but because Karlgaard is more influential, perhaps people will start believing us.

In addition to talking about early achievement itself, Karlgaard gives numerous examples of late bloomers and talks about their strengths. He argues that the extra time late bloomers take to "get on the right track" makes them more resilient and provides them with a different skill set than people who achieved (the standard idea of) success before the age 3o. For the late bloomers who are not yet convinced of their worth, Karlgaard provides some strategies for building confidence and marketing one's skills.

I liked this book because it made me feel *seen.* Although I suppose I could be considered an early achiever in some respects (I went to a top-tier school, I speak three languages fluently and I've studied and worked in a number of countries), I felt myself burning out in high school, and my performance has been steadily declining ever since. I graduated two years ago and although I have a rough plan of what I'd like to achieve, I constantly feel like I'm not making huge career gains at as fast a pace as my peers. I have to constantly remind myself that everyone achieves their own form of success in their own time, and this book helped me remember that.

This book is an excellent read on its own, but as I said before, I highly recommend you read it in addition to Normal Sucks

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

by Rich Karlgaard

I don’t think I have ever read an introduction as fascinating as Rich Karlgaard’s in Late Bloomers. With phrases like “trickle down societal madness for early achievement” he puts the reader into his world and his viewpoint. It’s not that he is opposed to the young people with scores of 800 on their SAT who create fantastic wealth in their early twenties. He does resent what our culture’s adoration of them does to the rest of us, those whose potential is downgraded because our star doesn’t rise at the same pace or shine as brightly.

In Late Bloomers we are brought to an understanding of the history and psychology of the conveyer belt systems of education and business that have led us to the current sad state of affairs. Karlgaard explains how late bloomers struggle in this early achievement focused society and how society suffers for not valuing late bloomers. This book is replete with examples—J.K. Rowling, Einstein, and the author himself, to name a few—of late bloomers. It also carefully examines the available psychological research and what it tells us about late bloomers. A large portion of the book is devoted to sharing what late bloomers and society can do to make the whole system function more successfully.

As a teacher, I applaud Karlgaard’s revelation of the background of our harmful testing culture designed to create cogs in an industrial wheel. As a parent, I agree with his theories about development occurring in different ways and times for individuals. I am especially intrigued by the promotion of a “gap year” (or two) for young people, giving them extra time for brain development before they are expected to “adult.” I can see the need for viewing 18-25 as a stage of life when, for most, that important brain maturation in the prefrontal cortex is still in process.

The main body of the book is addressed to the late bloomer, which Karlgaard argues is most of us. It is full of research studies which interestingly support his advice to the late bloomer—how to survive in a world that disparages late blooming and how to, in fact, bloom despite a society that does not value late blooming. The introduction and first three chapters of this book should be required reading for every teacher, administrator, policy maker, business entrepreneur, parent, and concerned citizen. Did I leave anyone out? After that, most will want to finish the book. Especially the late bloomers out there, the ones who have not yet “found themselves” or met their full potential.

I would like to extend my thanks to netgalley.com and to Crown Publishing (Currency) for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 5/5

Category: Self-Help, Education, Parenting

Notes: Rich Karlgaard, self-proclaimed late bloomer, is the publisher of Forbes Media, an author, and the founder of several businesses.

Publication: April 16, 2019—Crown Publishing (Currency)

Memorable Lines:

Being seen as a potential late bloomer was once a mark of vitality, patience, and pluck. Nowadays, more and more, it is seen as a defect (there must be a reason you started slowly, after all) and a consolation prize. This is an awful trend, since it diminishes the very things that make us human—our experiences, our resilience, and our lifelong capacity to grow.

Just when we should be encouraging kids to dream big, take risks, and learn from life’s inevitable failures, we’re teaching them to live in terror of making the slightest mistake.

…social media has now become our most toxic cultural mirror.

Reducing education to test preparation jeopardizes the quality of curricula and the craft of teaching. It drains education of humanity.

Yes yes yes! We need everyone talking about this book. I'm a late bloomer despite the "perfect ACT score" and good grades. Things just didn't quite follow the early achievement line I had hoped for and that society worships. I'm just now pulling it together and as this book will tell you, there are perks to doing that later than say...18. If you pull it together too soon you leave lots and lots of time for it to fall apart.

This book is being published at the right time: our society is obsessed with youth and makes it seem like life is over at the age of 30, but for some, that's when the going gets good. Thank Rich Karlgaard for your words and your well research book. This will be an inspiration to many when it gets published.

'Late Bloomers' by Rich Karlgaard is a look at what this taboo concept is really all about. Karlgaard uses many real life examples to show that late blooming is more common than what we have been led to believe. We live in a culture that places too much emphasis on early success which undermines those who need more time to blossom. The book looks at what led us to the point, specifically the societal conditioning. The following chapters examine the psychological and neuro-scientific research that reveals that late blooming is in fact normal. The standout chapter for me were the strengths and gifts that late bloomers possess and that late blooming offers. As someone in their mid-twenties who still doesn’t have their life together, this chapter made me feel better and more confident in my abilities. There were many tips included throughout this chapter on how to step into one’s potential and power. For late bloomers, being able to see their weaknesses as strengths is paramount for their self esteem.

A point I would like to make is that the so called “early-bloomers” usually come from affluent families who are able to accelerate their success. Also, I felt some of the examples of late bloomers were a little weak. Some of them were more “second career” examples, whereby someone had a successful career prior to blooming in their ideal environment. I also think that being a late bloomer doesn’t have to mean becoming a CEO at 45 or famous at 65. Everyone defines success in a different way, so there needed to be less examples around material success and more examples having to do with personal fulfillment.

Overall this is a must-read for every late bloomer who feels misunderstood and hopeless.

I agree. Not everyone blooms early or on schedule. It's about time everyone stops labeling children. Everyone makes it on there on good time. Everybody has a life course of their own that no one else can determine for them. Life works out itself. Also, no one else can decide what someone else's future should be or what it's going to be. There is nothing worse than adults adults labeling kids as losers or hopeless in grade school. Many thanks Rich Karlgaard! I hope everyone with kids, or responsible for kids, reads your book.