Transcript:
The data are very clear that the people
who have the earliest success, the mind-blowing success
they're the most likely to be
unsatisfied with their lives at the end of their lives
Many people who we revere today who had
early astonishing success
They died unhappy but we don't record that
We record their success not the
unhappiness with their life later on
Charles Darwin had his greatest
successes starting when he was 27 years old and for 30 years
I mean he's rich, he was famous, he was the
man but then his progress stopped it
stopped because he didn't have the
mathematical ability to keep up with his own research
His research passed him by technically
and there was there was actually an
advance that he needed that today we
call genetics that he couldn't
understand it was written in German
He didn't study Germany as a bad student he
didn't do his mathematics homework he
never learned very much about statistics
and so the result was that he was left
in the dust which happens to people in
their 40s and atmosphere early 50s based
on their early success and he said i
don't have the energy to do any work
that i really find satisfying to his
friends and you know he died
disappointed he died sad
The great maybe the greatest
naturalist of all time died sad this is
not what the world tells you
the world says bust your pick get as as
early as you can get bet 10 000 hours
Man, kill it, kill it...
You know write about it
in the book about the success addiction
that virtually all entrepreneurs
virtually all strivers have
You can be
you know the ace electrician and have a
success addiction because we are wired
to want to be excellent and to be
admired which leads you to get better
and better and better what you do using
what a
have identified for a long time now as
fluid intelligence
The structure of your
brain lends itself to just incredible
energy and focus and to get better and
better and better as an individual at
solving any problem faster than others
The problem is,
this is the problem that led to Darwin's
misery and so many others it peaks in
your late 30s or early 40s and then it
declines and then it declines faster if
you try to keep your growth you're going
to ride that thing to the basement and
you're going to be the man of the plane,
you're going to be Darwin, you're going
to be bitter and unhappy and most people
think they get one curve
That's the bad news
The good news is that's not your only curve
You have a second curve that comes in
behind it which is not your fluid
intelligence which goes up speaks comes
down it's your crystallized intelligence
your wisdom which doesn't have fast
working memory the innovative capacity
is not as good but it's your ability to
identify patterns to use the information
in your environment it's like having the
New York public library at your disposal
it takes a while to get the information
like, i can't remember that thing because it's
on the fourth floor back in the stacks
I gotta send my guy to get it but it's in
there and you can use this information
to be a teacher, to be a historian, to have actual wisdom
that's what you get better at through
your 40s and 50s and you can stay high
in your 60s and 70s and beyond that's
your true success curve as you get older
The key is you got to walk from fluid
intelligence over to crystallized
intelligence, you got to walk from the
star litigator to the managing partner,
from the innovative startup entrepreneur
to the venture capitalist, from the
mathematical researcher to the professor
those are the different curves you got
to go from one to the other,
If you're stuck on the first and if that's your
vision of your own greatness and you
can't be thrown off that you'll be
chasing that for the rest of your life
even though it's just it's in it's in
the basement
and you can't get it back.