You’re Over 50. Heads Up – Your Intelligence Is Crystallizing. (if you’re lucky!)

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

Did you know that we go through two stages of intelligence across our lifespan?

I didn’t either until I came across a conversation between Chip Conley and Arthur Brooks.

As you may recall, I’m a big fan of Chip Conley, entrepreneur, author of “Wisdom at Work” and founder of the Modern Elder Academy. I’ve written about Chip before:

Be Part of the “Modern Elder” Movement

I’ve also been following Brooks, social scientist, musician, columnist for The Atlantic, and past president of the conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute.

When I learned that Chip was interviewing Arthur, I figured there might be some magic.

And there was.

I’ve included a link to the 49-minute YouTube interview below that I hope you will find the time to watch. You’ll be glad you did. It has life-changing content.

Two intelligences; two success curves

Drawing from his new book “Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life”, Brooks notes that we experience two different forms of intelligence during our lifetime.

Accompanying those different intelligences are two success curves if we choose to pursue them:

The first success curve is the Fluid Success Curve which Brooks describes as when our analytical capacity is highest, our entrepreneurial ability the keenest, our ability to answer questions the quickest. It grows fastest in our late 20s and is most likely highest in our early 30s. Then a decline starts in the late 30s, accelerates through our 40s, and is in the tank by our 50s.

It explains why most successful entrepreneurial startups happen at or around age 31.

Maybe you did something with your Fluid Success Curve – I’m afraid I slept through mine.

But there’s hope for those of us who missed or have moved beyond that curve because there is a bailout.

It’s called the Crystallized Success Curve and it picks up momentum in your 40s, gets really high in your 50s and 60s, and stays high in your 70s, 80s, and 90s, assuming the neurons and synaptic connections don’t go south.

Whew!

In Brooks’ words, when we have crystallized intelligence, we aren’t so good at coming up with new ideas but really good at taking other people’s ideas and bringing them together into a coherent whole, or telling stories that other people can’t see, or teaching, or figuring out what stuff means, or forming teams.

The biggest takeaway: most people don’t know that the Crystallized Success Curve exists.

If we modern elders figure it out, he says, “the world is our oyster.”

Why? Because that’s where the greatest, most satisfying, and joyful success exists –

– and you get to keep it for the rest of your life.