Highbrow pleasure recently: the Royal Opera House, and Leoš Janáček’s Jenůfa. The opera was first performed when the composer was 50, and it was followed by an outpouring of new music, better than anything he had managed in his supposed prime. My favourites include Sinfonietta and Glagolitic Mass, both composed shortly before his death at the age of 74. If Janáček had faced mandatory retirement from composing at the age of 60, it seems unlikely that we would remember him.
One might say something similar about Vincent van Gogh, who was told at the age of 28, “You are no artist . . . You started too late.” Almost every one of his masterpieces was painted in the last two years of his brief life. Do we prematurely dismiss people on the grounds that they are too old? We recently marked the third inauguration in a row in which the incoming US president has broken the age record, so that might seem a curious concern.
But it’s a concern nonetheless. In her book The Future-Proof Career, my FT colleague Isabel Berwick reports a “breathtaking amount of ageism” in the workplace, with more than half of managers admitting they are not open to employing people over the age of 50. Presidents notwithstanding, we seem to think that only the young produce anything worthwhile.
Part of the problem was set out by Malcolm Gladwell in 2008, in his New Yorker essay “Late bloomers”. Gladwell argued that we assume great talents will announce themselves early. Think of Tiger Woods winning a 10-and-under golf tournament at the age of three. Or darts prodigy Luke Littler hitting bullseyes as a toddler. Think of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
But this is to confuse genius with precocity. What of the beloved poet Wendy Cope, first published at the age of 40? What of Julia Child, whose first, breakthrough cookery book came out the year she turned 50? For that matter, what of Janáček?
The economist David Galenson has pioneered the study of the creative lifecycle by finding proxies for creative achievement, such as the number of artworks reproduced in art textbooks, the auction price of particular pieces or the chart success of pop musicians. In his book Old Masters and Young Geniuses, Galenson argued that there were two different kinds of artists. Conceptual artists (think of Picasso or Bob Dylan) reimagined an artistic endeavour and broke through young. Experimental artists (Rembrandt, Fleetwood Mac) took their time to explore the territory and develop their skills. They peaked late.
This is an important corrective to the myth that the only kind of brilliance is youthful brilliance. But it is also of broader relevance. Most of us are no kind of genius at all, but we have more in common with Cope, Child and Janáček than with Littler or Dylan. In most careers we learn from experience, building skills and contacts that offset the advantages of youth.
Learning from experience doesn’t just mean deepening your skills in a particular field, it also means experimenting and figuring out what you like and where your talents lie. Van Gogh is a good example. He tried being an art dealer, a teacher, a missionary, a bookstore clerk and a pastor. When he started to draw and paint, he tried many styles before painting the artworks so beloved today.
In his book Range, David Epstein argues that we underrate this process of exploring the world to find a good match. He cites research by the economist Ofer Malamud, who compares the Scottish education system, in which students specialise late, with the English and Welsh system, in which they specialise early. The specialist students south of the border got off to a quicker start, but were then more likely to realise they’d chosen the wrong career path and have to start again. The unhurried exploration in Scotland might seem an indulgence, but it turns out to be a crucial way for young people to find their path in life.
Henry Oliver, author of Second Act, argues that there is really no need to explain why someone has bloomed late. There is nothing strange or unnatural about it. “Unexpressed promise”, he writes, “ . . . might be just as strong within a 40- or 50-year-old as in a 20-year-old”. Quite. Whether you are a Scottish pupil who has yet to specialise, or Van Gogh at 28, Cope at 40 or Janáček at 60, it is absurd to say “you started too late”. Everyone has the potential to do something worthwhile, regardless of how much or how little they may have achieved in the past.
Last summer, British athletics fans were captivated by the story of Georgia Bell, a once-promising junior runner who quit athletics for five years and was working full time in cyber security. After trying out her local Parkrun, she decided to take up running again. In the Paris Olympics, the 30-year-old took four seconds off her personal best and won bronze in the 1500m. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been this happy,” she told the BBC.
But Bell had one advantage. She could let her track times do the talking. Most people aren’t in that position. If we’re to flourish unexpectedly late, we will often need to persuade some gatekeeper that we are worth backing, even though we don’t look the part. We shouldn’t write people off, and we shouldn’t write ourselves off. But too often, we do.
Written for and first published in the Financial Times on 7 February 2025.
Loyal readers might enjoy the book that started it all, The Undercover Economist.
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