Great questions!

I’m upgrading the site today, but your comment came at the right time anyway! I’m about to start a new conversation dedicated to “adult underachievers”.

The work I’ve been doing for the last half year involved some new understandings about how these things work, and I’ll be putting more meat on this over the next few weeks. But to answer a couple of questions:

Jaques didn’t really put a limit on the number of modes that there were. It has to do with the growth trajectory that your mental life is on. And this has nothing to do with exterior achievements, as important as those are. That is, people who are on these high growth curves have minds that work differently than “normal people”. They “Think Different”. It’s not that they think faster or develop sooner but that they have a very different mental process.

(For an interesting look at that, the author Stephanie Tolan has an interesting essays describing the thinking on this. And not from Elliott Jaques’s perspective. See, for example,
http://www.stephanietolan.com/gifted_ex-child.htm )

Join me in this conversation. I think that we’ll find some interesting answers.

1. I knew what you meant by Real Boss.
2. I had a clue about the Modes.

But thanks.

I, too, like my last name.