What the research found was that neither exploration nor exploitation alone was critical to a hot streak: it was the transition from explore to exploit that mattered. Exploring before exploiting means you can discover the most productive ideas and expand your creative possibilities. What matters is the switch.Too much exploration can be risky: you end up as a dabbler, a dilettante. Too much exploitation can be boring: you don’t discover enough new information to do interesting, original work. To have a hot streak, a burst of your best work, we need to switch from explore to exploit.

What Matters Is The Switch

Most late bloomers go through these two stages. First, they take a long and winding road, an essentially unplanned career path. Then, they get the opportunity for success through some combination of the right people, the right place and the right time. Their network, the culture they move to, a personal transformation – or some combination of these – take the disparate experiences of the first stage and turn them into the focused output of the second stage. They make the switch from explore to exploit and enter a hot streak. They just happen to do it later than their peers.

From Disparate Experiences To Focused Output

Moments of crisis have to be taken advantage of, not ignored or suffered through, whether that’s a personal tragedy, a moment of inspiration, or a gradual attrition of your will, causing dissatisfaction that culminates in desperation to change. Sometimes there are good reasons to have a midlife crisis, not to accept a slump but to use it as a pivot point.

Right Time (The Dive)

Persistence: Though they often don’t work towards a specific goal, neither do late bloomers “lavish their life away on useless trifles”, in Samuel Johnson’s phrase. They persist in following their interests and ambitions; they are unable to let it go, but, sometimes by necessity, sometimes by choice, they have to be flexible about how and when this persistence accrues into a tangible achievement or accomplishment.

3 Traits: Persistence, Earnestness, Quiet Ambition

Earnestness:Late bloomers are serious, perhaps intense, obsessive, occasionally eccentric, volatile, or weird. Not infrequently, the people around them don’t quite understand who they are capable of being. Their earnestness can make them seem strange, off-putting, and makes it difficult to see how and where their talent could flourish: their capability often hides in plain sight.

This is similar to the explore/exploit dynamic, an idea from computer science, which says that to make the best decisions we should find the correct balance between gathering information (exploring our options) and making the most of what we know (exploiting that information). To make the best decisions, we need to balance exploration and exploitation.

The Explore/Exploit Dynamic (or Tradeoff)

Importantly, the study’s findings were robust whether the hot streak came early in a career or late. We can make the switch later in our career and still see the same effect.This broad pattern, of shifting from exploring to exploiting, can be observed in the lives of late bloomers.

The Switch And The Late Bloomers

Personal transformation happens through cultural immersion, sampling the world and changing our surroundings. In new circumstances, gradually sampling our way into a new mode of thinking, living or working, we can change our opportunities, perhaps even change ourselves.

Right Place (The Waters)

This second stage has three conditions, which are not all present in all cases, but which are reasonably consistent: right people, right place, right time. To understand how late bloomers leave the long and winding road and arrive at the place where they achieve so much, how they switch from explore to exploit, we need to look at their networks, the culture they live and work in, and the transformational moments in their lives, or their crisis points.

3 Conditions: Right People, Right Place, Right Time (or Crisis)

Quiet Ambition: Late Bloomers’ ambitions are usually secret, or unknown to themselves for a long time. They pursue their interests quietly. Their ability and confidence grow with experience. It might be quite late in the day when they realize that their capabilities actually make them fit for some exceptional enterprise.

A recent study of the careers of scientists, film directors and artists, conducted by academics at Northwestern University, looked at hot streaks in people’s careers – intense periods of high achievement, lasting a decade or more. What conditions have to be present for a hot streak to occur? The study found that before the hot streak begins there is an exploration phase, when new ideas are gathered, which is followed by a period of exploitation, when those new ideas are turned into original and impactful work.

Exploration - Exploitation - Hot Streak

Do your work and I shall know you. Do your work and you shall reinforce yourself.

Second, late bloomers find their niche or opportunity – some turn in their luck, some discovery, some change in their circumstances comes along and makes them a channel for their talents. They get direction, focus, challenge, resources, support, opportunity. This is when they exploit the capabilities and preparation from the first stage. We shall see, again and again, the importance of preparing for your luck – chance really does favor the prepared mind.

And Then A Channel Comes Along

Late bloomers rarely take conventional career paths to success; if they did, perhaps they would not be late. Their progress is punctuated and disrupted, not smooth and steady. In this stage, their careers are often either dormant or patchwork, made of seemingly disparate parts. This might look listless, directionless or inefficient: rather than working towards a specific goal, late bloomers prepare for the unknown, the unexpected, the unstated.

Late Bloomers Prepare For The Unknown & The Unexpected

What we will see is that weak ties – the phrase sociologists use to describe people we are only slightly acquainted with – are the people who can change our prospects, but only if they are influential. Good networking is not about knowing all the best people, but the few who can be credible and persuasive to the people we need to reach.

Right People (The Bridges)

So, despite the fact that late bloomers are often overlooked, they are often quietly, persistently developing the qualities, on the long and winding road that will eventually lead them to success, when the right opportunity comes along. Importantly, the more active they are in this process, the more likely they are to find that opportunity and turn it to their advantage.

“Do Your York And I Shall Know You”

Excerpted from “Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success And Reinventing Your Life”, by Henry Oliver.

Late bloomers tend to follow unconventional paths, quietly developing key qualities and skills while being overlooked.