After years of pressure from the pandemic, the challenges of managing remote, hybrid, and RTO workplaces, and inconsistent organizational support, managers are on the brink of a crash.
The coming manager collapse is kicking off a vicious cycle for organizations. As managers struggle, Gen Z sees the toll of the job and backs away, leaving fewer employees to rise into management roles. This puts more pressure on remaining managers.
At the same time, several years of manager layoffs have left fewer people taking on these responsibilities. In 2023 alone, middle managers made up over a third of all layoffs. The remaining managers are under more pressure, with growing stress leading to higher rates of burnout.
New research from my organization, meQuilibrium, shows just how deep the manager shortage could become. In addition to higher expectations for their performance, managers experience 59% higher emotional demands than their team members.They often face these elevated risks in isolation, being 12% less likely to receive support when they need it. The risks are also known precursors to burnout, disengagement, and quitting. UKG has found that almost half of middle managers would likely quit within the year due to stress.
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Organizations can’t attain their goals for growth without resilient managers who have the skills to support their teams, says meQuilibrium’s Alanna Fincke, SVP Content and Head of Learning, who first identified the likelihood of a manager crash earlier this year. Employees who don’t feel supported by their managers are more than four times as likely to quit their jobs, and twice as likely to report poor overall well-being. When this house of cards falls, it will impact the entire organization.
On the flip side, employees who feel strongly supported are more protected from psychosocial risks at work, such as mistrust, conflict, and excessive work pace. These employees are two times as likely to perceive that conflicts are resolved fairly and 2.6 times more likely to receive help when needed. Strongly supported employees are also much more likely to feel like the pace of work moves at a sustainable rate in which they can complete their tasks.
The manager role is indispensable for high workforce performance. But if today’s managers crash, who will be there to pick up the pieces? Expand to continue reading ↓
On the flip side, employees who feel strongly supported are more protected from psychosocial risks at work, such as mistrust, conflict, and excessive work pace. These employees are two times as likely to perceive that conflicts are resolved fairly and 2.6 times more likely to receive help when needed. Strongly supported employees are also much more likely to feel like the pace of work moves at a sustainable rate in which they can complete their tasks.
The manager role is indispensable for high workforce performance. But if today’s managers crash, who will be there to pick up the pieces?
Gen Z Says ‘No Thanks’
Next-generation employees show little interest in the challenges of management. Despite Gen Z’s greater openness to change, a recent Robert Walters survey revealed that 72% of Gen Z respondents would choose an individual route to progression over managing others. Sixty-nine percent say middle management is too high-stress and low-reward. (It’s not just Gen Z. CNBC reports 42% of U.S. workers say they’d turn down a promotion.)
There’s another complication, too. Even if Gen Z workers were looking for management jobs, our research shows many don’t yet have the skills to handle the emotional turbulence of change, which is part and parcel of managing teams. Compared to their older colleagues, Gen Z employees experience 34% higher change anxiety and 25% lower emotional stability in the face of change. This anxiety may be spurring them to self-select out of manager roles they could excel in.
To stop and reverse the draining of present and future manager talent—and prevent organizational growth from stagnating—leaders have to do two things. First, they have to change how their organizations support their managers. Second, leaders need to equip younger employees with the skills to handle change. The following actions are key:
Assess and address workplace psychosocial risks
Psychosocial risks are characteristics of work design and management that negatively influence performance. They include high workload, poor work-life balance, workplace conflict, lack of control, lack of meaning at work, and inadequate support. These risks are often measured as environmental impacts, affecting teams, business units, and entire workforces.
For example, a meQ customer recently sent a psychosocial risk survey to 34,000 employees and contractors. With a 50% response rate, the company gained significant data to identify risk factors across job functions, such as a lack of meaning for finance employees and a lack of control in the manufacturing unit.
Tight deadlines are the most common psychosocial risk, according to research by the University of Washington School of Public Health, with 43% of all U.S. workers exposed. Consider an engineering team that feels like the demands on them are too high. These strains typically lead to anxiety and depression, which both endanger attention and focus on the job and put the entire team at high risk for burnout and turnover.
Managers are nearly 40% more likely to cite excessive workloads compared to non-managers. Almost as many report insufficient time for tasks, and 34% are more likely to report needing to work at a very fast pace. These risks have both financial and human costs in increased absenteeism and more workers’ compensation claims. Poorly managed psychosocial risk also leads to elevated mental health risks and a range of negative physical health outcomes, including cardiovascular disease, musculoskeletal disorders, and diabetes.
A comprehensive psychosocial risk assessment, including mitigation strategies and support, is the clearest path to improving managers’ performance and experience—and changing how the rest of the workforce views the role.
Enact clear policies that support manager health and well-being
Explicit policy decisions can help managers protect and promote their own mental and physical well-being. This might look like mandatory “disconnect” periods, sabbaticals, or easing access to acute mental healthcare resources. Making sure managers have consistent, supportive check-ins with their own supervisors can help reduce isolation.
Leaders can also model and reinforce workplace norms that prioritize health. For example, a leader for an R&D unit might maintain consistent boundaries on work hours to sustain the high cognitive demand of the job. He or she might also begin meetings with simple well-being check-ins, modeling the normalcy of mental health discussions in day-to-day work. With these actions, companies set a positive example for the entire organization and invest in the sustainability of their management pipeline.
Deploy evidence-based techniques to build resilience
Comprehensive, evidence-based resilience programs equip managers with practical tools to improve team interactions, communication, and collaboration. Digital cognitive behavioral therapy tools can also help managers recognize and replace unproductive thought patterns with more effective alternatives.
As managers develop these skills and model them for their teams, they become better equipped to maintain clear communication channels, inspire collaborative problem-solving, and guide teams through periods of change or uncertainty. Ultimately, investing in leader resilience translates to improved team performance, increased productivity, and a more positive work environment that drives organizational success.
Focus on Gen Z
The previous steps are meant to improve the experience and perception of the manager role. But organizations also need to train their young employees in the essential skills they lack. In our research, Gen Z employees score significantly lower on core capabilities such as emotion control, stress management, engagement, and positivity.
At the same time, we have found the employees most skilled in handling change and challenge—the realities that managers deal with daily—have the highest levels of those very skills: emotion control, stress management, engagement, and positivity. These are the specific, actionable areas to focus Gen Z training efforts on in order to improve their ability to handle management demands.
Organizations that take a systematic approach to supporting managers and Gen Z workers can end the vicious cycle. The key lies not in grand transformations, but in consistent, practical steps to embed the fundamental capabilities of resilience and support across the organization. The result will be a more stable, sustainable workforce, capable of handling change and ready to lead through it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jan Bruce is a disruptor, entrepreneur, and force for growth. Recognizing the science of resilience as the new essential for human and organizational capability, Jan co-founded meQuilibrium (meQ), a global digital platform to deliver workforce resilience. More
Living in Los Angeles and paying $1,000 a month for rent seems like a fantasy for many cash-strapped tenants, or a rental figure from decades ago. But a new proposal from architecture and design firm Gensler and the Pew Charitable Trusts underscores the idea that more affordable urban living can be found in old, vacant office buildings.
The analysis, which was initiated and funded by Pew and nonprofit Arnold Ventures, looks at the potential of a new kind of building conversion in Houston and Los Angeles, two U.S cities where this type of conversion would currently be legal.
The aim is to build a better version of single-room occupancy units, or SROs, that have private rooms, shared bathrooms, and partial kitchens. The low-cost, no-frills housing was prevalent during most of the 20th century as a kind of housing-of-last-resort. Once immensely common in cities, their reputation for seediness, deserved or not, led to zoning and policy shifts that made them functionally extinct. An estimated one million such units were closed in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Numerous studies have blamed their demise on the modern rise in homelessness. In recent years, as homelessness and affordability have become crises, there’s been a push to bring this concept back: since 2023, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii have all passed laws to re-legalize them.
Los Angeles floor plan. [Image: Gensler/The Pew Charitable Trusts]
“The U.S. is only about 50 years removed from having very little homelessness,” said Alex Horowitz, project director of the housing policy initiatives at Pew Charitable Trust and coauthor of the report. “As recently as the mid-’70s, there was very little homelessness nationally, and most evidence points to SROs as the primary driver.”
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Gensler’s vision would ring the outer layer of an office floor with small, studio-style rooms with microwaves and fridges, roughly the size of a modest hotel room. The plans call for 190-square-foot units in L.A., and up to 227-square-foot units in Houston, about half the size of a typical studio apartment. The center of each floor would contain shared living rooms, kitchen, and bathrooms. These layouts would be designed with private keycard entry by floor, and what designers call a more concerted focus on safety, privacy, and security.
Los Angeles unit sample [Image: Gensler/The Pew Charitable Trusts]
It offers a compelling blueprint for expanding the housing stock in a nation where office vacancy is above 20% in most cities—29% in LA and 32% in Houston—and homelessness nationwide just reached a record 770,000 people.Such conversions make sense for dozens of buildings, 88 in downtown Houston and 42 in L.A.’s central business district, according to the report. These upgrades can also be done with relatively little subsidized public funding, and could create low-cost units renting for roughly half the median rent in both cities: $700 in Houston and $1,000 in Los Angeles. The microunits could be built for $240,000 each in L.A., less than half what it costs to build a typical studio apartment.
There’s currently a post-pandemic boom in office-to-residential conversations nationwide; new RentCafe research found 70,700 residential units will be created in 2025 alone by transforming offices left partially vacant and undervalued by remote work.Gensler has helped spearhead this push by developing an algorithm that can quickly figure out which offices made good conversion candidates.
Houston floor plan [Image: Gensler/The Pew Charitable Trusts]
That’s a huge jump in activity, since developers completed just 23,100 in 2022. But despite the boom, these conversions still represent a fraction of the units needed to bridge the housing shortage, and such conversions still remain expensive, complicated, and financially infeasible for many offices.
Gensler’s new research found that this SRO-style conversion opens up new opportunities. Traditional office-to-residential conversions, which create individual units with their own kitchens and bathrooms, require extensive plumbing and infrastructure work.This new proposal concentrates new plumbing and piping in the middle of each floor.In addition, standard conversions mean long, stretched out apartments with few windows and natural light. The SRO option contains big windows in each of the small studios (although no natural light in the shared spaces).
Research conducted by Gensler and Pew last fall found this type of layout cuts conversion construction costs by up to 35%. Locating the right building, which the authors did using CoStar data, was a challenge, since it needed the right-size floor area and infrastructure, but just a single conversion could add 800-plus units; buildings of 20-plus floors can fit up to 60 units on each level.
“Depending on the estimates you look at, just a few percentage points of the office stock could work for traditional office-to-residential conversions,” said Gensler principal and economist Wes LeBlanc. “But there’s a much larger percentage of highly vacant office stock that works in this case, and makes those unlivable floor plates in play in a way they weren’t before.”
Horowitz sees this type of housing filling a key gap in the market, giving single, working class renters, such as students, seniors, and immigrants, an option that won’t leave them cost-burdened. Approximately 40% of U.S. renter households consist of a single person, and these units could be perfect for people making $40,000 to $50,000 a year.
This housing strategy also offers ancillary benefits for cities. In downtown Los Angeles, for example, an area boasting 280,000 jobs, just 1% to 2% of residents who live downtown also work there. Providing more housing opportunities in that neighborhood could help lessen long commutes.
No developer has yet signed on to build such a project. Horowitz said he’s been getting positive responses from real estate groups, and Gensler and Pew presented these proposals to city officials in L.A. and Houston on January 31. They believe they can build momentum for conversions, and cheaper housing, soon.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrick Sisson is a freelancer at Fast Company who focuses on urbanism, technology, real estate development, and the forces that shape our cities, covering everything from libraries as sustainability hubs to the future of office space. . His work has appeared in Bloomberg CityLab, the New York Times, the MIT Technology Review, Dwell, and the Baffler More
This ‘why do you care about a tiny fraction of the population?’ line is, and always was, utterly ridiculous.
Gender ideology has undermined freedom of speech, scientific truth, gay rights, and women’s and girls’ safety, privacy and dignity. It’s also caused irreparable physical damage to vulnerable kids.
Nobody voted for it, the vast majority of people disagree with it, yet it has been imposed, top down, by politicians, healthcare bodies, academia, sections of the media, celebrities and even the police. Its activists have threatened and enacted violence on those who’ve dared oppose it. People have been defamed and discriminated against for questioning it. Jobs have been lost and lives have been ruined, all for the crime of knowing that sex is real and matters.
When the smoke clears, it will be only too evident that this was never about a so-called vulnerable minority, notwithstanding the fact that some very vulnerable people have been harmed. The power dynamics underpinning our society have been reinforced, not dismantled. The loudest voices throughout this entire fiasco have been people insulated from consequences by their wealth and/or status. They aren’t likely to find themselves locked in a prison cell with a 6’4″ rapist who’s decided his name’s now Dolores. They don’t need state-funded rape crisis centres, nor do they ever frequent high street changing rooms.
They simper from talk show sofas about those nasty far-right bigots who don’t want penises swinging around the girls’ showers, secure in the knowledge that their private pool remains the safe place it always was.
Those who’ve benefited most from gender identity ideology are men, both trans-identified and not. Some have been rewarded for having a cross-dressing kink by access to all spaces previously reserved for women. Others have parlayed their delicious new victim status into an excuse to threaten, assault and harass women. Non-trans-identified leftybros have found a magnificent platform from which to display their own impeccably progressive credentials, by jeering and sneering at the needs of women and girls, all while patting themselves on the back for giving away rights that aren’t theirs.
The actual victims in this mess have been women and children, especially the most vulnerable, gay people who’ve resisted the movement and paid a horrible price, and regular people working in environments where one misplaced pronoun could see you vilified or constructively dismissed.
Do not tell me this is about a tiny minority. This movement has impacted society in disastrous ways, and if you had any sense, you’d be quietly deleting every trace of activist mantras, ad hominem attacks, false equivalence and circular arguments from your X feeds, because the day is fast approaching when you’ll want to pretend you always saw through the craziness and never believed it for a second.
The new year isn’t getting off to a great start when it comes to employment in the tech industry. Tech giant Salesforce is reportedly getting ready to cut 1,000 roles at the company. The expected job cuts are just the latest in a line of layoffs already initiated by well-known companies in the technology sector, including Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft. Here’s what you need to know.
Salesforce to reportedly lay off over 1,000 employees
Today, Bloomberg reported that Salesforce, the world’s top customer-relationship-management software company, will be cutting more than 1,000 positions at the company. The news came from an unnamed source and was not an official announcement from Salesforce.
Nothing is known about which departments will be hit hardest by the cuts. However, a Bloomberg source said that any displaced workers will be allowed to apply for other positions at the company. We’ve reached out to Salesforce for comment.
It’s also worth noting that these cuts aren’t a net job reduction at Salesforce, as the company is also currently actively hiring salespeople to promote its AI offerings to customers.
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Salesforce reported having 73,000 employees as of January 2024, which means that a reduction of 1,000 personnel equates to fewer than 1% of its workforce.
Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and more cut jobs
Despite being fewer than seven weeks into the new year, many other major tech companies have already announced plans to reduce their workforce in 2025.
In mid-January, Facebook parent Meta Platforms announced it would cut about 5% of its 72,000-person workforce. A 5% reduction in staff equates to about 3,600 people, noted Bloomberg. Announcing the cuts in an internal memo, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster.”
Last month, Microsoft also laid off workers it deemed low performers,Business Insider reported. It’s unknown how many employees at the Redmond, Washington, company would lose their roles. We’ve reached out to Microsoft for comment.
Amazon also announced in January that it would eliminate staff, Bloomberg reported, with dozens in its communications department being targeted.
And it’s not just the Big Tech giants.
Smaller tech companies have also announced layoffs since the new year began, smaller tech companies have announced layoffs, including payments platform Stripe, which is eliminating 300 positions; and Placer.ai, the Israeli location-analytics firm, which is laying off 150 workers.
A repeat of 2022 to 2024?
The news, coming so early in 2025, has understandably given rise to anxieties for those in the industry who survived the massive industry-wide layoffs between 2022 and 2024, when hundreds of thousands of tech workers lost their jobs. Will 2025 be a repeat of those years?
At this point, that’s impossible to answer. However, the 2022-2024 period of mass tech industry layoffs was considered more of a “correction,” spurred by over-hiring during the pandemic years when many tech companies saw a rapid uptick in users and customers.
In 2025, the greatest threat to job layoffs is the rising specter of AI and its ability to replace human workers. It’s too early to know whether AI will pose a serious risk to tech industry jobs this year.
Layoffs-tracking site Layoffs.fyi says that so far in 2025, 31 tech companies have laid off just over 7,000 employees. That compares to the 152,000 employees laid off across various companies in 2024 and the 264,000 and 165,000 laid off in 2023 and 2022, respectively.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Grothaus is a novelist and author. His latest novel, BEAUTIFUL SHINING PEOPLE, has been translated into multiple languages More
Three-year limit for compensation claims to be axed – enabling victims to come forward when ready
Burden of proof to shift from survivors to defendants – protecting victims from reliving trauma
Measures deliver recommendations of Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse
The Government is delivering on recommendations from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) to make it easier for victims to gain an apology and to pursue claims in the civil court.
The three-year time limit for victims to bring personal injury claims will be removed.So will the burden of proof that currently rests on victims’ shoulders, who must prove it is possible to hold a fair trial for one to go ahead.Now, that burden is lifted off victims and placed on defendants, who must show a fair trial cannot proceed if they intend to block one. This will enable cases to be heard more easily, and protect victims from reliving their trauma.
The Law of the Apologies will also be amended to encourage employers to apologise to people wronged by their employees, where currently they fear doing so because of institutional liability, meaning that victims are likelier to receive apologies from schools, care facilities or hospitals for abuse carried out by an individual at these institutions.
The Government has listened to victims, survivors and experts through two consultations – and they have said they want action.
Lord Chancellor Shabana Mahmood said:
Child sexual abuse causes lifelong trauma and these important changes, recommended by Professor Jay, are long overdue.
These measures help survivors pursue their path to justice. They build on the Government’s mission of halving violence against women and girls and support our Plan for Change.
Currently civil child sexual abuse claims must be brought within three years of turning 18, unless the victim can prove a fair trial can proceed despite the time lapse. But as the IICSA heard, a “significant number” of claims are being rejected because it can take “decades for survivors to feel able to discuss their sexual abuse”.
As a direct result of today’s reforms, all cases brought will proceed unless the defendant proves that a fair hearing cannot take place, for example due to lack of evidence.
IICSA also heard that in many child sexual abuse cases, an apology by an institution was desired but never delivered, blocking victims’ path to closure.
Often organisations are reluctant to apologise because of concerns it may be interpreted by individuals such as insurers, as an admission of fault. The Government will clarify, as per the IICSA recommendation, that apologies could and should be offered by employers for the actions of current or former employees.
Justice Minister Sarah Sackman KC said:
The courts must work for the public they serve – and we recognise that victims and survivors need time to process their trauma.
By changing the law, it will now be possible for victims to come forward, and seek justice, when they feel ready to do so.
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse heard the powerful testimonies of more than 7,000 victims and made 20 final recommendations.
The measures announced today build on action already taken across government to respond to horrific child sexual abuse crimes, including providing £10 million to drive change at a local level to protect children across the country from grooming gangs, and a suite of legislative measures to tackle online child sexual abuse, including two world leading measures on AI-generated child sexual abuse material. These measures form part of our commitment – underscored by our Plan for Change – to halve violence against women and girls this decade.
Legislation will also be brought forward to make grooming an aggravating factor in the sentencing of child sexual offences, and introduce a new Mandatory Reporting duty, in the Crime and Policing Bill to be put before Parliament this Spring.A new offence will also be created so anyone covering up child sexual abuse will face criminal sanctions.
Changes to the Law of Apologies and Limitation Law, follow two Government consultations in 2024.
Gabrielle Shaw, Chief Executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC), said:
This is a watershed moment for survivors of child sexual abuse. These reforms recognise the long-term impact of trauma and ensure survivors are not excluded from seeking redress simply because of the time taken to come forward.
NAPAC also welcomes greater clarity on apologies. A sincere apology, when freely given and supported by meaningful action, is invaluable – especially as part of wider efforts to ensure accountability and prevent future harm.
These important changes reflect the growing understanding of what survivors need to access justice and healing, and we welcome the government’s commitment to making them a reality.
Civil claims are made where someone feels that they have suffered a harm or a wrong which another person or organisation is accountable for. It is made by issuing a claim form at the relevant court (such as the County Court), and serving it on the defendant.
Further information:
The apologies legislation would not apply to all types of civil litigation or regulatory disputes, including public inquiries or defamation cases.
The apologies legislation will not be retrospective. The changes for both reforms require primary legislation and will be implemented in due course.
As recommended by the IICSA, removal of the three-year limitation period will apply to all civil child sexual abuse claims brought by victims and survivors (though not to claims brought on behalf of victims and survivors` estates) except where claims have been dismissed by a court or settled by agreement.
Feb 5, 2025 #CNN#News CNN’s Fareed Zakaria discusses President Donald Trump’s comments that the United States “will take over” Gaza — possibly with the help of American troops — while the Palestinians who live there should leave, a stunning proposal that would dramatically reorient the Middle East and subject a population of more than a million to further displacement. #CNN#News
22,444 views • Feb 4, 2025 • #Putin #EU #In60Seconds
What does Putin mean when he says Europe “will stand at the feet of the master”? What’s next for Panama after deciding to exit China’s Belt and Road Initiative? How would a potential Turkey defense pact with Syria reshape power dynamics in the Middle East?
Studies show the higher your IQ, the higher risks for mental illness, anxiety, and severe depression. Because you can objectively see yourself. Like the saying goes, “you require an immense amount of knowledge just to be able to see your own depth of ignorance.” This is probably going to be a long and involved answer, so please stick with me.
Your ego is a mask, a story that you tell yourself. But those with high IQ are more easily able to see through the mask, and without some sort of spirituality, there’s nothing underneath. When you see your ego is false, it’s like a mirror looking into a mirror. But the up side is that you can see how your subconscious is programmed and take control of the 95% subconscious actions that we all have.
But because you see right through your ego…you also see straight through everyone else’s!If you’re not careful to agree with the subconscious lies everyone tells themselves, you WILL DEEPLY offend everyone. No one wants to hear that their problems today are the result of their actions and words yesterday, even if it’s as clear as day. They just want to be told they’re unlucky and have no control. You must realize what others want to believe is their life, and it’s not up to you to tell them the truth if they don’t want to see it.
If your IQ is too high for those surrounding you, you WILL be seen as insane, and highly ignorant.Because others don’t understand you, they assume you must be insane. They assume since you tell them stuff against their beliefs that you’re the one who’s ignorant. And they WILL HATE THE HELL OUT OF YOU!Intelligence must be hidden as much as possible for the sanity of the person who holds it. If you’re not careful, you’ll start to believe that you may just be insane and that will lead to many self destructive behaviors and thoughts. You must act dumb in many situations. (Anyone intelligent will see that I am putting a lot of emphasis on this, and usually our actions are the result of strong emotions, therefore I must have been extremely hurt recently or traumatized in the past by this lesson)
You rarely conform to social norms because they’re just stupid and a waste of time. This gets back into the ego I talked about. Almost 95% of our actions every single day are subconscious and random, depend on how society programmed our subconscious to respond to stimuli, and our ego justifies them after we do them in an effort to maintain consistent story. “I must have done that because I felt..” because few understand this, they think their programmed responses are free will, that they’re making the choice, even though science shows they react before they even have a mental thought.The thought and justification come after, sometimes by several seconds.The justification depends on what they’ve been programmed to believe to conform with their personal narrative. Society is brainwashed into thinking they need all these things to be happy, must be and act certain ways, even if they’re self-destructive. So the higher the IQ, the less you’re usually accepted by society.
The benefits are an insane ability to learn and master anything and pattern recognition. Pattern recognition is our superpower, and it leads us to see that much of society are not conscious. They don’t see that their lives are a reflection of their daily habits. Like going to the gym. They think becoming wealthy is luck, and has nothing to do with their daily learning and work. That’s like thinking someone going to the gym for two years just happened to luck out when they lost 50lbs on the way….They cannot see the correlation between using their turn signals and risks of accidents, or that how they react to others actually affects their lives.They live largely asleep.But when you see those patterns, that the entire universe revolves around magnificent and brilliant patterns, even human psychology, you generally have an extremely easy time manipulating those patterns to gain what you want or to help others. Wealth is easy.
Most people seem to think that possessing exceptional cognitive talent would be “cool”, “a great laugh” etc. Yet many of those same people get frustrated or irritated when presented with such a person, wondering why they are that way, and why there are circumstances under which he or she doesn’t behave “normally”. In other words, it would be “cool” to have those qualities of mind as long as they can ace their exams or whatever. But what seems to be universally missed is that having a mind like that is not something that can be turned on and off at will.
There are other ramifications, which are bound sooner or later to impact on various areas of that person’s life.
I’m going to take you through an imaginary journey, just to provide a little personal perspective. Or, if you like, this is WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE ME!
Imagine you are an average person, who borrows a gadget for a couple of weeks that will temporarily boost your IQ to stratospheric levels.
Suddenly, you find that nearly all the people you meet aren’t interested in the things that you’re now interested in, because they don’t understand them. On the other hand, you now feel bored and frustrated with the seemingly superficial stuff that your friends are into. Popular culture now looks rather odd to you. You may find you lose interest in the “expected” bodily pleasures like alcohol and sex. I bet you’re already running through in your mind what your friends are likely to think of that.
Thrill-seeking (in the usual sense of high-speed rides etc.) may seem like an extreme stimuli overkill. However, thrill-seeking in the sense of spending an invigorating afternoon studying something you were always curious about, or perhaps creating in the artistic sense, puts you on a personal high that lasts for hours, if not days.
You may find you have become sensitive to things that you never gave a second thought about before. Certain clothes are irritating – the labels are annoying, the collar is too tight, or the fabric itches against your skin, the garment whose sleeve got accidentally wet must be changed immediately, or it will simply continue to annoy until it dries.
You may find you are extraordinarily sensitive to the temperature and texture of foods, not just their tastes. Additives may be a problem. You watch your friends scoffing junk food and wonder what the appeal is of eating stuff that just makes you feel unsettled or ill.
Certain noises are now unbearable (loud amplified music for instance).
Well, let’s consider the reason for these sensitivities. You didn’t really think for a moment that a mind sensitive enough to spot logic patterns etc. that 99.9????% of the population can’t perceive wasn’t going to be that sensitive to other things, did you?
You may find your emotions become so sensitive you can no longer watch much of what’s on TV, and you are deeply affected by what people say.
Then there’s the burning intellectual insatiety – how do you cope with sleepless nights because your mind is driven to ponder and solve things that other people don’t even care about?
How would you cope with being a person stuck in a routine job, when you feel driven to constantly learn and grow? And then of course there’s the matter of careers and qualifications – the thought of studying the same university textbook for the entire semester is abhorrent to you (you could probably polish off such a publication in a matter of days), and your interests move on too fast for you to complete any official course of study, never mind stick it out long enough to forge a career. (Ever wonder why the very brightest people aren’t rich?)
In the absence of the company of university professors or other people who might understand your deepest ponderings, your only recourse for real discussions is to join one or more of the various high IQ societies. Yes, some people think it’s sad, but where else are you likely to go? The education system isn’t geared up for you, as it works towards harmonization and systematization, rather than being interested in your tailor-made education.The result tends to be a self-educated, but officially unqualified, individual. Most career paths aren’t geared up for you, being tied as they are to expectations of certain durations of “experience” before one is usually offered promotion. The result tends to be the person who is regarded as a butterfly.
So your interests move on as your extraordinary mind starts compelling you to reach for the next level of self-growth, and you drop out of that degree or that career that for you personally has served its purpose. Again.
And perhaps I should mention the social pressure, if word should get around that you are not the average bunny. Any mistake you make suddenly brings your entire BEING into question.
People develop the idea that you’re “stuck up” or “up yourself” even if you’re not. The fact that you are, for example, teaching yourself another language doesn’t bring commendations from others for being willing to improve, it becomes yet more “proof” that you’re just out to polish your medals.
Then there are the people who just want to bring you down, as described so eloquently by a comment on another site: “Yes, he’s very clever, but perhaps TOO clever for his own good, because HE’S ALSO SILLY! At least we the normal (barely sentient, low to mid IQ people) aren’t silly! We’re shrewd and streetwise, and those “intelligent” folks could never acquire our simple-yet-robust both-feet-on-the-ground-thinking (as-seen-on-Jerry-Springer) style.” Brilliant!
Despite all this, I wouldn’t trade my place out here on the far right-hand tail of the distribution curve. Not because I have had to learn to deal with the way I am, but because I have learned to deal with the way other people are about it, and all the overt and covert ways in which that is manifested.
Your writing represents who you are personally and professionally, so it’s worth honing your skills. Here are five writing tips to help make writing easier.
