Maturity does not necessarily increase in a linear fashion at a growth rate that is proportional to age. I don’t know how to quantify maturity, but let us for a second assume that we have today, a maturity scale that would weigh a person’s level of mature-ness. Take a specific quantity of mature-ness and assuming that everyone will at some point obtain that level of maturity, you will see that not everyone will reach that level at the same time. I’ve met all sorts of people throughout my life, and in particular, people older than me who I thought should have been more mature, and people younger than me who I thought were much more mature than their peer age group. That’s all the proof I needed to know that age does not necessarily equal maturity.
However, I’ve never actually sat down to think about my exact precise definition of maturity. It’s kind of hard to describe. More education doesn’t necessarily make one more mature, increased skill-set experience too doesn’t necessarily equal maturity. More money won’t buy you more maturity, although contrary to popular belief, it might cause more in-maturity (more proof that you can’t throw money at just any problem to make it go away).
When my gut feel tells me that someone isn’t mature, how do I put that in words if I had to describe to someone why I thought another person wasn’t mature? I was reading an essay written by Paul Graham today when a passage stuck out to me:
One test adults use is whether you still have the kid flake reflex. When you’re a little kid and you’re asked to do something hard, you can cry and say “I can’t do it” and the adults will probably let you off. As a kid there’s a magic button you can press by saying “I’m just a kid” that will get you out of most difficult situations. Whereas adults, by definition, are not allowed to flake. They still do, of course, but when they do they’re ruthlessly pruned.
The other way to tell an adult is by how they react to a challenge. Someone who’s not yet an adult will tend to respond to a challenge from an adult in a way that acknowledges their dominance. If an adult says “that’s a stupid idea,” a kid will either crawl away with his tail between his legs, or rebel. But rebelling presumes inferiority as much as submission. The adult response to “that’s a stupid idea,” is simply to look the other person in the eye and say “Really? Why do you think so?”
Paul put had put it in words for me. These two metrics, are part of what my gut feel uses when gauging someone’s maturity. I don’t think these two alone are all of the metrics for maturity, but at least now I know of two. The first point is basically the finger-pointing and blame-pushing game, where nobody wants to take responsibility over spilled milk and tries to blame it on someone else. Grown-ups don’t do that. If you are to take 100% credit for success, then by definition, you are to also take 100% blame upon failure. Risk is proportional to reward.
The second point is basically how you react under pressure. Life is colorful, and not without challenges (if you literally have no challenge or face no difficulties in life; then life must be too boring for you). In the face of adversity, do you choke and breakdown? Do you constantly complain to others as a way of coping, or wish every night that through inaction, your problem will magically disappear? Now there are a few things in life where the solution _is_ inaction, but most problems I’ve seen only get worse or the worry is just unnecessarily prolonged through inaction.
It’s easy to run a company when times are good; it’s during the bad when one’s character truly shows. I vividly remember the time when Google founders Larry and Sergey were pressured by venture capitalists John Doerr and Michael Moritz to find a “grown-up” to run their company. After a lot of dilly-dallying on the picky founders part, Eric Schmidt was brought in as CEO to provide parental supervision. The founders had a long list of stringent requirements, including insisting that the CEO have a Ph.D in Computer Science. I’m sure that weeded out many would-be B-school CEO’s, but more importantly, I also do remember reading that Eric Schmidt was selected not because of his string of successes in bringing tech companies from zero to hero. In fact, he instead had a string of failures. Through his previous companies, he has fought many battles with Google’s then would-be competitors, and lost. That’s right, he is the hardened warrior that would know what to do, based on his previous experience, when faced off with Google’s enemies.
Before anyone can scream “culture of promoting failure”, I would like to point out that everybody fails, nobody’s perfect .. and if you haven’t failed, then you’re just too risk-averse and not trying hard enough in capitalizing on opportunities to maximize return. Also, I think that valuable lessons are learned in every mistake made. It’s only those who don’t learn from previous mistakes and repeat them, that are problematic 
I’d like to conclude this post with a quote, on responding to adversity:
“The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win.”
– Sir Roger Bannister
And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes my 1 year mark of blogging. Archives show I started blogging in March of 2006. Who knew it’d be this much fun. Blogging is tough for me due to time constrains, but when I first started, my goal was to write at least once a week, and I’ve stuck to that very closely. Looking back, I have learned not to underestimate the cumulative power of incremental work. Now, I can click on the monthly archives to step back in time and see what I was thinking at that time. Sweet! Let’s see if I’ve learned anything since last year..