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How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

737 points by apress 8y ago

tw1010 8y ago
Does sabotaging my own success mean I'm smart?
alexcp_ 8y ago
Title should be: How people who think they are smart sabotage their success.
- ginsu 8y ago
  Because no true Scotsman would simultaneously claim to be smart while acting as their own saboteur. The two concepts are, of course, mutually exclusive, incontrovertibly.
- will_brown 8y ago
  I’d title it...How to Justify and Frame Your Success as Meritocracy In Light of People Much Smarter than you Not Succeeding Because They Lack Your Connections
  - syn0byte 8y ago
    or "Why it's your own fault you aren't successful despite your abilities and skills."
    - will_brown 8y ago
      That’s just it’s...IMO it’s saying if you are smart and not successful you have no ability or skills. Which we all know isn’t true. The lack of social mobility in the US has nothing to do with lack of ability or skills. Power and wealth are to concentrated and “success” is more dependent on access to those than being smart, having abilities or skills.
- faceplanted 8y ago
  Are you suggesting that if they were somehow truly smart they would know how not to sabotage their own success? Because that's some serious fallacious thinking right there.
  - tom_ 8y ago
    Sounds like it, and I agree. How else should you judge this? And what should you call it when people are less successful than they could be, and can't see that the cause is their counterproductive habits and apparent lack of self-awareness? - because 'smart' isn't the first word that springs to my mind.
    - Epenthesis 8y ago
      This is a bit of a silly semantic game. There's "smart" in the sense of "general mental ability" (ie, skill in cognitive tasks), which is usually what the word is used colloquially to mean, and then there's "smart" in the sense of "making the optimal choices for long term happiness and success", which, being correlated with the first definition is often conflated. Now, sometimes these definitions come apart, ie, people who are "smart" in the first sense fail to be "smart" in the second sense. That doesn't mean the first definition is inherently meaningless. In fact, g factor ("IQ"), the psychometric concept that maps most closely to that first definition is extremely well studied, and well established as coherent and measurable. Why these two attributes come apart in some people is an interesting question, because they're usually so correlated, and that's what the article is in a sense about.
      - jillav 8y ago
        That's actually a very sensible way to put it.
- jillav 8y ago
  I kinda agree. I've seen too many people using their self-diagnosed over-intelligence to excuse some of their surprisingly non-smart behavior. Behavior that leads to failure in their enterprises. This kind of article always make me uncomfortable because I feel smartness/cleverness/intelligence does not seem to be objective enough a quality to lead to such analysis. And some people may identify with such patterns and declare themselves as "too smart" and not try harder, believing the problem is from the other side of the table.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ElatedOwl 8y ago
  If you're not happy with where you're at in your career, don't worry, it's totally because you're too smart.
bootsz 8y ago
> 4. Smart people get bored easily. Being smart is not exactly the same as being curious, but if you have both these qualities you might find yourself becoming easily bored with executing the same behaviors over and over. Some types of success stem from creativity, but other types come from becoming an expert in a niche and performing a set of behaviors repeatedly. If you’re smart, curious, and have a love of learning, you might find you quickly lose interest in anything once you’ve figured it out. The execution side of performance might bore you, and you’d rather constantly be learning new things. This can end up being less lucrative than finding a niche and repeating the same formula, but that might seem too boring or unchallenging to you. I've been wrestling with this for most of my career so far. I think it's all about striking the right balance. If you're not constantly learning you will stagnate. At the same time, jumping continuously from learning one new thing to another (esp. if the things are not very inter-related) can spread yourself too thin: you need to "go deep" on some things to become an effective/valuable contributor. I sometimes feel resentful of the amount of time I've spent as a software engineer dealing with what I often feel is boring or pure B.S. (e.g. almost everything other than designing/building some novel complex system from scratch). But in reality looking back I see that a lot of that sh*t-shoveling has actually made me much better and wiser at my profession, despite how mind-numbing and boring it often was. So I'm trying to keep that perspective to get me through those really dull days when I want to just rage-quit and move to a rural commune :)
- dfsegoat 8y ago
  Ditto to all you just said: Figuring out how to strike the balance between "filling myself up" learning new things - while becoming an expert at repetitive drone work (cough cough documentation) was the hardest thing I've done. Still working on it. Previously I had no balance - always was at one extreme or the other.
- abledon 8y ago
  I’m seeing how a few sprinkles of VBA can make an .org so much more efficient than trying to bend management to green light an entire new web app system written in a ‘real’ programming Lang
throwaway9980 8y ago
Reading that I can’t help but think most people in the modern knowledge work classes probably identify with a lot of it. Doesn’t everyone have these feelings? This all seems very normal to me, but I’m definitely the target audience. High IQ that was praised from a young age, hated school but did well with no effort, hated team work all my life, value deep thinking as the solution to almost any problem, successful in my career by objective measure, and I feel like a failure. I’d argue that everyone sabotages their sense of success by having poorly calibrated expectations. It isn’t easy to honestly assess and accept your own capacity.
- gervase 8y ago
  I think the article was written in such a way as to trigger the Barnum effect [0], since most people think of themselves as "smart". [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect
  - Stryder 8y ago
    Bravo.
- mrleinad 8y ago
  By the looks of your self description, seems you're my long lost (evil?) twin. I didn't hate school though. I hated some people in it.
- lrc 8y ago
  /me feels the unsettling presence of a doppelgänger
- thirdsun 8y ago
  I agree. Reading those articles sometimes resembles reading a horoscope given that probably everyone can relate to these issues to some degree. Likely many of us think of themselves as smart, yet not reaching their true potential. With that in mind, I wonder if that isn't a misleading assessment, a soothing, relieving conclusion that is all that uncommon at all. After all we can't all be above the median smartness line. What if you or me are actually unknowingly performing below that threshold while mistaking ourselves for a precious exception to most other people?
strikelaserclaw 8y ago
honest question, has anyone ever improved their lives by reading articles of this flavor ? (e.g 10 things successfully ceo's do, 10 ways to increase your chances of building a successful company)
- newsbinator 8y ago
  Not necessarily directly. But perhaps indirectly, like how reading a useful novel or non-fiction book can help channel your thinking later. In other words, reading the piece might not alter your behavior today and you might forget 98% of it if quizzed later, but next time you're presented with a decision to which it applies, you find yourself behaving somewhat more wisely than you would have if you hadn't consumed these articles. Maybe. Or maybe these articles are no more useful than reading the backs of shampoo bottles. Tough to measure.
- jimmy1 8y ago
  Maybe not one particular article but reading the same messaging over and over again until it eventually sticks with me and then my brain is the one that reminds me of it rather than the article. Articles on a subject also lead me to the books and videos on the subject as well.
- projectramo 8y ago
  No, you are right: generic advice is garbage.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    There are no silver bullets or precise instructions to life. Most things must be dealt with generic advice (and it's still surprising how many get generic advice wrong, and do the opposite). And most of what we do as people are not that unique anyway, to require any non-generic advice. The hard part is sticking to the generic advice and making it work. But there are no, or very few, shortcuts and precise step-by-steps procedures to success.
    - projectramo 8y ago
brianmcc 8y ago
Read about Belbin team roles if you've never done so. If you're someone that thrives on finding new things and learning them, revel in it, don't beat yourself up - that's valuable. Others thrive on crossing 't's and dotting 'i's - and good luck to them, the whole point is that teams succeed with the right blend of people. https://www.belbin.com/about/belbin-team-roles/ https://www.belbin.com/about/belbin-team-roles/ Bottom line if you try to be perfect at all dimensions, you're going to probably be unhappy: play to your strengths!
- catherd 8y ago
  I feel like all too often that leads to an outlook where you assume whatever job you end up in must meet your preferences in all things, and it's a pretty brittle way to conduct your career. Sure, from an individual standpoint that would optimize your short term happiness, but I've found the ability to know what the role requires and be that person is a skill that's rewarding in it's own way (and often, but not always, requires a lot of growth to do it well since roles change over time). And from a system level view, business needs don't necessarily match those roles in whatever ratio people happen to naturally occur at. I'm going to go out on a limb and say there is a gross oversupply of people who like starting things but not finishing them. As someone who hires and manages people, if I could somehow tap into a foolproof supply of people who are primarily motivated to grind away at any problem given to them until it's finished, and have just enough sense to be effective, but not enough to start solving problems just for the sake of the novelty I could probably take over the world in about 3 weeks. Luckily those kinds of people are almost completely absent from the human species and it's fairly difficult to organize and achieve arbitrary goals without a lot of politics and people skills in addition to simple coercion and/or funds and a plan.
  - brianmcc 8y ago
    Agree 100% - if you as an individual decide you're clearly a "Plant" and so don't need to take care of details, that's bad. Or if you decide you're an "Implementer" and will never do well in a more creative, explorer style role, that's also bad. I think the Belbin stuff's explicitly designed for managers though: if you have a team of "Implementers" and you know the concepts here, you might go out of your way to blend in a "Plant" to open the team's ideas up. Much as an extravert might bring a nice element to a team of introverts. Although that could also backfire terribly depending on the personalities. Obviously all of this has the same limitations and caveats as any other kind of pigeon-holing excercise but I think it's a worthwhile "stretch goal" when it comes to hiring, e.g. I need an accomplished JavaScript person and as a bonus let's look for one that complements and rounds of our current team. Also agree that team members who can grind away without fuss or drama and finish things are just generally worth their weight in gold. More of those please!
beaconstudios 8y ago
Currently working my way through "Grit" by Angela Duckworth, it has some interesting things to say on smart people and why they can often grow up into underachievers. In school, the more average kids have to study hard to achieve good grades and thus learn a strong work ethic. Smart kids can often "coast" through school and thus don't pick up the same attitude to working through boring, hard, or long-lasting work. It's an interesting book and I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to learn more about the topic.
- gdfer 8y ago
  I second this. These concepts were a reality check for me.
- OnACoffeeBreak 8y ago
  I haven't read the book or really know much about Angela Duckworth's research. I just recall reading somewhere that much of her conclusions have been found to be incorrect. Quick search results from NPR: https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/05/25/479172868/angela-duckworth-responds-to-a-new-critique-of-grit https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/05/25/479172868/angela-...
  - beaconstudios 8y ago
    having read your linked article, it doesn't seem so much that her conclusions were incorrect but that she exaggerated (intentionally or unintentionally) their impact. Expanding on the subcomponents of big five traits like conscientiousness seems like valuable work to me. Nonetheless when I'm reading self-improvement books I always take the claims with a pinch of salt because most of them over-hype their contents anyway. I'm still finding the book interesting and educational nonetheless.
- Balgair 8y ago
  Interesting Idea: Find the smart kids that were up against massive cheating. A local HS near me had a HUGE cheating scandal. It ended up on the front page of the local Big-City paper and some episodes of Dr. Phil. The story, as I heard it, was that the kids made a wiki for their classwork and tests. It worked ok the first year. But in the second year, all the kids found out that none of the teachers ever changed a single question on a test or HW. Hence, all the answers were already in a wiki, ready to be applied. This went on for a few years before they were found out. I think there were about 300 kids in the racket, but I'm not sure. HSs here are about 3k kids, so ~10% of the school. I always wondered about the kids that were up against those cheater-kids. The smart ones that were trying to get into college (a huge motivator) yet were never clued into the cheating wiki. Likely, most of the smart kids just gave up in the face of near-perfection and massive cheating. But I imagine there were a fair few that kept on plugging away. I can't imagine what that did to their psyches, especially in those very formative years. EDIT: Found the citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Park_High_School_(Pleasant_Hill,_California)#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Park_High_School_(Plea...
projectramo 8y ago
devalue relationships, frustrated with team-mates, ego, boredom and over-reliance on one's thoughts. It seems smart people sabotage their success in exactly the same way as dumb people.
- choxi 8y ago
  They're just more clever about it
austincheney 8y ago
I don't like to think about it in terms of smart. I see supposedly smart people do stupid crap all the time. A better word for describing people with potential is focus.
mooreds 8y ago
I've said that ambition beats smart any day of the week. I have seen it in my life multiple times. (Of course, ambition plus smart is a killer combo.)
H1Supreme 8y ago
As an aside, the font(and size) they've chosen for the copy in this article looks dreadful on a Win10/Chrome setup. Chrome tells me it's: "Garamond,Baskerville,"Times New Roman",serif". I don't know if it's using an embedded version of Garamond, or the one that ships with the OS, but I could barely get through the article.
- nness 8y ago
  Looks like your browser isn't picking up the web-fonts. Having disabled the web-font, the font-stack they've chosen is definitely a lot harder for my to read.
drinane 8y ago
Develop relationships with people who you trust to give you help constructive feedback. Contains a typo... Don't listen to their pontifications folks!
3minus1 8y ago
Trying to beat the stock market, when it's incredibly difficult. Even actively managed mutual funds fail to consistently beat the market average.
- neogodless 8y ago
  That's called "thinking you're smarter than everyone else." That's not the same as being intelligent. You can read about and learn how to intelligently invest your money over the desired time period for the goal you have. And if you have a long time period, you can read that you're most likely to succeed by dumping it in a total stock market index fund!
  - 3minus1 8y ago
    I still think it's a trap that a lot of smart people fall into. I know a lot of really smart people who try to beat the stock market.
drinane 8y ago
Contains a typo... someone should just figure out the top queries related to 1. Fear 2. Guilt 3. Shame And generate random buzzword articles... LOL ... that's a unicorn folks! "Develop relationships with people who you trust to give you help constructive feedback."
epx 8y ago
I see the boring work as the way to finance the fun stuff. Helps a lot.
camelCaseOfBeer 8y ago
Seems like author of this article has mistaken smart people for people who think their smarter than everybody else. If a smart person can't focus on long term goals or cooperate with others, attaching their self worth to arbitrary skill assessments while lauding the world with these accomplishments, was that person really that smart to begin with? Nah.
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SubiculumCode 8y ago
I've a colleague who can barely put a sentence together much less conduct and understand a complex analysis, yet this person has twice the umber of QUALITY papers as me..HOW? This person is really good at getting other people to do the work. Once I realized this I disengaged from this person's schemes, but I found it frustrating.
SubiculumCode 8y ago
I'm smart, but wouldn't say I am super smart...but I am pretty damn tenacious to perfect whatever I am doing...this makes people impressed with my work but frustrated at my slow pace...to the point where the latter is interfering with my career.
- jnbiche 8y ago
  I've have the exact same problem. My tenaciousness has given me the ability to understand concepts and obtain skills beyond my "natural ability". But it doesn't make me fast at them. Anyone out there successfully overcome this problem?
  - SubiculumCode 8y ago
    Perfect is the enemy of good. So I guess know when it is important to perfect, but allow yourself to be mediocre when it doesn't matter...So I guess I work on determining whether the thing I am working on really needs perfection or not. Note: I am a researcher.
- extragood 8y ago
  My brother is a perfectionist who works in tech (as do I). I tell him that everyone needs at least 2 working speeds, and one of those speeds needs to be "quick" (aka "emergency"). I don't see it as a binary thing. You can be meticulous in the things that matter that they are done right, and quick for the things that need to be done. The metric for success in those things are different. Quickness is perfection in an emergency.
throwaway713 8y ago
I remember reading once that students who excel in high school (valedictorians and salutatorians) are underrepresented as successful company founders, meaning that they occur at a lower rate than one would expect from chance alone. I think the hypothesis was that these people tended to develop a perfectionistic (or even people pleasing) approach, and that this strategy works really well for "doing what you're told". So they might often end up as a lawyer or a doctor, but they won't start the next big company. As someone who did well academically early on without putting in much effort, I constantly try to avoid this trap of a "successful", but boring life. I think the problem with a lot of these people is that the first sign of failure total demolishes them, because their identity is strongly tied to "being smart" (like the article mentions). I know two people who became valedictorians in high school, mostly on natural talent. The first became a lawyer at one of the best law firms in the country, but she mentally cracked after a few years. She ended up quitting her job on the spot and stays at home now (and drinks way too much). The second finished his PhD and hasn't applied for a job in over a year. No one is really sure why. I've had some personal hardships in my life (chronic injuries and death of close loved ones) that I think has put failure into perspective for me, otherwise I would probably respond the same way.
- thwy12321 8y ago
  I think it's actually that individuals with high levels of academic success don't need to start a company, they already have very good high paying career options. And so starting a company has a high level of opportunity cost.
  - longerthoughts 8y ago
    Do you think most founders didn't have decent career prospects before starting a company? Are you suggesting that people start companies because they think being a founder is likely to be a high paying job? What founders are trading up in salary when they're starting their company?
    - andyidsinga 8y ago
andyidsinga 8y ago
> 5. Smart people sometimes see in-depth thinking and reflection as the solution to every problem. Bright people are accustomed to succeeding through their thinking skills, but can sometimes overlook when a different approach would be more beneficial. This really resonated with me. One of the "problems" with over thinking things and "figuring out all the potential problems" is that when presenting the ideas/concepts/solutions one doesn't leave enough room for response by the target audience. You end up with responses like "well - you're really smart - you seem to have thought of everything". Often we really do want and need the audience to have a chance to respond, poke holes, describe what they find to be useful / not useful.
- robertAngst 8y ago
  I disagreed with that point, thinking through things means not making the mistakes later. Presenting your data should spark questions or proposals or agreement regardless how much time you put into it. I agreed with the first 4 points, but the last one seemed weak.
  - allenu 8y ago
    I read that point as sort of analysis paralysis where you just end up spending a lot of time researching and thinking through and not enough time taking action. For me, I've noticed there are times when I use thinking as a crutch to avoid actually doing. Often, doing, making a mistake, and then correcting is more expedient than analyzing all options to find the optimal one.
    - andyidsinga 8y ago
      This is pretty spot on - I hate to be the one arguing for "less thought" on a subject/concept etc. But I've definitely gone too far too often .. so I try to stop earlier more often now - for feedback (and implementation as you suggest) knowing I can always go deeper. I find that asking one's self this question is helpful : "Are the barriers to believe for concept ________ technical or something else?" If the answer is that there aren't deep technical barriers - its a good time to stop and start collecting feedback.
ryanwaggoner 8y ago
5. Smart people sometimes see in-depth thinking and reflection as the solution to every problem. ... Which of these five patterns do you identify with the most? Try rank-ordering them. Are there colleagues or other people in your life who seem to fall into these traps? Err...how ironic. More to the point, it seems like #5 should actually be about thinking and reflecting poorly. Taking a break from thinking about your career decision to solve a puzzle might help you think better when you pick it up again. It won't solve the problem directly.
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motohagiography 8y ago
Seems survivor bias explains why many ostensibly successful people are boring. What is the anti-pattern in our organizations that produces leaders who lack competence and charisma? It's like somehow we've managed to collectively optimize against producing people others might actually admire. Arguably much of what the author calls "relationship building," manifests in many organizations as "ability to conspire to undermine more talented and honest people." Perhaps highly intelligent people do not belong in large organizations precisely because that particular talent is optimized for explosive growth and change that large orgs are necessarily structured to suppress in favour of stability. One should recognize whether they are more of a fox or a hedgehog, and then decide where they belong. If you are really that intelligent, you should feel obligated to take outsize risks, because the success that comes from anything other than your talent will feel empty and dishonest. I also find that feelings of failure, shame, and regret are inversely proportional to the amount of risk I took. I wonder if that's generally true.
- antocv 8y ago
  Easy to say "take risks", but many of the talented ones can not really afford to take any risks, those from poverty.
  - motohagiography 8y ago
    I'd say if you can afford it, it's not real risk.
eeZah7Ux 8y ago
> people he outperformed at school who have now achieved more This matter-of-fact tone irks me. It implies that the reader must see life as a competition ("outperformed", "achieved more") just to understand the sentence.
john_moscow 8y ago
Totally anecdotal, but I have 2 friends from the time of doing my PhD in Germany. The first one is a brilliant person, hard-working, always determined to get to the bottom of things, but is not very charismatic. The other one is totally relaxed, doesn't care about what he's doing at all, but is extremely pleasant, cheerful and willing to agree with everyone just to make them happy (and will forget what he said 5 minutes later). 5 years after graduation, the first one tried several positions from an architect to a senior researcher, couldn't stand the politics and infighting and ended up as a software engineer in a fairly conservative enterprise. The second one started as a sales consultant in a smaller place, shook a few hands and is now a project manager in a Fortune 500 company.
rconti 8y ago
1 and 3 are the focus of Carol Dweck's book Mindset, which I'm really enjoying. It's all about how valuing intelligence over effort is counterproductive. http://a.co/d/1mV8oQv http://a.co/d/1mV8oQv
HumanDrivenDev 8y ago
Of course everybody here who isn't successful assumes it's because of their intellect...classic Hacker News.
Stryder 8y ago
#5 is basically an overclocked mind running DFS.
jkuria 8y ago
The phrase that comes to mind is: A students become professors, B Students become executives at large corporations. It is the C students who--perhaps lacking the traits to succeed in the previous two pursuits have no choice but to endure the risk/hardship of entrepreneurship--endow professorships and name buildings. Examples of this: 1. Founder of Kinkos (failed in school and had to repeat two grades) 2. Billionaire Flavio Briatore 3. Almost Billionaire founder of Jimmy John's subs Another phenomenon I see often is what I'd call "The Video Professor". The founder of that company reaped a massive fortune teaching "dunderheads" how to use computers and operate simple programs like Word and Excel. Many of my techie friends would sneer and dismiss it as being "too easy" and fail to recognize the business opportunity therein or other many similar opportunities.
- SamvitJ 8y ago
  On the other hand, Jeff Bezos, the richest individual in modern history, graduated high school valedictorian and summa cum laude from Princeton. Anecdotes abound!
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crazygringo 8y ago
> 5. Smart people sometimes see in-depth thinking and reflection as the solution to every problem. This one really rang true for me when I was less experienced... yet for me, the solution isn't what they list. For me it was to talk to people. Don't solve things too much on your own. Spend at least as much time communicating as you do thinking, because it turns out 1) assumptions you'd never think to question turn out to be invalid all the time, and 2) other people suggest solutions you'd never come up with because they have a different thinking style and different experience. Over-communicate even when it seems pointless, especially when it seems pointless, because other people will point things out where you never imagined.
cwyers 8y ago
I feel like the suggested remedies are rather thin on details. It would be nice if the author provided some citations for further reading.
viburnum 8y ago
"Smart" had nothing to do with any of this, other than to flatter the reader.
oldpond 8y ago
I highly recommend Marshall Goldsmith's What Got You Here Won't Get You There. https://www.marshallgoldsmith.com/product/book-2/ https://www.marshallgoldsmith.com/product/book-2/ Great book on overcoming smart people faults.
yomritoyj 8y ago
This is a problem only if the person is bothered by their lack of "success". For some, being a dilettante may precisely be the life that they want. The problem is that if you are perceived as "smart" people all around you will push you to "succeed" in traditional ways, either because they want a share of the profits of such "success", or because they see someone not doing the boring grind as a moral failure, or out of concern that the dilettante is "throwing away their potential". I'd say that if you are "smart" then it should make your life freer and not more constrained.
deytempo 8y ago
This is why drugs like adderall are popular among people who get bored easily.
paulgrant999 8y ago
I get sick and tired of this nonsense being pushed as "wisdom". Perhaps smart people, don't measure success the same way. -- I could, go and work, for a shit company, with a shit corporate culture, get "paid", while trading the few years I have on this planet, for worthless scrip, miserable colleagues and a corporate culture designed to kill intelligence... OR, I could use that time to locate a set of colleagues, who are equally as intelligent, in a company that tries to tackle the "big problems" and move the state of the art forward. -- I could work at a company where "relationship building" is the primary focus (i.e. small-minded politics), where I am either wasting all my time fielding constant attacks from the lower echelons, or consistently seen as a "resource" to be exploiting in some pointlessly complicated machiovellian scheme. OR I could go work with a bunch of adults, who come to work, do their job, get paid, and fuck off to go fuck their wives/husbands, and leave all that mini-munchkin shit, out of work. -- I could spend, the entire workweek, carrying worthless "team members", who don't even know enough to shut the fuck up, and let the only professional on the team, handle it. OR. I could actually get, shudder, competent team members who I rarely have to interface with because their shit just works, and who can coordinate without constantly having their balls held. -- I could join a company where the "corporate" advancement, is some ridiculous mating dance between you, HR, and some shit manager or where the "job title" is a straight jacket, not a definition of responsibilities to be handled.... OR I could join a company that understands that smart people, should be let loose to handle the corporations problems, and that job title, is a reflection of necessary duties; but not something to straightjacket an employee who is handling there business. -- I could go to work for a company where things are always done last minute, two or three times, with regular failures OR I could join a company where the shit gets done right the first time; where long-term success matters just as much as short-term success. -- I could... simply not care, what someone with mediocre intelligence, thinks the problems people with intelligence "suffer from"....
truth_seeker 8y ago
Been there. Done that. Have been trying to change my thinking by more thinking or some actions given prescriptions. It just doesn't work. Energy is neutral. It's how and where you use it makes the all difference. All that this article is providing is prescriptions about how not to misuse it. The solutions given are just a prescription not really a solution. Few people might follow it successfully for few days or months and eventually get back to their conditioning. Or if they succeed in through the prescription given, they will attract other problems in their life. That's what Psychologist do, they help retrospect your life in little depth than you can and then help you persuade that you understood the problem and recognise the solution for it. But essentially what they have done is, either suppress it for the sake of ethics, morality etc. And convert the problems into some other problems unconsciously which errupts in your life after few months or years. The very thing we are asked to drop through prescriptions or advices becomes difficult to let go of. In the very attempt of forgetting you have to keep remembering it, just to forget it. It keeps coming back to your mind. In order to forget, the more you will need to remember it the stronger that memory becomes. What essentially they are suffering or fail to recognise is that "Knowing the path is not synonymous to walking the path". But it's easier said or understood by reading it than done. If you seek permanent transformation, something fundamental has to be changed. Something which is the very root cause of it. Only inner transformation can help. Dynamic meditation given by OSHO is dynamite to realease the mental and body energy blockages which cause such and various other types of hurdles. It helps you energy center to move from Body to Mind to Heart to Being. http://www.oshodynamic.com/five-stages.html http://www.oshodynamic.com/five-stages.html Before adopting this meditation I have asked thousand questions about it's genuineness and how it works but none of that help. It is only by actually trying for few weeks I could see the change in my character. Note: I am not associated with any OSHO's meditation centre or their work. I am just someone who tried it and found it useful.
ataturk 8y ago
Maybe it isn't the individual sabotaging their success but rather outside individuals who have ego issues? I know from my own experience that I have had many back-biting, back-stabbing people attempt to steal my ideas, take credit for my work, and generally make my life hell because the people who actually do the work are easy targets by those attempting to usurp and manipulate. All I can say is that Eastern philosophy, especially the concept of Zen, and eliminating one's own ego, have kept me sane all these years. You have to remember that we are a tiny spec of dust in the universe and not get all wrapped up in these trivialities. Some days it is harder than others to realize that one truth.
gfs78 8y ago
The title is wrong. It should have been: How Intelligent People Sabotage Their Success. But is all filler anyway. Current western societies are amoral. So dumb vs intelligent is out of the question. If you don't have any regrets about f.u.c.k.i.n.g people and luck is on your side, you win. And big.

737 points by apress 8y ago

tw1010 8y ago

Does sabotaging my own success mean I'm smart?

alexcp_ 8y ago

Title should be: How people who think they are smart sabotage their success.

ginsu 8y ago
Because no true Scotsman would simultaneously claim to be smart while acting as their own saboteur. The two concepts are, of course, mutually exclusive, incontrovertibly.
will_brown 8y ago
I’d title it...How to Justify and Frame Your Success as Meritocracy In Light of People Much Smarter than you Not Succeeding Because They Lack Your Connections
- syn0byte 8y ago
  or "Why it's your own fault you aren't successful despite your abilities and skills."
  - will_brown 8y ago
    That’s just it’s...IMO it’s saying if you are smart and not successful you have no ability or skills. Which we all know isn’t true. The lack of social mobility in the US has nothing to do with lack of ability or skills. Power and wealth are to concentrated and “success” is more dependent on access to those than being smart, having abilities or skills.
faceplanted 8y ago
Are you suggesting that if they were somehow truly smart they would know how not to sabotage their own success? Because that's some serious fallacious thinking right there.
- tom_ 8y ago
  Sounds like it, and I agree. How else should you judge this? And what should you call it when people are less successful than they could be, and can't see that the cause is their counterproductive habits and apparent lack of self-awareness? - because 'smart' isn't the first word that springs to my mind.
  - Epenthesis 8y ago
    This is a bit of a silly semantic game. There's "smart" in the sense of "general mental ability" (ie, skill in cognitive tasks), which is usually what the word is used colloquially to mean, and then there's "smart" in the sense of "making the optimal choices for long term happiness and success", which, being correlated with the first definition is often conflated. Now, sometimes these definitions come apart, ie, people who are "smart" in the first sense fail to be "smart" in the second sense. That doesn't mean the first definition is inherently meaningless. In fact, g factor ("IQ"), the psychometric concept that maps most closely to that first definition is extremely well studied, and well established as coherent and measurable. Why these two attributes come apart in some people is an interesting question, because they're usually so correlated, and that's what the article is in a sense about.
    - jillav 8y ago
      That's actually a very sensible way to put it.
jillav 8y ago
I kinda agree. I've seen too many people using their self-diagnosed over-intelligence to excuse some of their surprisingly non-smart behavior. Behavior that leads to failure in their enterprises. This kind of article always make me uncomfortable because I feel smartness/cleverness/intelligence does not seem to be objective enough a quality to lead to such analysis. And some people may identify with such patterns and declare themselves as "too smart" and not try harder, believing the problem is from the other side of the table.
deleted 8y ago
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ElatedOwl 8y ago
If you're not happy with where you're at in your career, don't worry, it's totally because you're too smart.

bootsz 8y ago

> 4. Smart people get bored easily. Being smart is not exactly the same as being curious, but if you have both these qualities you might find yourself becoming easily bored with executing the same behaviors over and over. Some types of success stem from creativity, but other types come from becoming an expert in a niche and performing a set of behaviors repeatedly. If you’re smart, curious, and have a love of learning, you might find you quickly lose interest in anything once you’ve figured it out. The execution side of performance might bore you, and you’d rather constantly be learning new things. This can end up being less lucrative than finding a niche and repeating the same formula, but that might seem too boring or unchallenging to you. I've been wrestling with this for most of my career so far. I think it's all about striking the right balance. If you're not constantly learning you will stagnate. At the same time, jumping continuously from learning one new thing to another (esp. if the things are not very inter-related) can spread yourself too thin: you need to "go deep" on some things to become an effective/valuable contributor. I sometimes feel resentful of the amount of time I've spent as a software engineer dealing with what I often feel is boring or pure B.S. (e.g. almost everything other than designing/building some novel complex system from scratch). But in reality looking back I see that a lot of that sh*t-shoveling has actually made me much better and wiser at my profession, despite how mind-numbing and boring it often was. So I'm trying to keep that perspective to get me through those really dull days when I want to just rage-quit and move to a rural commune :)

dfsegoat 8y ago
Ditto to all you just said: Figuring out how to strike the balance between "filling myself up" learning new things - while becoming an expert at repetitive drone work (cough cough documentation) was the hardest thing I've done. Still working on it. Previously I had no balance - always was at one extreme or the other.
abledon 8y ago
I’m seeing how a few sprinkles of VBA can make an .org so much more efficient than trying to bend management to green light an entire new web app system written in a ‘real’ programming Lang

throwaway9980 8y ago

Reading that I can’t help but think most people in the modern knowledge work classes probably identify with a lot of it. Doesn’t everyone have these feelings? This all seems very normal to me, but I’m definitely the target audience. High IQ that was praised from a young age, hated school but did well with no effort, hated team work all my life, value deep thinking as the solution to almost any problem, successful in my career by objective measure, and I feel like a failure. I’d argue that everyone sabotages their sense of success by having poorly calibrated expectations. It isn’t easy to honestly assess and accept your own capacity.

gervase 8y ago
I think the article was written in such a way as to trigger the Barnum effect [0], since most people think of themselves as "smart". [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect
- Stryder 8y ago
  Bravo.
mrleinad 8y ago
By the looks of your self description, seems you're my long lost (evil?) twin. I didn't hate school though. I hated some people in it.
lrc 8y ago
/me feels the unsettling presence of a doppelgänger
thirdsun 8y ago
I agree. Reading those articles sometimes resembles reading a horoscope given that probably everyone can relate to these issues to some degree. Likely many of us think of themselves as smart, yet not reaching their true potential. With that in mind, I wonder if that isn't a misleading assessment, a soothing, relieving conclusion that is all that uncommon at all. After all we can't all be above the median smartness line. What if you or me are actually unknowingly performing below that threshold while mistaking ourselves for a precious exception to most other people?

strikelaserclaw 8y ago

honest question, has anyone ever improved their lives by reading articles of this flavor ? (e.g 10 things successfully ceo's do, 10 ways to increase your chances of building a successful company)

newsbinator 8y ago
Not necessarily directly. But perhaps indirectly, like how reading a useful novel or non-fiction book can help channel your thinking later. In other words, reading the piece might not alter your behavior today and you might forget 98% of it if quizzed later, but next time you're presented with a decision to which it applies, you find yourself behaving somewhat more wisely than you would have if you hadn't consumed these articles. Maybe. Or maybe these articles are no more useful than reading the backs of shampoo bottles. Tough to measure.
jimmy1 8y ago
Maybe not one particular article but reading the same messaging over and over again until it eventually sticks with me and then my brain is the one that reminds me of it rather than the article. Articles on a subject also lead me to the books and videos on the subject as well.
projectramo 8y ago
No, you are right: generic advice is garbage.
- coldtea 8y ago
  There are no silver bullets or precise instructions to life. Most things must be dealt with generic advice (and it's still surprising how many get generic advice wrong, and do the opposite). And most of what we do as people are not that unique anyway, to require any non-generic advice. The hard part is sticking to the generic advice and making it work. But there are no, or very few, shortcuts and precise step-by-steps procedures to success.
  - projectramo 8y ago

brianmcc 8y ago

Read about Belbin team roles if you've never done so. If you're someone that thrives on finding new things and learning them, revel in it, don't beat yourself up - that's valuable. Others thrive on crossing 't's and dotting 'i's - and good luck to them, the whole point is that teams succeed with the right blend of people. https://www.belbin.com/about/belbin-team-roles/ https://www.belbin.com/about/belbin-team-roles/ Bottom line if you try to be perfect at all dimensions, you're going to probably be unhappy: play to your strengths!

catherd 8y ago
I feel like all too often that leads to an outlook where you assume whatever job you end up in must meet your preferences in all things, and it's a pretty brittle way to conduct your career. Sure, from an individual standpoint that would optimize your short term happiness, but I've found the ability to know what the role requires and be that person is a skill that's rewarding in it's own way (and often, but not always, requires a lot of growth to do it well since roles change over time). And from a system level view, business needs don't necessarily match those roles in whatever ratio people happen to naturally occur at. I'm going to go out on a limb and say there is a gross oversupply of people who like starting things but not finishing them. As someone who hires and manages people, if I could somehow tap into a foolproof supply of people who are primarily motivated to grind away at any problem given to them until it's finished, and have just enough sense to be effective, but not enough to start solving problems just for the sake of the novelty I could probably take over the world in about 3 weeks. Luckily those kinds of people are almost completely absent from the human species and it's fairly difficult to organize and achieve arbitrary goals without a lot of politics and people skills in addition to simple coercion and/or funds and a plan.
- brianmcc 8y ago
  Agree 100% - if you as an individual decide you're clearly a "Plant" and so don't need to take care of details, that's bad. Or if you decide you're an "Implementer" and will never do well in a more creative, explorer style role, that's also bad. I think the Belbin stuff's explicitly designed for managers though: if you have a team of "Implementers" and you know the concepts here, you might go out of your way to blend in a "Plant" to open the team's ideas up. Much as an extravert might bring a nice element to a team of introverts. Although that could also backfire terribly depending on the personalities. Obviously all of this has the same limitations and caveats as any other kind of pigeon-holing excercise but I think it's a worthwhile "stretch goal" when it comes to hiring, e.g. I need an accomplished JavaScript person and as a bonus let's look for one that complements and rounds of our current team. Also agree that team members who can grind away without fuss or drama and finish things are just generally worth their weight in gold. More of those please!

beaconstudios 8y ago

Currently working my way through "Grit" by Angela Duckworth, it has some interesting things to say on smart people and why they can often grow up into underachievers. In school, the more average kids have to study hard to achieve good grades and thus learn a strong work ethic. Smart kids can often "coast" through school and thus don't pick up the same attitude to working through boring, hard, or long-lasting work. It's an interesting book and I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to learn more about the topic.

gdfer 8y ago
I second this. These concepts were a reality check for me.
OnACoffeeBreak 8y ago
I haven't read the book or really know much about Angela Duckworth's research. I just recall reading somewhere that much of her conclusions have been found to be incorrect. Quick search results from NPR: https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/05/25/479172868/angela-duckworth-responds-to-a-new-critique-of-grit https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/05/25/479172868/angela-...
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  having read your linked article, it doesn't seem so much that her conclusions were incorrect but that she exaggerated (intentionally or unintentionally) their impact. Expanding on the subcomponents of big five traits like conscientiousness seems like valuable work to me. Nonetheless when I'm reading self-improvement books I always take the claims with a pinch of salt because most of them over-hype their contents anyway. I'm still finding the book interesting and educational nonetheless.
Balgair 8y ago
Interesting Idea: Find the smart kids that were up against massive cheating. A local HS near me had a HUGE cheating scandal. It ended up on the front page of the local Big-City paper and some episodes of Dr. Phil. The story, as I heard it, was that the kids made a wiki for their classwork and tests. It worked ok the first year. But in the second year, all the kids found out that none of the teachers ever changed a single question on a test or HW. Hence, all the answers were already in a wiki, ready to be applied. This went on for a few years before they were found out. I think there were about 300 kids in the racket, but I'm not sure. HSs here are about 3k kids, so ~10% of the school. I always wondered about the kids that were up against those cheater-kids. The smart ones that were trying to get into college (a huge motivator) yet were never clued into the cheating wiki. Likely, most of the smart kids just gave up in the face of near-perfection and massive cheating. But I imagine there were a fair few that kept on plugging away. I can't imagine what that did to their psyches, especially in those very formative years. EDIT: Found the citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Park_High_School_(Pleasant_Hill,_California)#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_Park_High_School_(Plea...

projectramo 8y ago

devalue relationships, frustrated with team-mates, ego, boredom and over-reliance on one's thoughts. It seems smart people sabotage their success in exactly the same way as dumb people.

choxi 8y ago
They're just more clever about it

austincheney 8y ago

I don't like to think about it in terms of smart. I see supposedly smart people do stupid crap all the time. A better word for describing people with potential is focus.

mooreds 8y ago

I've said that ambition beats smart any day of the week. I have seen it in my life multiple times. (Of course, ambition plus smart is a killer combo.)

H1Supreme 8y ago

As an aside, the font(and size) they've chosen for the copy in this article looks dreadful on a Win10/Chrome setup. Chrome tells me it's: "Garamond,Baskerville,"Times New Roman",serif". I don't know if it's using an embedded version of Garamond, or the one that ships with the OS, but I could barely get through the article.

nness 8y ago
Looks like your browser isn't picking up the web-fonts. Having disabled the web-font, the font-stack they've chosen is definitely a lot harder for my to read.

drinane 8y ago

Develop relationships with people who you trust to give you help constructive feedback. Contains a typo... Don't listen to their pontifications folks!

3minus1 8y ago

Trying to beat the stock market, when it's incredibly difficult. Even actively managed mutual funds fail to consistently beat the market average.

neogodless 8y ago
That's called "thinking you're smarter than everyone else." That's not the same as being intelligent. You can read about and learn how to intelligently invest your money over the desired time period for the goal you have. And if you have a long time period, you can read that you're most likely to succeed by dumping it in a total stock market index fund!
- 3minus1 8y ago
  I still think it's a trap that a lot of smart people fall into. I know a lot of really smart people who try to beat the stock market.

drinane 8y ago

Contains a typo... someone should just figure out the top queries related to 1. Fear 2. Guilt 3. Shame And generate random buzzword articles... LOL ... that's a unicorn folks! "Develop relationships with people who you trust to give you help constructive feedback."

epx 8y ago

I see the boring work as the way to finance the fun stuff. Helps a lot.

camelCaseOfBeer 8y ago

Seems like author of this article has mistaken smart people for people who think their smarter than everybody else. If a smart person can't focus on long term goals or cooperate with others, attaching their self worth to arbitrary skill assessments while lauding the world with these accomplishments, was that person really that smart to begin with? Nah.

deleted 8y ago

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SubiculumCode 8y ago

I've a colleague who can barely put a sentence together much less conduct and understand a complex analysis, yet this person has twice the umber of QUALITY papers as me..HOW? This person is really good at getting other people to do the work. Once I realized this I disengaged from this person's schemes, but I found it frustrating.

SubiculumCode 8y ago

I'm smart, but wouldn't say I am super smart...but I am pretty damn tenacious to perfect whatever I am doing...this makes people impressed with my work but frustrated at my slow pace...to the point where the latter is interfering with my career.

jnbiche 8y ago
I've have the exact same problem. My tenaciousness has given me the ability to understand concepts and obtain skills beyond my "natural ability". But it doesn't make me fast at them. Anyone out there successfully overcome this problem?
- SubiculumCode 8y ago
  Perfect is the enemy of good. So I guess know when it is important to perfect, but allow yourself to be mediocre when it doesn't matter...So I guess I work on determining whether the thing I am working on really needs perfection or not. Note: I am a researcher.
extragood 8y ago
My brother is a perfectionist who works in tech (as do I). I tell him that everyone needs at least 2 working speeds, and one of those speeds needs to be "quick" (aka "emergency"). I don't see it as a binary thing. You can be meticulous in the things that matter that they are done right, and quick for the things that need to be done. The metric for success in those things are different. Quickness is perfection in an emergency.

throwaway713 8y ago

I remember reading once that students who excel in high school (valedictorians and salutatorians) are underrepresented as successful company founders, meaning that they occur at a lower rate than one would expect from chance alone. I think the hypothesis was that these people tended to develop a perfectionistic (or even people pleasing) approach, and that this strategy works really well for "doing what you're told". So they might often end up as a lawyer or a doctor, but they won't start the next big company. As someone who did well academically early on without putting in much effort, I constantly try to avoid this trap of a "successful", but boring life. I think the problem with a lot of these people is that the first sign of failure total demolishes them, because their identity is strongly tied to "being smart" (like the article mentions). I know two people who became valedictorians in high school, mostly on natural talent. The first became a lawyer at one of the best law firms in the country, but she mentally cracked after a few years. She ended up quitting her job on the spot and stays at home now (and drinks way too much). The second finished his PhD and hasn't applied for a job in over a year. No one is really sure why. I've had some personal hardships in my life (chronic injuries and death of close loved ones) that I think has put failure into perspective for me, otherwise I would probably respond the same way.

thwy12321 8y ago
I think it's actually that individuals with high levels of academic success don't need to start a company, they already have very good high paying career options. And so starting a company has a high level of opportunity cost.
- longerthoughts 8y ago
  Do you think most founders didn't have decent career prospects before starting a company? Are you suggesting that people start companies because they think being a founder is likely to be a high paying job? What founders are trading up in salary when they're starting their company?
  - andyidsinga 8y ago

andyidsinga 8y ago

> 5. Smart people sometimes see in-depth thinking and reflection as the solution to every problem. Bright people are accustomed to succeeding through their thinking skills, but can sometimes overlook when a different approach would be more beneficial. This really resonated with me. One of the "problems" with over thinking things and "figuring out all the potential problems" is that when presenting the ideas/concepts/solutions one doesn't leave enough room for response by the target audience. You end up with responses like "well - you're really smart - you seem to have thought of everything". Often we really do want and need the audience to have a chance to respond, poke holes, describe what they find to be useful / not useful.

robertAngst 8y ago
I disagreed with that point, thinking through things means not making the mistakes later. Presenting your data should spark questions or proposals or agreement regardless how much time you put into it. I agreed with the first 4 points, but the last one seemed weak.
- allenu 8y ago
  I read that point as sort of analysis paralysis where you just end up spending a lot of time researching and thinking through and not enough time taking action. For me, I've noticed there are times when I use thinking as a crutch to avoid actually doing. Often, doing, making a mistake, and then correcting is more expedient than analyzing all options to find the optimal one.
  - andyidsinga 8y ago
    This is pretty spot on - I hate to be the one arguing for "less thought" on a subject/concept etc. But I've definitely gone too far too often .. so I try to stop earlier more often now - for feedback (and implementation as you suggest) knowing I can always go deeper. I find that asking one's self this question is helpful : "Are the barriers to believe for concept ________ technical or something else?" If the answer is that there aren't deep technical barriers - its a good time to stop and start collecting feedback.

ryanwaggoner 8y ago

5. Smart people sometimes see in-depth thinking and reflection as the solution to every problem. ... Which of these five patterns do you identify with the most? Try rank-ordering them. Are there colleagues or other people in your life who seem to fall into these traps? Err...how ironic. More to the point, it seems like #5 should actually be about thinking and reflecting poorly. Taking a break from thinking about your career decision to solve a puzzle might help you think better when you pick it up again. It won't solve the problem directly.

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motohagiography 8y ago

Seems survivor bias explains why many ostensibly successful people are boring. What is the anti-pattern in our organizations that produces leaders who lack competence and charisma? It's like somehow we've managed to collectively optimize against producing people others might actually admire. Arguably much of what the author calls "relationship building," manifests in many organizations as "ability to conspire to undermine more talented and honest people." Perhaps highly intelligent people do not belong in large organizations precisely because that particular talent is optimized for explosive growth and change that large orgs are necessarily structured to suppress in favour of stability. One should recognize whether they are more of a fox or a hedgehog, and then decide where they belong. If you are really that intelligent, you should feel obligated to take outsize risks, because the success that comes from anything other than your talent will feel empty and dishonest. I also find that feelings of failure, shame, and regret are inversely proportional to the amount of risk I took. I wonder if that's generally true.

antocv 8y ago
Easy to say "take risks", but many of the talented ones can not really afford to take any risks, those from poverty.
- motohagiography 8y ago
  I'd say if you can afford it, it's not real risk.

eeZah7Ux 8y ago

> people he outperformed at school who have now achieved more This matter-of-fact tone irks me. It implies that the reader must see life as a competition ("outperformed", "achieved more") just to understand the sentence.

john_moscow 8y ago

Totally anecdotal, but I have 2 friends from the time of doing my PhD in Germany. The first one is a brilliant person, hard-working, always determined to get to the bottom of things, but is not very charismatic. The other one is totally relaxed, doesn't care about what he's doing at all, but is extremely pleasant, cheerful and willing to agree with everyone just to make them happy (and will forget what he said 5 minutes later). 5 years after graduation, the first one tried several positions from an architect to a senior researcher, couldn't stand the politics and infighting and ended up as a software engineer in a fairly conservative enterprise. The second one started as a sales consultant in a smaller place, shook a few hands and is now a project manager in a Fortune 500 company.

rconti 8y ago

1 and 3 are the focus of Carol Dweck's book Mindset, which I'm really enjoying. It's all about how valuing intelligence over effort is counterproductive. http://a.co/d/1mV8oQv http://a.co/d/1mV8oQv

HumanDrivenDev 8y ago

Of course everybody here who isn't successful assumes it's because of their intellect...classic Hacker News.

Stryder 8y ago

#5 is basically an overclocked mind running DFS.

jkuria 8y ago

The phrase that comes to mind is: A students become professors, B Students become executives at large corporations. It is the C students who--perhaps lacking the traits to succeed in the previous two pursuits have no choice but to endure the risk/hardship of entrepreneurship--endow professorships and name buildings. Examples of this: 1. Founder of Kinkos (failed in school and had to repeat two grades) 2. Billionaire Flavio Briatore 3. Almost Billionaire founder of Jimmy John's subs Another phenomenon I see often is what I'd call "The Video Professor". The founder of that company reaped a massive fortune teaching "dunderheads" how to use computers and operate simple programs like Word and Excel. Many of my techie friends would sneer and dismiss it as being "too easy" and fail to recognize the business opportunity therein or other many similar opportunities.

SamvitJ 8y ago
On the other hand, Jeff Bezos, the richest individual in modern history, graduated high school valedictorian and summa cum laude from Princeton. Anecdotes abound!

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crazygringo 8y ago

> 5. Smart people sometimes see in-depth thinking and reflection as the solution to every problem. This one really rang true for me when I was less experienced... yet for me, the solution isn't what they list. For me it was to talk to people. Don't solve things too much on your own. Spend at least as much time communicating as you do thinking, because it turns out 1) assumptions you'd never think to question turn out to be invalid all the time, and 2) other people suggest solutions you'd never come up with because they have a different thinking style and different experience. Over-communicate even when it seems pointless, especially when it seems pointless, because other people will point things out where you never imagined.

cwyers 8y ago

I feel like the suggested remedies are rather thin on details. It would be nice if the author provided some citations for further reading.

viburnum 8y ago

"Smart" had nothing to do with any of this, other than to flatter the reader.

oldpond 8y ago

I highly recommend Marshall Goldsmith's What Got You Here Won't Get You There. https://www.marshallgoldsmith.com/product/book-2/ https://www.marshallgoldsmith.com/product/book-2/ Great book on overcoming smart people faults.

yomritoyj 8y ago

This is a problem only if the person is bothered by their lack of "success". For some, being a dilettante may precisely be the life that they want. The problem is that if you are perceived as "smart" people all around you will push you to "succeed" in traditional ways, either because they want a share of the profits of such "success", or because they see someone not doing the boring grind as a moral failure, or out of concern that the dilettante is "throwing away their potential". I'd say that if you are "smart" then it should make your life freer and not more constrained.

deytempo 8y ago

This is why drugs like adderall are popular among people who get bored easily.

paulgrant999 8y ago

I get sick and tired of this nonsense being pushed as "wisdom". Perhaps smart people, don't measure success the same way. -- I could, go and work, for a shit company, with a shit corporate culture, get "paid", while trading the few years I have on this planet, for worthless scrip, miserable colleagues and a corporate culture designed to kill intelligence... OR, I could use that time to locate a set of colleagues, who are equally as intelligent, in a company that tries to tackle the "big problems" and move the state of the art forward. -- I could work at a company where "relationship building" is the primary focus (i.e. small-minded politics), where I am either wasting all my time fielding constant attacks from the lower echelons, or consistently seen as a "resource" to be exploiting in some pointlessly complicated machiovellian scheme. OR I could go work with a bunch of adults, who come to work, do their job, get paid, and fuck off to go fuck their wives/husbands, and leave all that mini-munchkin shit, out of work. -- I could spend, the entire workweek, carrying worthless "team members", who don't even know enough to shut the fuck up, and let the only professional on the team, handle it. OR. I could actually get, shudder, competent team members who I rarely have to interface with because their shit just works, and who can coordinate without constantly having their balls held. -- I could join a company where the "corporate" advancement, is some ridiculous mating dance between you, HR, and some shit manager or where the "job title" is a straight jacket, not a definition of responsibilities to be handled.... OR I could join a company that understands that smart people, should be let loose to handle the corporations problems, and that job title, is a reflection of necessary duties; but not something to straightjacket an employee who is handling there business. -- I could go to work for a company where things are always done last minute, two or three times, with regular failures OR I could join a company where the shit gets done right the first time; where long-term success matters just as much as short-term success. -- I could... simply not care, what someone with mediocre intelligence, thinks the problems people with intelligence "suffer from"....

truth_seeker 8y ago

Been there. Done that. Have been trying to change my thinking by more thinking or some actions given prescriptions. It just doesn't work. Energy is neutral. It's how and where you use it makes the all difference. All that this article is providing is prescriptions about how not to misuse it. The solutions given are just a prescription not really a solution. Few people might follow it successfully for few days or months and eventually get back to their conditioning. Or if they succeed in through the prescription given, they will attract other problems in their life. That's what Psychologist do, they help retrospect your life in little depth than you can and then help you persuade that you understood the problem and recognise the solution for it. But essentially what they have done is, either suppress it for the sake of ethics, morality etc. And convert the problems into some other problems unconsciously which errupts in your life after few months or years. The very thing we are asked to drop through prescriptions or advices becomes difficult to let go of. In the very attempt of forgetting you have to keep remembering it, just to forget it. It keeps coming back to your mind. In order to forget, the more you will need to remember it the stronger that memory becomes. What essentially they are suffering or fail to recognise is that "Knowing the path is not synonymous to walking the path". But it's easier said or understood by reading it than done. If you seek permanent transformation, something fundamental has to be changed. Something which is the very root cause of it. Only inner transformation can help. Dynamic meditation given by OSHO is dynamite to realease the mental and body energy blockages which cause such and various other types of hurdles. It helps you energy center to move from Body to Mind to Heart to Being. http://www.oshodynamic.com/five-stages.html http://www.oshodynamic.com/five-stages.html Before adopting this meditation I have asked thousand questions about it's genuineness and how it works but none of that help. It is only by actually trying for few weeks I could see the change in my character. Note: I am not associated with any OSHO's meditation centre or their work. I am just someone who tried it and found it useful.

ataturk 8y ago

Maybe it isn't the individual sabotaging their success but rather outside individuals who have ego issues? I know from my own experience that I have had many back-biting, back-stabbing people attempt to steal my ideas, take credit for my work, and generally make my life hell because the people who actually do the work are easy targets by those attempting to usurp and manipulate. All I can say is that Eastern philosophy, especially the concept of Zen, and eliminating one's own ego, have kept me sane all these years. You have to remember that we are a tiny spec of dust in the universe and not get all wrapped up in these trivialities. Some days it is harder than others to realize that one truth.

gfs78 8y ago

The title is wrong. It should have been: How Intelligent People Sabotage Their Success. But is all filler anyway. Current western societies are amoral. So dumb vs intelligent is out of the question. If you don't have any regrets about f.u.c.k.i.n.g people and luck is on your side, you win. And big.