Try moving to a different field, especially a high-value one where raw intelligence is less important than "street smarts"/intuition/flair. There are many field

Try moving to a different field, especially a high-value one where raw intelligence is less important than "street smarts"/intuition/flair. There are many fields where the smartest person in the room doesn't have a Ph.D. or impressive academic/technical credentials. I often try to reinvent myself every couple of years. Moving from technical fields that I'm comfortable with into less technical fields where I'm forced to be a beginner has helped remind me what it's like to ramp up from an ignorant state. It's uncomfortable but worth it. The analytical mindset (which cerebral people tend toward) is disproportionately powerful for tackling various problems, but there are many open-domain problems--laden with tons of uncertainty--that only yield to heuristic approaches and trial-and-error. It's useful to learn what it actually feels like to be engaged with problem domains where analytical approaches aren't as effective. Here's something to consider: take a sampling of large multinational U.S. companies and look at the biographies of their executives. You'll likely find that most of them only have a bachelor's degree and often from middling schools, yet they are at the helm of these large corporations. It's tempting to think all of them got to where they were because they knew how to play the politics game in their orgs -- which is true in part -- but having worked with folks of this ilk, I would submit that there are some non-technical skills that these folks have that we tech folks don't often recognize.