#35 - You Are Not So Smart

Hello,

Are you smart? Of course.

Are you smarter than others? Well, maybe not smarter than a few outliers like Nobel Prize laureates, but definitely smarter than average.

That's probably how you tend to think of yourself. Welcome to the world of self-delusion.

You Are Not So Smart

The Misconception: You are a rational, logical being who sees the world as it really is. You evaluate yourself based on past successes and defeats.

The Truth: You are as deluded as the rest of us, but that's OK, it keeps you sane. You excuse your failures and see yourself as more successful, more intelligent, and more skilled than you are.

When you compare your skills, accomplishments, and friendships with those of others, you tend to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. You are a liar by default, and you lie most to yourself. If you fail, you forget it. If you win, you tell everyone. When it comes to being honest with yourself and those you love, you are not so smart.

Beyond Smart

Imagine you had a choice between being really smart but discovering nothing new, and being less smart but discovering lots of new ideas. Surely you'd take the latter. I would. The choice makes me uncomfortable, but when you see the two options laid out explicitly like that, it's obvious which is better.

  • In his most recent article, Paul Graham posits that intelligence is not the only ingredient in having new ideas. What are other ingredients? Can we cultivate them?

A Technique for Producing Ideas

An idea is nothing more nor less than a new combination of old elements.

The capacity to bring old elements into new combinations depends largely on the ability to see relationships. Consequently, the habit of mind which leads to a search for relationships between facts becomes of the highest importance in the production of ideas.

  • First written in the 1940s, "A Technique for Producing Ideas" by James Webb Young introduces a 5-step method of generating new ideas:

    • I - Information - we gather raw material, both in relation to our immediate problem and the information that enriches our general knowledge.

    • D - Digestive process - we seek relationships across the material we've collected. We'll get tentative, partial ideas that we should put on paper. We'll get first tired, then hopeless.

    • E - Escape - We drop the problem completely and escape to other things that stimulate us.

    • A - Aha! Moment - we see the birth of an actual idea. It comes out of nowhere when we least expect it.

    • S - Submission to reality-check - we take our newborn idea to the world of reality.

Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas?

Why do promising people have unpromising ideas? The first & the biggest mistake: pick the first thing you thought of. If you're going to spend years working on something, you'd think it might be wise to spend at least a couple of days considering different ideas, instead of going with the first that comes into your head. You'd think. But people don't. Plunge in, by all means, but remember later to look at your idea in the harsh light of morning and ask: is this something people will pay for? Is this, of all the things we could make, the thing people will pay most for?

ABCD: Always Be Collecting Dots So You Can Always Be Connecting Dots

ABCD simply means Always Be Collecting Dots so you can Always Be Connecting Dots. And in this case, dots, some people would rather call it data. But when I talk about a dot, I'm talking about a morsel of information that matters to you. And if it matters to you, then it better matter to me. Because if I want to matter to you, I better care about something important to you.

  • Always Be Collecting Dots: Take as much interest in someone else as you'd like them to take in you.

  • Always Be Connecting Dots: Be intentional about leaving every interaction better than you found it.

  • I found the ABCD principle so powerful and absolutely essential in building relationships. (The Power of Hospitality - Colossus® (joincolossus.com))

With Goals, FAST beats SMART

According to conventional wisdom, goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. But SMART goals undervalue ambition, focus narrowly on individual performance, and ignore the importance of discussing goals throughout the year. To drive strategy execution, leaders should instead set goals that are FAST — frequently discussed, ambitious, specific, and transparent.

10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings

Like everyone, appearing smart in meetings is my top priority. Sometimes it can be difficult if you start daydreaming about your next vacation, your next nap or bacon. When this happens, it's good to have some fallback tricks to fall back on. Here are my 10 favourite tricks to quickly appear smart during meetings.

Stay healthy and smart, and don't take yourself so seriously.

Arina

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