LogFAQs > #969862311

It actually took me several years to work this out, so I can't be that smart! But I was sat in a meeting with one guy one time, and I'd often thought about how these people are so driven, and he was waffling on about something that I'd already grasped about half an hour ago. I had the feeling that I often have; this meeting offers me nothing, I'm deriving no value from this whatsoever. And it suddenly dawned on me that it's not just that these people are driven, they don't get bored, and the reason that they don't get bored is that routine stuff that would become tedious for an intelligent person is challenging enough to keep them interested. Or else, they're not intelligent enough to tackle more challenging or more creative work; this is the limit of their capabilities.

I must emphasise that I've liked virtually everyone that I've worked with. People have been very generous and complimentary towards me. I haven't met any horrible egotists, far from it. But I did come to realise that intelligence is a disadvantage if you want to be successful, unless you find a creative field or something you're passionate about. If you can identify that, you can invest your intelligence in it. If you don't find that, your life will be akin to continually battering your head against a brick wall for 60 years.