Does being smart matter?

[Love_Deadlifts]

Whats is really weird is the number of people on this thread that have expressed that they wished they could trade their smarts for a little more work ethic. Ie that smartness has been a problem in their lives. Go ahead and count. Its really amazing.

Interesting right ?

Anyway I sincerely believe that if you think your too smart and that you've coasted then the problem is that your not challenged. And the reason your not challenged in your current line of work is that you dont care. You owe it to yourselves to find something your really passionate about it and pursue it. Actually you owe it to society and the community. Especially if you really are very smart.

Actually that's what i'm struggling with right now, (not that i want to sound supremely arrogant by saying i'm super smart or anything) i just graduated from college and i'm still working a crappy minimum wage job because nothing really appeals to me or interests me.

[vivek]

All said and done, I dont think anyone on this thread is super smart except maybe Mehdi (because of what he's done with Stronglifts.com). If we were are all super smart, we'd all have a booming business and be making so much money that we'd have our own personal trainers to research the best way to put on muscle.

Seriously though, everyone has been/is in your position. So that should make you feel better.

My own motto is to keep trying stuff till I find something I love. The worst thing I could do is to not keep trying different things. I personally think I have found something that I love doing (after 30 years on this planet) but I have my own problems like the american immigration system to deal with ...

[atypical1]

If we were are all super smart, we'd all have a booming business and be making so much money that we'd have our own personal trainers to research the best way to put on muscle.

There's a huge difference between being very smart and being very driven.

james

[wrenchhands]

Amen. The kids that were top of my class in school weren't geniuses, they just worked hard.

Me? I didn't work hard and thought I was better than them. You know what that makes me? Arrogant.

[vivek]

There's a huge difference between being very smart and being very driven.

james

Aha! My precise point is that talking about the difference between smart and being driven is inconsequential. I feel all it does is give you an excuse for not executing.

Another way to put it is "If your really smart then you'd also be driven." ...

-V

[wrenchhands]

There's a huge difference between being very smart and being very driven.

james

Another way to put it is "If your really smart then you'd also be driven." ...

-V

Drive is digging a hole with for 16 hours a day. Smart is inventing a backhoe.

[atypical1]

Another way to put it is "If your really smart then you'd also be driven." ...

-V

It's my experience that the two are not necessarily related to each other. I know a lot of very successful people who are no smarter than anyone else and I know a lot of really smart people who have done nothing with their lives.

james

[vivek]

Another way to put it is "If your really smart then you'd also be driven." ...

-V

It's my experience that the two are not necessarily related to each other. I know a lot of very successful people who are no smarter than anyone else and I know a lot of really smart people who have done nothing with their lives.

james

So my point is that those "smart" guys who do nothing with their lives are not really all that smart. You might find them to be intelligent for some very specific reason but I would have to say that they are not smart enough to realise
A) they could lead a much more fulfilled life.
B) what they should be doing to get to a more fulfiled life.

Self realization and then actualization is real smartness. Everything else is just average.

I ranked 290th out of every Indian school boy in 12th grade in 1995. Attended one of the best schools in India (ranked higher than MIT) etc ... I do NOT consider my self smart but I do realise how much a good work ethic could help me.

All said and done, we'd probably be spending our time better if we were trying to find a way to enhance our work ethic instead of debating "intelligence versus work ethic".

-Vivek

[TheUniqueOne]

Whats is really weird is the number of people on this thread that have expressed that they wished they could trade their smarts for a little more work ethic. Ie that smartness has been a problem in their lives. Go ahead and count. Its really amazing.

Interesting right ?

Anyway I sincerely believe that if you think your too smart and that you've coasted then the problem is that your not challenged. And the reason your not challenged in your current line of work is that you dont care. You owe it to yourselves to find something your really passionate about it and pursue it. Actually you owe it to society and the community. Especially if you really are very smart.

That's the problem I have noticed for smart people. Most people could need more self-discipline, and to get that you start easy. But if you start easy, smart people get discouraged because it's to "easy", and therefore they try to increase the self-discipline by adding more, and usually fail. Then two things could happen: 1.You end up tring again and up in the same pattern or 2.Give up

Ps.I also believe it's a third option: Accomplishing it, but I am still trying to figure that out

[vivek]

I really liked the way this article defines working hard. I've been doing it for the last 2 weeks on my own personal project (after work) and its yielding results.

http://calnewport.com/blog/2009/08/20/f ... at-a-time/

[vivek]

I just want to add that its not anything complex or superly insightful on its surface but it is effective.

-Vivek

[Jinithith]

I always had an easy time with academics, getting A's and the likes, but I've always been overweight and never all that athletic. Right up until 9th grade, I blamed genetics, and I had almost no muscle and I weighed 206,5 lbs.

Then I decided to take charge, screw genetics and do something about it. I started working out and doing whatever it took to get me in a better shape, and to compensate for my lack of hand-eye coordination, I started looking into muscle and endurance sports like crew, and made the team this march
I've lost over 65lbs of fat and gained muscle over the past two years, and just this summer, I discovered stronglifts, and I am making progress on all my lifts.

Just goes to show that some people may be gifted in some aspects and lacking in others, but those deficits can be ironed out if you really work at it.

I've also found out that body management adds, in some degree, to the street smarts (I define street smarts in this occasion as the ability to socialize with people) of a person. In my experience, after the gray cloud of "FAT" stopped tailing me, I became more confident and started being less self-conscious, especially around girls.
Another thing. Book smarts have helped me really understand how fatloss takes place and how to facilitate the quickest way to do so, but in the end, what really matters to me is actually going out there and doing things. What's the use of knowing the best ways of body management if you don't actually do it?

[itsbruce]

I work in software engineering. I have the misfortune, in my current job, to have worked in a department mostly staffed by people who were not smart enough and who were managed by people who were not smart enough. Believe me, this sucks. Software development is an abstract intellectual activity; it requires thought, design, analysis and the ability to visualise complex patterns. Dumb fucks (forgive me, but I've had months of battling these chimps) who think they can throw things together because they can manage a spreadsheet or did a bit of javascript work for some websites once, they just create chaos when let loose on complex tasks. These people can't reflect on what they do, they can't abstract the general principle from the specific example, they can't understand that taking some time at the start to think through a proper design will save days or weeks of wasted work in the future, they lack the judgement to tell good code from bad code. And because senior management don't pay enough attention (and lack experience), there's no proper authority to appeal to, so those of us who do have these skills waste much time on endless arguments with the incompetent.

After months of struggle to see standards respected and enforced, I've finally managed to tip the balance in favour of quality. Just by recruiting one smart guy into a team of five, I nearly doubled its skill level and productivity. Not soon enough to save the company, unfortunately; it's going to go under because people who weren't smart wasted much time doing stupid things.

In my job, being smart matters.

[Vlad]

The original question was if it matters for strength training. ... I am amazed that this thread is still active

[itsbruce]

I had that impression, but in my situation I need somewhere to vent