Certain people move through life at lightning speed in the direction of the stratosphere.
They make more progress in a year than most do in their life.
And when they do end up taking a wrong turn they course-correct and go back to winning without skipping a beat.
This gives them access to most of the spoils that help us thrive: resources, recognition, connections, etc.
As a culture, we tend to assume such people are smarter or more “brilliant” than others – and I’m not going to pretend there is no correlation.
But is intelligence really the main driver of success?
If intelligence equals success then all smart people should be raging success stories. And yet, there are plenty of brilliant people who are average by any other measure and vice versa. So, there must be some other factor involved.
I have several friends and mentors who are in fact outlier-successful.
Observing them, I recently had a hunch about what that factor is.
At first, I struggled to articulate it.
Then I saw this tweet from Midjourney Founder David Holz:
Many of my brilliant friends are paralyzed by their intellects. Thinking overwhelms doing. Many of my successful friends are less reflective but quick to action. They are always focused on moving forward. Making as many 'probably correct actions' as possible. A winning strategy.
There's a certain high you get by working with ideas inside your head. The alternative is the harsh and open battleground of an unrelenting world. In this sense, overthinking can be a kind of drug. Preventing you from fighting for the changes that you and your people most desire.
H/T to Zach for sharing.
He hits on a key observation:
“Many of my brilliant friends are paralyzed by their intellects.”
It’s thrilling to think through exactly how something works and envision the steps required to make it happen, especially if you have a tendency to intellectualize.
By working extensively with an idea in your head, you get the dopamine hit of doing that thing. And then, you lose motivation to actually do it.
He goes on to say, “…many of my successful friends are less reflective but quick to action.”
This is a distinction I’ve noticed about top performers: they start immediately.
It’s like they are entering a race without needing to know the route before they start. They just run in the general direction of the finish line. At each intersection along the way, they gather more data, figure things out, adapt, and adjust until they see the full road ahead. Not only do they not stop moving – they never stop accelerating. Before you know it they sprint across the finish line, often making it look easy from the outside.
In contrast, most people stand at the start worrying about what shoes to wear, have they had enough water beforehand, did they train enough, etc. Most of all, they need to know the exact route before they start running.
But in real life, knowing the way before you start is often impossible, which inevitably leads most of us to never start running.
This is what David means by “Many of my brilliant friends are paralyzed by their intellects”.
But the main point I want to hit, which is the core of my theory, is that I don’t think brilliance or intellect is the true cause for this “paralysis by analysis”.
I personally have had this problem big time (I’m writing in the past tense because I’m determined to change this).
To be fair, I do score above average on various intelligence tests (I once did a comprehensive test with a psychologist and scored 140 in the verbal IQ domain, which I guess is my top feature). But I'm nowhere near brilliant – certainly not by the standard of someone like David, who actually is.
Instead, I’d argue that it is a separate attribute that paralyzes us.
What is it, then?
I believe it’s courage – or rather the lack thereof.
In David’s words:
“…the alternative is the harsh and open battleground of an unrelenting world.”
Many, if not most, are afraid of entering the battleground. The smarter you are, the more likely you are to understand just how harsh and unrelenting it really is.
That’s the only reason “brilliant” people tend to overthink slightly more than ordinary people (but there is plenty of overthinking to go around).
It’s also why some people who – let’s not mince words here – simply aren’t that smart, but who possess the courage to enter the battleground, can reach extreme levels of success.
Some ventures (like Midjourney) require tremendous amounts of brainpower. Others require unique talent paired with consistent practice. But there are many, many paths to success that don’t. All they require is the courage to actually do it.
One obvious example to prove my point is going into an extremely financially leveraged position in order to buy real estate and collect rent.
This can be a profitable venture (which can be defined as “success”) but it can also lead to bankruptcy. What it doesn’t require is an above-average intelligence. So, someone who isn’t that smart but courageous enough to enter this particular battleground and take the risk – even if they know very little about real estate investing – can figure out how to succeed.
Going back to the previous analogy of running a race: starting before knowing the way is scary. Having the courage to do so over and over may very well be the key driver of success, in general.
This also gets easier with confidence, which only comes from previously and consistently doing what you set out to do. This is the main thing that makes success a virtuous cycle and failure a vicious one.
NOTE I: In this discussion, I’m ignoring many other factors that play into the results someone will end up with, such as luck, circumstance, culture, etc.
NOTE II: For clarity, I’m also referring to success as some one-dimensional thing when, more often than not, most of us don’t exactly know what true success would look like for us personally.
Let’s Not Overthink This
The idea that you need to be a genius to be successful is convenient because it gives us an excuse to not demand the same performance (or rather, courage) from ourselves.
Because of our bias toward “intelligence equals success”, we simply don’t have a reason to think that someone who isn’t that smart should be successful.
But I don’t believe that’s true. Given that you do possess the courage to enter the battleground, your level of intelligence will mostly determine the quality and level of opportunities you go after, not whether you become successful at that thing.
It is highly ironic of course, that I’ve spent hours writing this essay analyzing the metaphysics of success instead of courageously spending that time in my personal battleground. But I’m getting there. I hope you will too.
Remember, courage is not the absence of fear. It’s the ability to act in its presence.
So, stop stalling.
Take the first real action toward whatever you are dreaming of.
It won’t be perfect.
Just start.