I have long believed this for I have seen far too many personal examples of it not to understand these facts:
1. Intelligence is no guarantor of success
2. Intelligence can become a definite detriment to your success (and the success of others) if you concentrate only upon your intelligence, your theories, and you ideas while you ignore or discount Reality and the way things actually are.
3. Intelligence has no direct correlation to Creativity and the smart man will practice developing his Creativity and not just his intelligence.
4. It is far more important to be Wise than merely intelligent. Wisdom breeds foresight and foresight breeds understanding of what is to come and that kind of understanding breeds Creativity.
Modern man is childishly and slavishly enamored of his own supposed intelligence. He’d do much.much better to seek Wisdom and to continually practice his Creativity than to merely cultivate his intelligence. I am in no way anti-intelligence, but the shortcomings of mere intelligence are obvious and everywhere evident if you but look with clear and critical eyes.
Here’s How Smart You Have To Be To Succeed
- Oct. 14, 2014, 4:13 PM
BurnAwayAt a certain point, creativity reaches a threshold, no matter how intelligent you are.
How smart do you have to be to succeed?
What about to become a creative genius? Did Picasso and Mozart use superhuman intelligence to create their masterpieces?
And similarly…
- How intelligent do you need to be to become a successful entrepreneur?
- How good does your training program need to be to become an elite athlete?
- How perfect does your weight loss program need to be to burn fat?
These are questions that we don’t often ask ourselves, but they are built into our beliefs and actions about many phases of life. We often think that the reason we aren’t succeeding is because we haven’t found the right strategy or because we weren’t born with the right talents.
Perhaps that is true. Or, perhaps there is an untold side of the story…
“The Termites”
In 1921, there was a psychologist at Stanford University named Lewis Terman who set out on a mission to conduct a research study unlike any before it.
Terman began by finding the 1,000 smartest students in California between the third grade and eighth grade as measured by IQ. [1] After much testing and searching, Terman gathered a final sample of 856 boys and 672 girls. The children became known as “The Termites.”
Terman and his team began testing the children in nearly every way you could image. They tracked their IQ, analyzed how many books each student had in their homes, took their medical histories, and on and on. But that was just the beginning.
What made Terman’s study unique is that it was the first longitudinal research study, which meant that Terman continued to track and test his subjects for years afterward. The study, which is now famously known as “Genetic Studies of Genius,” collected data from the students throughout their entire lives. Terman collected additional data in 1928, 1936, 1940, 1945, 1950, and 1955. After Terman died in 1956, his colleagues continued tracking The Termites in 1960, 1972, 1977, 1982, and 1986.
To summarize, the study started with the smartest group of children in the entire state of California and then tracked their success throughout their entire lives. Decades later, the researchers had discovered something very interesting…
Threshold Theory
The surprising discovery that came out of Terman’s study is best described by creativity researcher and physician, Nancy Andreasen…
“Although many people continue to equate intelligence with genius, a crucial conclusion from Terman’s study is that having a high IQ is not equivalent to being highly creative. Subsequent studies by other researchers have reinforced Terman’s conclusions, leading to what’s known as the threshold theory, which holds that above a certain level, intelligence doesn’t have much effect on creativity: most creative people are pretty smart, but they don’t have to be that smart, at least as measured by conventional intelligence tests. An IQ of 120, indicating that someone is very smart but not exceptionally so, is generally considered sufficient for creative genius.” [2]
Remember our question from the beginning: “Did Picasso and Mozart use superhuman intelligence to create their masterpieces?”
According to Threshold Theory, not necessarily. Being in the top 1% of intelligence has no correlation with being fantastically creative. Rather, there is a minimum threshold of intelligence that you need to have, and after that it comes down to a lot of deliberate practice, putting in your reps, and developing your skill set.
Threshold Theory in everyday life
If you look around, you’ll see that Threshold Theory applies to many things in life. Success is rarely as simple as “just work harder.” The fundamentals matter. There is a minimum threshold of competence that you need to develop in nearly any endeavor.
After that, however, the difference is between those who put in the work and those who get distracted. Once you have a basic grasp of the right things to do, it becomes about the consistency of doing the right things more often. Once you understand the fundamentals, it comes down to your habits.
Some examples…
Launch Port - The Open Door Business Blog 
Reblogged this on Wyrdwend and commented:
And there you go…
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