@@CreatedByKC yea but that's what smart is. How fast you can learn something if you try. Why would I want to spend 500 hours to learn something that some genius learns in 1 hour. Coding is legit chinese to me. I would have to study it for 1000s of hours to learn.
@@germ4613 coding is pretty simple if you are not breaking the limits. However some people learn to code and they quit because It's not for them simply
When complimenting someone, instead of praising them by saying, ".. you're so smart". Instead, say "you must've worked really hard for that". They'll continue to work hard to achieve a desired outcome instead of relying on 'natural abilities'.
@@tbcstuff3634 cool. it's not a foolrpoof strategy, but, anecdotally, this strategy seems to be more effective in 'getting the most out of people' ... but agree to disagree, do whatever you feel most effective
Socrates said that btw. Imagine you have a circle, the more you know, the bigger it gets (the knowledge is what is inside). The circumference (the line that draws the circle) is what you don't know. The bigger the circle is, the bigger is the circumference . This is a nice way to picture it.
I joined MIT as a grad student last year and I was humbled realllllly quickly by how everyone is just simply much smarter than I am. I realized that I fall into the same bucket you described and the only way I was able to join and graduate is by working 10x harder than whatever load is required for a course/project
I'm also like this, I joined computer science 3 years ago and made the mistake of doing things the same way as my much smarter friends. I failed for a while before I could adapt.
Yeah, and if I were working only 3x harder then I would naturally think that you were just simply smarter than I, when all I had to do was work 7x more harder. No one sees the work people put in and just assume that it come effortlessly to those who appear to excel in class. Same as when one thinks: "screw putting my hand up to ask the teacher to repeat what he just taught, cause I did not understand it, because no one else is putting their hand up". The fact is, no one bloody understood but ego gets in the way, as you don't want to look like the dumb kid.
At least you got into MIT. Many of us wouldn't. Anyhow, when I was younger I used to resent not being as smart as others. But as I grew older I realized two fundamental truths. There will always be somebody smarter, prettier, more talented than you are. It's called evolution...that's the nature of the universe. In any event, I also came to appreciate that what ever our skill set or level of cleverness, human beings are more like a hive creature than anything else in nature. We collectively create probably the most successful organism if not in the entire universe, pretty close to it. We each benefit from the brilliance and cleverness of many millions of other humans. We don't have to go out each day and hunt or scavenge for food like every other creature on earth. And everything we enjoy and take for granted from the iPhone to electricity, to the internet was created by many millions of smart people. Why resent that? So the most important thing we can do as humans is give back, not only to human kind, but also to Planet Earth. We are all part of the ecosystem and if we don't take care of it, it won't take care of us.
Clear thought is more important than pure intelligence. Obviously the combination of the two is really optimal but if i had to choose clear in thought would be better overall
I've always been praised for being the smartest in the room ever since I was a kid. I'm an ESL teacher now learning to code to change careers and realizing that I've only been called smart because I was trying harder than everyone else not because I was actually smart
this is me too. I just did my work while everyone else played around but i wasn't smart. There's also the fact that I took AP courses which made people assume I was smart but I actually wasn't
Growing up, I was _that_ smart kid. I think I was actually reasonably smart, I was writing stories at 2 and doing multiplication at 3. But in the end I think it crippled me. I was the kid who only needed 20 minutes to study. Therefore I *always* had to be the kid who only needed 20 minutes. Needing to study longer would mean I’m not actually smart. But as topics get harder, everyone has to study more. And as everyone else studied for days or weeks, I had trouble walking over my big fat ego to study more than a few hours. Everyone would keep saying _“if only you applied yourself…”_ and I was *terrified* of proving them wrong. What if I couldn’t do it even if I tried? My whole _thing_ was being smart. If I wasn’t smart, I’d be nothing. On top of that, I can’t live with mediocre achievements. I got into the best university of my country, but I didn’t get into US Ivy League due to my lack of work ethic. I’ve never been able to feel proud. No matter what I do, I should’ve done better. I’m really working on developing work ethic. At my university, I don’t know how many people are as “smart” as me, but most people are almost definitely *better* than me. Because they can actually put in the work. I’m working on being more like them.
perfect description of how i'm feeling right now, thanks for sharing. As Einstein said: "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."
Yo I’m going through the exact same thing :). Don’t worry it is all normal, right now I am studying law/economics in the best university in France #40. I am originally from Mexico and can speak 4 languages fluently, so I had the chance to study there. I realized that I was not as smart as everyone else and that I had no preparation for this type of pressure, I was always praised by my teachers in high school and was always seen to be the smartest person in the certain room, since I didn’t need to study for exams and would still get good grades. Needless to say, my ego did get crushed by the time I got to school and I realized that not having a good work ethic is the worst thing not to have in college. Nevertheless, it is also important to enjoy whatever we are doing in life, and truth is I don’t enjoy economics, but I do enjoy doing things like law and philosophy. I’m changing majors next year and although I’ll have to begin from scratch, I am thankful that I had the chance to actually study here and to know what to expect for the future, it is much more easier to work and to be disciplined whenever you set up goals for yourself, and to wake up in the morning to do something you enjoy. So for real don’t be too hard on yourself and give yourself some credit, you’ll get that work ethic and we’ll make it through :).
I've been on the same page as you for most of my life. Luckily, on my 2nd year of college (engineering) I hit the wall but I could reach everyone else's work ethic. My problem actually came after that. Even when I was able to put the work, I always thought that being smart was equal to being successful and rich, and I HAD to be that. It took a long time for me to change my mindset and expectations. Now I realize that the only difference between the rest and myself is that I'm probably the one that solves most problems and retains more information, but that doesn't mean that I have magically traced the path to success. I've fallen into bad career choices but I'm not less valuable for them. I've learned a lot from my mistakes. There's a RU-vidr who is a psychiatrist and some of his podcasts talking about this got very deep into me, I'll give you the link if you wanna give it a look. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-QUjYy4Ksy1E.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-kPZwR3v_UyI.html
I am the guilty party that would look over the notes 20 minutes before the test and passed. Being able to do that really fks you up when you’re actually trying to do something genuinely hard.
@@hopelessfool6722 nice, I never studied anything and didn't read books or articles or podcasts (anything thought provoking) and was stuck in the social media algorithm for years and recently I started becoming more and more aware of how my perfectionism affected my growth (made me procrastinate my whole teenage years away) and I am finally more organised and willing to sit down and put in the hard work, but I have dug myself into a mountain-deep hole and it takes all of my energy and effort to climb out of that hole.
@@lampsizgod no, because lack of discipline will really f u in life, unable to focus, make a plan, schedule and organize isn't something youll wish you have.
Are you sure it’s not the case that those people picking up concepts in 20 minutes that took you hours have already been exposed to the concept beforehand? Einstein put a shit ton of hours into math and physics. I always hear about these people who can just magically understand concepts and pick up skills. I’ve never seen anything like that. I went to 5 high schools and never came across anyone like that. In college I haven’t come across anyone like that. Maybe I can only witness something like that in an Ivy. My guess is that if you dig deep enough you will find that they put the time in too, probably just long before they needed it or indirectly through another skill or concept that’s related. I remember people flunking out of beginner CS courses who I thought were smarter than me. I wasn’t one of those people flunking because I was already learning a lot of the concepts in my free time beforehand because I found it interesting. If you’re the type of person who reads philosophy for fun, then you ace all your humanities courses without studying much, are you really just a genius? That’s such a ridiculous notion when you think about it. There are so many ways in which your hobby is giving you direct and indirect exposure to a shit ton of the concepts that will be addressed in those courses. This idea has never made any sense to me. As humans, we use other concepts/ideas to build on others. This is why a baby can’t do Calculus and Physics or comprehend complex philosophical concepts. They simply do not have the intellectual building blocks for it. If someone is picking things up fast, they almost certainly put the time in elsewhere to develop the building blocks necessary to grasp that concept quicker and easier. There are certainly different degrees in natural ability, but unless you’re mentally handicapped, I think the difference between the average and high-achieving is negligible. When it comes down to it, everyone has to work hard to accomplish anything worthwhile.
100% agreed. On top of that, while I think people whose minds are considerably/naturally gifted in certain areas definitely have a head start, they often lack the objectivity or “big picture” thinking necessary to take advantage of it in the long term. That objectivity usually comes from being an underdog, aka hardwork and experience.
I couldn't have put it better myself. I would only add that a genius in one domain is average or below average in other domains, whereas a genius in those other domains is only average or below average in the former domain. You might call this the law of equity amongst humans: time is limited and our ability to study is limited by time, therefore if we devote our time to a singular domain of knowledge, we lack the potential understanding from other domains of knowledge, thus we may excel at one thing and be plainly average at other things. A good example is mathematics and music. While the two are obviously related via harmonics, if one studies mathematics and doesn't dabble much in music, he may become a genius mathematician but will never perform in an orchestra. Vice versa one will never expect to see Kanye West solve high level math problems between albums. In essence, humans are creatures of limitation and so our individual abilities reflect this inherent limitation. The only exception to this rule is intelligence if intelligence is defined as the ability to quickly process knowledge effectively (IQ is a measure of this). In that case an individual of high IQ may be able to pick up mathematics and multiple musical instruments from a young age and be precocious at all of them, but then there will be *other* fields of knowledge he will always be limited in simply due to the limitation of time and, perhaps, his interest in those other fields. Therefore genius is really a poor descriptor for successful individuals. It implies some next-level trait in human evolution when genius/smartness is nothing more than a combination of two factors: dedicated time to a specific field of knowledge, and the inherent ability of an individual to process information quickly and effectively. The latter quality is rather rare, but the former quality can be developed by literally everybody. It's the people who have both qualities in spades, however, who history tends to remember for thousands of years as universal geniuses, and that fact simply cannot be denied.
Yeah, I remember in college in my freshman Physics I class (for my mechanical engineering degree) I took an exam and finished first out everyone in a class of about 150 people. Everyone else had their heads down and was still diligently working. Usually I would finish before other people on other exams too, but that time I beat everyone by about 10 minutes. I took basically that class and physics II as part of my AP physics class. The exam didn't count towards my major (it counted as a physics class for non-majors) and I didn't pass the AP exam anyway, but seeing the material before made that class and physics II a piece of cake. I took a social psychology class to boost my GPA (I tested out of a lot of early classes and got no grade for them), and the professor threw up the distribution of scores on one exam: I was the only one out of about 400 people to get a perfect score on one exam. They asked me to TA it afterwards, lol. Part of the reason I did well is because psychology is just a fun subject to study. In my free time I liked to listen to podcasts and read books on the subject so and I was familiar with a lot of the concepts before. I only read the material for the exam once in the hallway about 3 hours beforehand. SAT scores are highly correlated with IQ score. I'm brighter than most people but not super bright: my SAT score only correlates to an IQ of about 117. I'm only a little more than one standard deviation away from the mean (you're not getting any Nobel prizes out of me). I do wonder what it would be if I retook it now, since I know men's brains keep developing well into their 20's, but on a certain level I'd rather not clearly know.
As long as you have an acceptable baseline, it's all, and I do literally mean all, about the hour count. That's by far the dominant factor. Nothing else comes close. Now you can't just put in hours for the sake of putting in hours. They have to be meaningful and focused. So if you have the minimum qualifications and aptitude as long as you "work hard", you'll be just fine. Compare where you end up after 2000 hours and compare that to someone "talented" who started out the same as you after 2000 hours. You won't be nearly as far off as you would imagine. 80% of life is literally showing up and putting in an honest effort. The other 20% is just dumb luck. "Talent" I consider the equivalent of an early game booster. It helps early on, but you can be rather quickly outcompeted.
There were 3 types of people at my school: 1. People who said they did not study but actually studied a lot at home(common) 2. People who said they did not study and did not study(common) 3. People who said they they studied and did actually study(rare)
This is so true. Being called "smart" and "talented" by your parents only boosts your ego, which in turn tells you "you don't need to study for that exam" or "you failed that test? what a bad test that was". You HAVE to break it. You have to realize you are the equivalent of the work you're putting in.
Realizing I'm not as intelligent as I was told throughout my whole childhood, and for a good part of my tens, was a blow. I'm not attractive or interesting or funny enough, so being smart was my only strength. Learning I'm just average and was experiencing a "kind of big fish, little pond" situation made me very, very depressed and ruined my chances of succeeding in life. Now, in my forties, and a failure. Not because I'm not wealthy or famous or successful. Just because I feel unhappy and both disappointed and disappointing. Expectations placed on you by suggestion are a terrible and sure way to ending up as a sad human being. When you think you're average from the get go you work harder and actually accomplish stuff.
I see you. Solidarity. We've still got time, though. I'm turning 40 later this year, G-d willing, and I'm planning on making the most out of my next 80 years on earth ❤️
I believe in you. I believe you will be able to accept yourself and the world and find that anyone can make a mark in this Earth just by their willingness to help it to be better.
@@veniqer I haven't given up yet. I'm learning a new skill, quite a challenging one, coding, and it's... coming along. Not as easy as I wanted it to be, but it's not supposed to be, right? There's still hope. 80 years is still a considerable amount of time :D
My mom was a baseball fan and she always told me that Pete Rose wasn't the most naturally talented player but he worked harder and longer than the others. Years later, he eventually made the Hall of Fame and I remembered my mother's words. So when I had a kid, I always told her that it doesn't matter how smart she may be, there will always be people out there who are ahead of her in brains. What matters is being willing to work at what you want.
I know you bro. I am also not smart but love programming. I failed in public exam and spent 2 more years than others to get into college, but I didn't give up and now become a software engineer!
Shit homie, this hits home really hard. I didn't get this concept until I was 27, always looking for excuses as to why I wasn't where I wanted to be. It all boils down to being hard on yourself and actually doing the goddamn work, every fucking day, no shortcuts, no excuses. Grind. You're not special, you're not entitled to anything, work for it, get to it.
I completely agree with your sentiments here in this video. I made the same realization around your age where I realized I was not the smartest person in most rooms. This is an uncomfortable feeling to confront oneself with as the ego does just about everything it can to work against this idea. On paper, it might seem like "I'm smart". I have a PhD in computer science from a top school. I've written numerous papers on quantum computation, run my own business, and do a number of other "smart-sounding" things. However, in all of those pursuits, I have had to put in way more effort, time, dedication, etc. to get similar results to my peers. I've realized that it's not about your initial "intellect roll", but more so about what you do with that information. In my case, I've just decided to apply the same techniques you've outlined here--hard work, tracking, and consistency. In the end, I've seen that hard work and consistency steamrolls brute "strength" in the form of intelligence. From one dull penny in the fountain to another, I salute you :)
It's about how interested you are in something, whether that be mathematics, tech or whatever. Some people know every single detail about their favourite sport and had they had the same interest in, say physics, they also would be considered as very smart. Those in your class you considered smart were highly interested in doing well in exams and thus developed efficient systems of memorisation or were interested enough to study when they needed to study, and enjoyed studying. Their egos boosted when they saw the results, further motivating them to study more.
Hahaha. So true. The ego boost was definitely a big factor. I don't think I ever put in as much effort into anything than I did junior/senior year of high school and junior year of university. I stopped caring and my grades tanked. The drop off was swift, enormous, and and made me realize, "wow, I'm literally dead average". Might as well focus on what interests me.
That is true. I am not smart but I enjoy what I do and therefore spend time and effort learning it therefore making me good at it. It is like a positive feedback cycle. On the otherhand if you hate(say maths) you are probably not going to want to do it therefore not be good at it. Then again if you are not good at maths you are probably going to hate it as well. Basically, I think it is best specialising in a skill or industry you enjoy and love but can also profit from it. Something that can land you a good middle class jobs and has further career options. Heaps of people absolutely loves sports like football/soccer, video games, Martial arts, youtube etc but you are normally competing against everyone in the whole world and only a tiny% of the elite can make a living from it in certain industries.
Perfectionism is another part that I develop thinking that I'm 'smart'. The expectation that 'smart' people don't make mistake really thrown me down the hole of mental issues. Just like video mentions, if I took so long to understand or do something, I would get frustrated with myself. Slowly the fear of failure develop, the needs to keep the image of being 'smart' (pretending), I stop working and be in denial. Now I am trying to climb out of this hole that I dug for myself. My best advice is do what YOU can, don't compare yourself to others, and focus on your own specific needs. Most importantly, love and learn more about yourself (ability, capability, skill and environment, etc...), who you really are without lies that you told yourself. I hope you the best.
It is SO weird that someone has felt the same experience I did growing up. My childhood was surrounded by video games, TV, and playing around in school. When middle school was over, I found out my crush was planning on applying to this high school magnet program that apparently had lots of Asians. So my 8th-grade self made the decision to apply there and I got in. My life changed after I entered that high school. I was living in a new world. My peers were not only ambitious and hardworking - they were incredibly talented. Presidential Scholars, competing in international competitions and other insane feats. When I was a sophomore, the realization dawned upon me that I was not the smart kid my mom said I was. No - I was leagues asunder everyone. Whether it was presentation skills, making novel critiques against arguments, being articulate in speech, or just flat out being a faster learner: they were always on top. I found out I would have to study 3-4x as hard as my peers just to keep up with the content. I was struggling. And now I have to say that I'm not really satisfied with your solution mindset of "damn I can't be that far off." Because what if you are actually very far off? What if you found out you have severe cognitive impairments like a working memory that is faulty even against middle schoolers? What does it actually mean: could we provide a description or qualitative evaluation as to how far off an individual can be before we realize their life truly does have some terrible, harsh disadvantages? Telling an individual who has severe limitations or impairments that they should just try harder, I think, wouldn't be great. In a way, we make them feel responsible for something they have no control over (and this is an enduring criticism of the growth mindset). It just doesn't account for innate talent or acknowledge it enough. I, as an individual, have a working memory that is below what is normal. And I know because my memory affects every aspect of my life - my relationships, school performance, self-esteem, my job, everything. I have lived and experienced my frustration.. I understand that, to some people, I may come across as idolizing intelligence. That is something I am also considering. Intelligence isn't what I should value. What I should value are principles of being a moral and good human being. But that response still doesn't really feel relieving. It feels more like a superficial band-aid of "hey bro just don't think about it." I intend not to come across as rude in my comment. I just wanted to share some of my thoughts regarding innate intelligence.. such a depressing topic.
i feel you on the working memory stuff, it makes me feel like i'm actually cognitively impaired.... and like you say, it affects every single thing i do, including just holding a conversation. i don't know what the solution is ...
I feel your pain bro. l also was told l was smart when l was a kid, but in uni realized that wasn’t true. I struggle with basic concepts all the time, and as l age memory and brain power slowly get worse. I try mental exercises to keep up but man, it’s so hard sometimes, and you can’t feel any payback.
Same, my memory is failing me and affecting my daily life and relationships whether family or friends. I want to get my brain scanned but i need to get a job first to have the money
It's refreshing to see someone who has come out of their shell in regards to life ambitions. I relate to being a terrible student and disorganized employee, although in my case I think it was more of a lack of direction than thinking I was brighter than my peers. I'm now in my mid-20's and I'm finally pursuing the things I actually want and need, for the first time in my life. I look back at my younger self and I don't know what I was thinking.
You describe my situation perfectly, I'm in my mid twenties and life has humbled me so much. I'm trying to let go of the negative perceptions of myself and move forward slowly after finding out something I would love to pursue.
It's a strange thing, how people seem to love it so much more to get complimented on their intelligence, rather than on their hard work. It's weird, intelligence is to a large part just a perk you got for free, like a big mole or a short nose, but results of hard work are actually real achievements....
And the exact reason you then tell them as the receiver of the compliment: It's not because of intelligence, but hard work that they can and should put in as well!
but intelligent people once they get to know that they are smart double down on their potential with working hard. imagine this. if i get 100/100 on math, by just reading the book a week before the exam, and if it is something that takes almost avg energy(effort), and gets you 4 times the ego boost or dopamine hit then you'd want nothing but that even more in your life. some of the high iq friends of mine work more than 9 hours a day because that makes them tons of money and tons of money makes them super happy and boosts their social dominance and status.
It’s because as an intelligent individual, you have a naturally higher potential which is precious and rare. Hard-work can be learned, intelligence can’t
Never saw an advice video this related to my self-experience. As an Asian who has always been “pushed” into some sort of elite group and grown up with imposter syndromes. It made me constantly ruminate on the concept of “self” and eventually I realised that “self” is just an object/instance from collective consciousness to individual awareness.
Thanks for the video Kevin. I do realize that realizing I’m not smart drives me to work harder as it tells me I’m not entitled to anything in life. Kudos 💪
Golden advice here. It’s so easy as a parent to fall into the ‘tell your kids their smart for their self esteem’ trap. Teaching them the value of hard work is responsibly preparing them for a successful life.
Yeah even I had this problem of thinking myself as smart. When I was learning to code, everyday I would try to solve coding problems in the evening, and whenever I would solve one I would say out loud in my brain "Oh.. I am smart" and after that I would approach another coding problem and whenever I would get stuck. I would curse myself l. After looping through this a lot of times. I realized that I am not smart it was just hard work and constant learnings, that were paying the off.
Thank you for sharing! Very humbling. I come from a similar circumstance and my parents had given me the same advice. I realized in high school I wasn't the smartest and that I needed to put in more hours/effort to achieve the same results as my peers. This still applies now that I'm 30 when I set my goals with self-learning and in my career. Having a GRWOTH MINDSET is pivotal in life + be consistent with how you're investing in yourself!
1. Would your past self be happy with your future self if they saw that you were making the exact same mistakes? 2. Nothing changes in life unless you make the change. 3. Anything you want if it's something worth achieving is going to take time, pain and effort. 4. Improvement in life is all about slow incremental change.
Honestly, I wish more people were humble. No one is truly smart, what makes us "smart" is hard-work and constant studying. If you are dedicated to something, you will succeed. Many of us who have gone through great high schools and universities realize/realise this. Especially at the University level, things get very competitive if you are studying at a top 20-25 Engineering/STEM school.
Actually wrong, there are people born so smart they pick up a math book and in a few months famous mathematicians fly over to get them in university at age 10. But anybody can increase their intelligence, it’s all about daily training your brain challenge it
Yeah this is wrong. Some people can learn faster, learn higher level concepts and at greater levels of abstraction. Others do not have the same capabilities. IQ is quite a robustly studied topic. However, someone who learns 4x as fast and only studied a topic 10 hours can still be definitely outdone by someone learning at 1x who studies 100 hours. But intelligence is still absolutely at different levels. In my accounting classes for instance I was tutoring other students while having not studied the material at all. I only showed up and listened in class. This was true for almost all of college. I rarely studied, only enough to be sure I understood the topics and had all the details right, often the night before the test, and yet others struggled greatly. I am no better of a human for having been born with gifts others do not possess as much of, and there are others with more than me. I am thankful for these gifts. I have not earned it, and even fall short of being worthy of it, because as a result of things being easier, I am lazier. I don’t have the same work ethic and discipline, which I admire and want to improve
Brilliant! It’s taken me all my life to figure this out, so you are way ahead of the game. You have to be honest with yourself and do the best you can with what you have. Being smart, or handsome or rich or whatever is not going to get you where you want in life. Effort, dedication and patience and discipline will. I predict you’ll do a hell of a lot better than most people in life because they haven’t understood the simple truths about life.
Simple truths about life is not "work like mad to get the best job/salary", or is it? You can appreciate your intelligence without being a hard worker, all this is very new to mankind, people used to be recognized for what they are/have, but now you have to work for years just to get shitty jobs, it makes no sense...
Man what you say is so useful that i wish i had this mindset when i was so young. Its nice that you realized what's the best thing for you and what you really should go after in life. That probably saved you years of frustration unnecessary failures even a failed life. So best luck from now on.
Appreciate the advice Kevin, when you described your past self, I feel like I'm at that point in my life right now. If I truly want to achieve my goals, I have to change my approach to studying and be more disciplined overall. Glad this video popped up into my feed because I just finished taking my CS final but I think I bombed it haha. Anyways, love the advice, not only is it applicable in a career aspect, but life in general too. p.s: drop the arm routine bro, your arms are massive lol
One of the more interesting moments in my life was when it really clicked that nobody really knows how much they don't know. You cannot know how much you don't know, which is a very interesting mindset to have because it just makes learning things feel really rewarding because the more you know, the more options you have.
Just wanted to say thanks for putting out all this content. I relate to a lot of your problems and I find a lot of comfort in watching your videos! I always feel super dumb when I don’t get a concepts when others get it faster than me but I’ll never give up!! Thanks KC 🙏🏻🙏🏻
10 years ago, when I was in art college, I was crushing it in every class, especially in human sciences. Now today, I'm taking a simple course in programming, where the road has been bumpy. A lot of my classmates are getting concepts much faster than I do. It was really disheartening to fail classes after repeatedly hearing people around me say how "smart" I am. What I realized is that, it's not about how smart I am, it's about how I try to understand things. My brain is not trained to do abstract thinking, and it's really hard to make it do so anyway. So yeah, we don't often know where our brain's strengths lie until we give different things a try.
Yah never know, those kids in your class with you could have prior programming knowledge. I’ve been programming for years and if I took a class at this point I’d be way ahead, so I’d probably look really “smart” when really I just know a bit more and have an advantage. I think some people truly do pick stuff up faster, but you never know how ahead someone already is :) Blessings to you. Becoming a developer is hard !
Thanks so much for making this video. I've felt like this a lot. It takes me forever to remember something well. The more I try to be something I'm not the more insecurity I put into my mind. If I don't make it an insecurity I can be at peace with myself.
This is such good advice that I wish I had learned sooner. I actually am smart, I was that kid in school that never studied and got A's on tests. But I also have severe ADHD and with it some pretty big cognitive deficits. When I got into college I flunked out because I had never taken the time to address my deficits. It took me from 18-28 to finish my undergraduate. But after I was done I got an interview at a top tech consulting firm and spent nearly 200 hours in 2 weeks studying to do as best I could on the interview. And I got the job. Humility goes a long way. I'm sure there are many other folks like me who have aptitude in certain areas and not in others. Humbling yourself and putting in the work is the only way. This is the first video I've seen of yours and it really struck a chord. You've earned my sub.
I believe this is very useful not just for people who "aren't smart", but everyone. Because probably, even if you were the smartest person on the planet, taking work seriously would improve your results.
amazing, i’ve been trying to get this through my head for years (freshman in college that really started to struggle as a high school freshman) and this might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back!
Thank you for opening my eyes from this I can relate because my dad also told me that he failed alot of his classes but he became successful he told me that also do you best and work hard
Same thing here. I even got in a loop of: 1. Failing and losing faith in my "smartness" 2. Being more humble, listening to others and more careful 3. Succeeding and regaining faith in my "smartness" 4. Which lead to another fail due to over confidence in my capabilities. And oh boy, successes are very satisfying and these fails are devastating.
Wow.. I've never related so much to a 5 minutes video before.. I am a lazy person, I've always think that I'm smarter than others and I don't need anyone's advices. Meeting people that are smarter than me doesn't help much due to my mind that keep on making excuses. thank you soo much for sharing. It really means a lot to me. I'm at 11th grade and currently is preparing for my overseas study. This video just enlighten me and now I know what to do to maximize my preparation.
It’s crazy that the algorithm suggested this video to me, this describes me to a T. Similar background, similar advice from my dad, same mindset growing up. Thanks for the message 🙏🏽
Just what I needed to hear. I think I was on the brim of falling into a similar mind set. Realizing that we are not geniuses is the smartest thing one can do.
Yeah, your 'smart' friends had probably been coached by their 'smart' parents via the social environment they constantly provided for them. Reading, writing and speaking in a native language is a phenomenal achievement that most kids around the world achieve around the age of five, given the opportunity.
@@Tom-dn6zy Learning languages isn't just memorization but also requires grammar and the ability to read between the lines. There is a critical period for children to learn a native language.
I know that feeling. When I was young I was in a really good school, so when I went to high school I meet people who were from not so good schools and I was doing really good with nearly no effort and one of the teachers once told my mother that I am lazy and I throw all my work on the fact that I thought I am smart and when it was the time to do the official exams I was confident that I will do good because my school marks were good so I wasted so much time and when the marks were out many of the people that I thought I was smart than turned out to have better marks than me I was shocked then and it was the time I understood that I am not that smart I just had an unfair advantage for some time and I had to work harder to stay at the top so when I went to university I started to study day by day and I put way more effort than before and my marks were good this time even though I was not the best at the class but I was happy because I know I deserved every good mark I got.
I can definitely relate to this. At first it's hard to accept that maybe you're smarter than average but you're not a genius, but it's suuuper healthy. Good for the ego, you go easier on yourself, you work harder, you listen better and you learn more. You stop thinking you know everything straight away (somewhat)
This is so relatable. All throughout engineering school, I felt intellectually inferior to many of my peers. I had to study harder than them and for longer. I didn't have much free time and when I did, I procrastinated it away because I was so tired from studying/doing assignments that I just wanted to relax. I managed to get pretty decent marks, but the issue is that I don't feel knowledgeable in the subject matter, and since I basically just study to do well in assessments, I can't remember much after the final exam. Now that I've graduated, I still don't feel confident enough that I can work in my field competently. And it has lead to me pivoting my career choice
I think if this careerfield is what you really want I think you could still try becaus I don't think everybody remembers everything after they graduate and I think if you work in a job you will learn al lot of the things you need to know for this job learning doesn't stop after collage everybody continiues to learn and you will probably not need everything you've learnd in Collage most people learn the important in their job some things can't be studied you have to experience them I'm not saying that it's a sure thing that you would have success but it's also not sure that it would be a Desaster and I think you could still go into this careerfield I think way more people relate to you than you think who are succesfull Plus theres a Chance that you underestimate your Potential and what you are capable of doing :)
Question---> Can you visualize an apple 🍎 in your minds eye? How much detail do you see? Can you see elaborate color variations in the skin, or its textured pores? Is it wet, does it have a stem? Where is the apple, by itself, or in a bowl, on a table, in a sculptures hand, etc? Or... do you only see 👀 black ⚫️ space and the apple is just an idea 💡like something from a list, but not physically visible in your mind's eye? I ask because only seeing black is called aphantasia, and makes learning complex "imaginative" topics like physics almost impossible. People have varying degrees of imagination, for instance you might see... Just black or darkness. A foggy outline of an apple. A solid 🍎 like this emoji with no texture. A detailed apple with moist skin in a fruit bowl with other different fruits. Maybe it's on a table or on a kitchen counter. A man standing on the back of a horse 🐎 , riding through a forest full of other wildlife, who is balancing a teetering apple on his head like a circus performer. Then an archer 🏹 shoots an arrow through the apple 🍎 and it explodes into a thousand multi-colored pieces while also exposing its moist white center. The latter is hyperphantasia, or overly imaginative. But if you have trouble learning "imaginative" topics, various visualization exercises may be something worth exploring 🤔.
@@KentoCommenT 😄 I saw a planet sized 🍎 being closely orbited in space...like a giant apple 🍎 deathstar scene. It was a collaboration between George Lucas and Michael Bay and it was aiming to keep the Dr. away... from the planet.
An important note for people on the higher end is to be understanding when someone does not get something as quick as you do. Their brain could have simply just not had the same click as yours when you finally began to understand something.
Great Video KC, I'm also living in the I'm smart mindset and I always looked to the majority of advices as a worthless monologue. I got inspired from this video to consider myself as not smart as I assuming, and I will start looking around and evaluate advices, and set up a process to achieve my goals Thanks
Good points, and I want to add two things: It's only natural that you, and everyone wants to get the work done with minimal possible efforts, but the dangerous thing to be aware of here is a delusion that you're doing enough. And maybe one should think of being smart, but work hard, otherwise you may end up thinking that something is "too big for me, because I'm not so smart"
i had a similar experience. my freshman year high school history teacher tried to tell us to think like yoda from star wars, "do or do not, there is no try". have an internal locus of control and do not worry whether you're smart enough to achieve a goal, just be disciplined and keep trying, even if you initially fail. i always knew i didn't have that mindset. it took me almost ten years to stop comparing myself to others and think like yoda, and it changed my life. i wish i had a lot earlier.
OMG! I had the same problem. I had friends who were like “I didn’t prepare for the midterm, but I got full”. I hated such people, because they make midterm look easier for me
The reverse was true for me. Kids and sometimes even teachers would say how I'm not smart and how I work hard, teachers as a compliment, but kids out of jealousy; it created an insecurity that I'm not smart at all and it made me lazy and try to do things with minimal effort to prove to myself I have decent intelligence; it worked in high school but now I'm struggling in university
Same! How do u plan on moving on? For me, my entire life I was called stupid by teachers, kids, parents, family. My mom told me I was a mutation in the family. Even if I work very hard to get good scores, I am always reminded that I needed to work way harder than everyone else and how it's just luck. I've reached a point where I have given up, but I want to get back to how I was before. I just don't know the steps towards that :(
@@cookiecookielookies Wow, it's nice that we're connecting with similar stories. I'm working with a psychologist through some perfectionism modules and trying to heal childhood trauma. It's so hard to get out of because working hard often feels like falling back into that insecurity of needing to work hard. I can send you the modules if you'd like?
Hi, thanks for the reply! You're so kind! My comments are not going through for some reason but my e mail is wendywuhomecomingwarrior@gmail.com .We can talk through there :)
Damn this hits so close to home. I just find it so hard to stay in the mentality of constant improvement. I also wish I wasn't watching this video at 2 am before my lab exam tomorrow lmao.
When you gonna give us a discord channel my dude ?! Watching your videos ,legit makes me feel so much better about my computer science degree and i can relate with all that you went through my dude. Keep the content coming !
I can so relate to this. What you had in high school, I experienced in college and yes, my dad also has a similar ‘motivation ‘ line . I have been trying to share my experience to my kids so they do not go the same path or at least be more aware of what’s to come but I do not think it’s working. Maybe part of the learning that one is not that smart is really having a first hand experience.
I really like the video and the message you’re putting out there. I just wanted to contribute what might be an alternate view: You’re absolutely right, being smart is subjective. I think there’s an even greater degree of subjectivity then we might assume. Growing up for example, I had a lot of friends who were drawing just as well as some really famous comic book artists by the time they were 15. I’m sure if you put a handful of those kids in any art school, most of them would have done really well. You put them in a STEM focused program, and I would only know a couple of them who would do well in that type of environment. If you’re a student in the former, art focused program. they would be seen as achievers, and in the more science and math oriented program, they would be the struggling kids. But why? Because most of these kids probably spent the vast majority of their childhoods drawing, painting, and otherwise trying to visually copy the things that they genuinely enjoyed. So by the time they’re 15, they’re already journeymen at their craft. Likewise, it could be that a lot of your friends growing up that you saw as being “smarter than you“ were exposed to a bunch of opportunities to improve those skills early on in life so that they became more second nature by the time high school and college roll around. That’s not to say that certain people don’t have an affinity for one thing or another, I just think we often discount the amount of hours that someone puts into honing things, and that it doesn’t always have to feel like work, for some people, doing a certain degree of math feels like play. Thanks for making a video to share your perspective on this, I do think there’s a lot of validity here, I just wanted to throw another viewpoint out there. Either way, determination beats natural talent any day of the week in most cases
I agree, especially in topics that it's proven they need LOADS of practise like math, and physics ! Understanding the concept is not the issue, the hard part is being able to solve every possible related variant to that subject, and that is not something that can be done in 20 minutes, I've seen this a lot. With that being said, there are many studies showing that people have different kind of intelligence, however, the current education systems are too rigid to help kids discover their own path, thus, continue creating generations of confused students thinking they are extremely smart/ or stupid ! Which is sad if you ask me.
@@hibaimene9684 This was very well put, I 100% agree with you! We forget the different minds are better at different things because we don’t come to schools with is the exact same types of experience in the same measure. Different people filter different topics mentally in different ways, and we need far more multimodal education practices. So people actually have a shot at figuring out what their path might look like.
Really insightful comment - It's the hidden work that has occurred in the background, possibly during early life, that must play a very large role in their future performances in academia and their work.
Being tested as actually a bit smart, I can confirm that grasping a concept within 20 minutes is impossible. I have many classmates who also go to the ivies, and they don't do that either. People with average intelligence usually depict smart people as 'godlike' creatures who could do impossible things... no we don't. We are just a bit faster. You have the feeling that we only study 20 minutes before tests and still get a perfect score only because you don't see us listening in class. Most smart people have a longer concentration span, meaning that we can actually focus our minds longer. When your minds wonder off in god knows where during classes, we are actually absorbing ideas like a sponge. Reading a book later becomes a review which is really simple for everyone not just smart people. However, for those wonderers, reading books later is actually a process of learning new stuff. Of course that's gonna be slower! The bottom line is, anyone who seems like they don't break a sweat doing something is a lie. They work more efficient and harder under the hood. Not so smart people may not get a Nobel Prize, but it doesn't mean the NP winners don't even try.
I'm guilty of this and it takes reminding myself everyday. I got interested in maths recently (from the proof 'higher level' side) and am in a group with these other mostly self taught mathematicians. When I see them talking casually about advanced topics it is truly a sight to behold and I've never met them so I have this vision in my head that they are gods, and here I am on some book called 'Basic Mathematics' struggling with simple geometry proofs thinking 'they would never have struggled like this, they would have just read this and got the proof' and it's silly, on a rational level I know (and they've told me) that the struggle is literally HOW you get this stuff. Still, knowing all this I have to actively encourage myself, in maths everybody struggles
@@Bambotb yes ! Look at it this way, the problem is not understanding the concept, cause yeah that can be done in a short amount of time, BUT math and physics ( and relate topics ) need practise, a lot of it to be able to solve the real questions they give you in exams, often they start young so when it's time with more difficult lessons they are more accustomed. Also bear in mind that everyone has materials where it's easier than others, for instance, you can be very good in art / history / French... and really study them last minute, but need more time with biology / physics, which is okay, everyone has strength and weaknesses.
@@Bambotb ye cause Asian parents hate competition with other students, so we hide everything we study, but in reality we all knew that everyone else studied immensely.
Excellent video. This was one of my biggest problems in life-people continually telling me when I was younger that I was "really smart". I achieved high school honors with relatively low study but then I entered into engineering and got my butt kicked. This is what I now want to impress upon my children-life is hard work and if you want to be successful you better be prepared to work for it. Part of the problem here in North America is that the school system aids and abets this mentality. I work with one of the best interventional radiology physicians in the world and he was told he wasn't smart enough to go into that field. His life proves determination trumps smarts pretty much every time. And the smartest thing one can learn and be taught in their younger years-organize your time and be disciplined. We all have the same time in a day-my successful friends made those hours count.
I agree with this, I never looked at myself as smart. One thing I knew was that I have dedication if I am interested in something. Also, I do believe that just about anything can be learned if you put in effort and work towards retaining information. My high school life was similar to yours. Effort and how you talk to yourself is incredibly important and having the right attitude towards learning something challenging will work wonders.
This seems to revolve more so around IQ than anything. Intelligence as you outlined, is a rather broad term. Whereas IQ simply refers to one's ability to pick up on and understand concepts quickly. Someone with a high IQ can be a blithering idiot, and likewise someone with a lower IQ (within reason) can be clever. Intelligence in summary is a combination of what you know(applicable to anyone), and your ability to pick up on and apply things (genetic and learnt). You can learn to learn, but you are limited by the processing power of the computer upstairs, and it can take longer as well as a lot more effort to memorise text from a course or something of a similar nature. I'm 17 and won't be finishing my A-Levels, I found school vexing and tiresome (mind you, out of boredom) despite doing Computer Science, Applied Law and Business. I felt neutral about getting high grades because I literally never revised. I'm currently working at a company as a Cyber Security Apprentice, in the following years hoping to be a Consultant in that field and wish to do a variety of things in life such as Real Estate and to pursue Civil Law. It tends to be the case that people are transfixed with the idea that they are the main character in their own story (subconscious, rarely consciously thinking about it), and as such believe they are capable and deserving of the best things in life. Whilst we all need aspirations, which are a good thing, it is good to be realistic as well. I wish to enter politics and offer an alternate view despite the barbaric environment it is, but know I realistically will never make it beyond an MP (IF THAT!!). I'm realistic and base my thoughts on fact, whereas in politics no matter how much I may want to get into it, has become more a self-serving joke getting into power through filtered lies. Don't set yourself up for failure because you pursue someone else's career, be the best you that YOU can be. And that's a good enough legacy for me. Doubt anyone read that but have a good day
Realizing it definitely changed my life as well, but I realized it a little differently. I was always treated as the smart one, always one of the best in whatever I did especially if it pertained to mathematics. It got to the point where I was sick of being called smart because I felt like people were undermining the effort I put into it. I would often be in a position where I could help others, something I was really passionate about, but anytime I tried to encourage someone one of the most common replies were "yeah, but you're smart" Yes, it's possible I may have spent less time grasping some concepts, but I understood how to grasp those concepts quickly which is something I had to learn. No one is superior to others. Nearly every "smart" person understands this, which is why hearing someone say "I'm smart" or "they're smart" is often meaningless. Einstein put in the work and had help from peers, yet he often gets reduced to some anomaly.
@@jake9854 only because I've learned how. If doing things with little study is your goal, all you need to know is how to recognize what will be tested/required and, if it isn't intuitive for you, learn how to memorize small amounts quickly and efficiently But I wouldn't recommend this as it's not sustainable, it's best to learn good study practices. This takes time and effort. "Smart people" typically fall into one of these categories, the first of which only appears smart but is one of the stupidest things you can do if you want to learn, while the second is quite literally putting in the effort that anyone is a secure position is capable of
The part where you discussed the failed interview really hit me. I did the same thing recently. A job I was really excited for, was on the final stage of the process, and had basically convinced myself I had got the job already. I bombed it completely. For some reason, although I knew I was walking into a technical interview, I put almost no time or effort into studying for it. I was just so self-assured that I thought I didn't need to and like you mentioned, spent 30 minutes before the interview figuring I'd ace it. I've always been told I was smart, but frankly I'm anything but; I've just gone to good schools with good teachers. As I'm reaching adulthood, I'm realising this, and having to completely change the work ethic I've had all my life. This video was incredibly poignant for me.
This is why I hate all of those people that say that they're "gifted but lazy" because that is such a cop-out. They want to have the satisfaction that the reason they didn't succeed in spite of their genius was simply that they chose not to.
@@clumsyroad4026 it's wrong because it downplays the effort other people put in to succeed, and god forbid if the people who put in effort don't succeed perfectly. They make fun of them as they "could" hypothetically do incredibly better if they put just half the effort. Not that they have any proof of that but they make others feel like they wasted their time.
@@una9133 OMGGGG I've been surrounded by those ppl my whole life!!! I got a 1400 on my practice SAT (old score) and ended with a 2050 on the real thing. My cousins started with a 1800 and only got a 1900s in the real thing. They said I have to work so much harder than them and I got lucky. They still call me stupid and my mom called me a mutation in the family. I can't deny that they are smarter than me, and this has been very hard in my life. How do I not get bothered by what they said? I'm glad I saw ur comment bc that is exactly how those ppl think
This is interesting, I kind of have the opposite situation going on where my Dad was the same way and I believed him and I knew I wasn't smart but people would tell me I was and till this day it leaves me confused. People still think I'm really smart...I think I'm pretty stupid because somethings I struggle hopelessly at time but I hate to quit so I've become somewhat of a masochistic learner and will put myself through migraines and anger fits to make sure I'm not stupid when it comes to something I really want to achieve. I had ADHD growing up and I'm properly medicated as an adult but I think having learning disabilities is a super power if your able to get them handled. I still study like I have ADHD, looking forward to seeing how that pays off in my medicated life. EDIT: Double edged sword, I got the cert I was studying for but then had a nervous breakdown 2 days after the test that put me out of work for 2 weeks. Consequences, consequences.
i recommend you go really easy on the meds, as someone who’s started as an adult in similar circumstances i wish i knew how bad non medicated days could be and should have taken absolutely minimum dose it takes to help for as long as possible. tolerance builds up and meds become easier than any of the natural skills you’ve acquired to focus and train yourself with. like any skills they need to be honed and practiced too, taking regular breaks from meds ensures you keep them maintained and prevent yourself from getting totally dependent on strong medication and forgetting all your coping skills =)
adhd smart ppl strugges. and medicating adhd doesnt make it go away it just lessens the symptoms you can still use other tool sto help you, bbut seriously sometimes its nice to just understand things easily when your in a pinch and need stuf figured outf ast
The smartest thing you can think is that you aren't smart. Steve Martin maybe the greatest comedian of all time said that he may not be smarter than other comedians but he was willing to work harder than them, and yet he has the achievements those others could only wish for. “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. *Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.* Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On!' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” ― Calvin Coolidge
Well, if you don't know how smart/intelligent you are, take a serious IQ test, then assess your rate of learning compared to others. Just from those two parameters you can figure out where you are in terms of intelligence.
Holy shit, I'm 26 and you talking about your experience helped me realize (one of) the reason why I did so poorly in highschool... My entire friend group was filled with incredibly smart guys, one of whom became the valedictorian! And they literally would spend maybe a few hours studying for exams, when in reality I should've spent a few days preparing for them. Of course, going through uni I intentionally improved my studying/working habits, but it just dawned on me why my highschool academics were so mid
I always thought I was dumb af then one day people just started acting surprised about what I knew and started calling me a genius and now I have major imposter syndrome cause I know I'm not smart :/ Can ya'll comment some facts to help me? I don't wanna be a hypocrite
The more you think you know, the more you know how little you actually know. This humbling quality is what separates the stupid from the smart, not calculating integrals in your head, not coding operating systems at age 8. Recognizing how little you actually know as a human is wisdom, which is much more valuable than mere intelligence, whatever that is (quickly discerning patterns out of percieved chaos, perhaps?). Once you recognize your lack of overall knowledge, like Socrates demonstrated, then do as Aristotle did and go about collecting all that you know you *can* know, i.e. specialize in some field of knowledge, be it math, how cars work, music, just *ANYTHING* you feel inclined towards, or dabble in multiple things. Do that and you'll experience what you experienced: people will start to call you a genius for knowing so much about one particular thing or just enough about multiple unrelated things. Just remember, you are doing this with the knowledge that *you truly know nothing, or rather, you know so little about so much that you might as well know nothing.* In reality, we are all clueless hominids approximately equal in ability across multiple domains of measurability. Nobody is truly "smart", though one can certainly be found "wise".
I was never a quick learner, but when I first got to college as a full time student, it was a breeze and I never had to work too hard. I made the deans list the first 2 years, worked full time and had a social life. When I got deeper into my major (aerospace engineering), I tried to keep applying the same methods and I never adapted to the fact that I had to study harder than I started off. I can relate to this video, because I would see other students breezing through information that I needed more time to digest when I got home.
Hahah OMG dude this is sooo spot on! Seems like I made this video for myself. Sooo thankful to you for putting out relatable content and being so honest to us all. We are going through the same. Thank you!
Yeah, I'm smart. Since I'm dyslexic and because of my age and location I grew up in, IQ tests were part of my childhood. I had several, and they were all pretty close to the same. In the type of test I was given, I wouldn't be considered a genius (Extremely High) but instead "superior," which would keep me out of Mensa, but who cares. Being smart is nice, and for sure, when it comes to conceptual understanding of abstract concepts and problem solving, I'm good. The two most important things that I have learned about what it means to be significantly above average but not in the top couple of the percent is that hard work matters more than intelligence most of the time and a couple of percent difference between me and a genius can be noticeable in somewhat extreme ways in the proper contexts. Still, the world is designed to be operated by ordinary people. So normal people who work hard can beat more intelligent people consistently in all but a few specialized disciplines.
Smart and intelligence are two different things to me. Smart is knowledge (What you learn throughout schooling) while Intelligence is more innate (You're born with). You can be smart, but not intelligent. You can be intelligent, but not smart.
@@friedstein4289 sure. I could except those definitions. I have raw computational and abstract thinking power. I could that with a significant amount of education and many certifications.
great video bro! this hits home bc I have a good career but I procrastinate and do everything last minute. i want to do better and hold myself up to a higher standard
