What do you need to be successful - Intelligence or Creativity?
You see successful people every day and think you can be like them in the future, but have you asked yourself this simple question - “how smart do I need to be to attain success and be rich?”
Have you asked yourself that how intelligent you need to be a successful entrepreneur? How skilled do you need to be to be a successful athlete? How good would you be to build an excellent team?
We don’t ask ourselves these questions often, but we feel we are not succeeding because we lack some skills or we are not intelligent enough.
This seems like a fact, but there is more about it.
In 1921, Lewis Terman researched 1,000 smartest students in California within the third and eighth grades, based on IQ tests and other tests to get the rate of their intelligence. Finally, he could gather 856 boys and 672 girls and they are known as The Termites experiment.
Terman team started the experiment by following the progress of the students, testing their IQ, medical reports and others. They continued for many years to study the growth of the students from 1928 to 1955 in all areas. The study of Terman is significant because it is the first extensive research which is now known as Genetic Studies of Genius. Terman died in 1956, but his team continued from that year till 1986. They tracked the intelligent students for decades and almost their entire life and they found something really interesting.
Minimum threshold of intelligence
They found out that there is a minimum threshold of intelligence needed to be creative and you don’t need to be extremely intelligent to be successful. If you can get 120 in the conventional intelligence tests, it is enough to be successful. Being on top as the most intelligent in the world doesn’t have a thing to do with being creative. All that is important is the effort put into improving your skills and consistency. I have seen many intelligent people, but they are less creative. They absorb information quick but they just dwell with them.
Psychologists use the analogy of a lineman in the NFL to explain this theory. The size of a linesman doesn’t determine how good they are, but all linesmen should weigh over 300 pounds to be effective. So, 300 pounds is the threshold to be a productive linesman. What matters next is the amount of work the individual linesman applies to get better.
Therefore, if you are new to what you do, you might not have reached the threshold to attain success in it. And it is not about just being intelligent, it is about applying principles of following things that work and overcoming distractions.
In every area of life or your field, you don’t have to be the most intelligent to be successful and you can be successful than the most intelligent people, you just need to follow the metric to success.
My name is @tykee (Barlogun Michael), a web developer, Civil engineer, content writer and the founder of Meshboc Technology & Digital Services Limited. I am using my content to share my opinions on tech, lifestyle, and finance, to promote myself and impact my readers. I always like to learn. Education is the most thing I cherish.
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