Stop trying to be so damn smart all the time — be stupid
Calling all gifted kids, honor roll students, and valedictorians
I’m an egghead. I love learning, and when I face a problem, my instinct is to think my way through it. Recently, I reflected on some major life choices I made and how I made those decisions.
Now, I’ve done some stupid shit that, in hindsight, I should’ve given more thought, but interestingly, I noticed that many of the decisions that I made with my gut—without a drawn-out deliberation—led to my most defining moments.
Are you too smart for your own good?
Maybe this is you: you’re cerebral and have built your identity around being smart. Everyone knows you as the smart one. The intellectual. The one who actually reads those article-thingies posted on social media before sharing them. But be careful you don’t shoot yourself in the foot.
Intellect is an incredible quality that the world undoubtedly needs more of — just read through the comment section on any news page’s Facebook posts to see why.
Intellect becomes a problem, though, when you start using it, as Dr. K from Healthy Gamer says, “to thread the needle through all our life’s problems.”
Not every problem in life can be solved intellectually. You can’t think your way out of everything. And your biggest challenge is probably that you keep trying to think your way out of problems that can’t be thought out of. Also, the more you use your intellect, the more it becomes your default.
Analysis by paralysis
Let’s say you don’t know what you want to do with your life. So, you spend a ton of time gathering information to make an informed decision about what to do.
You read all the best career advice books, watch inspirational TED Talks, doom scroll on TikTok, enlist the services of psychics, or consult the zodiac — but still, you’re just as clueless about what you want to do.
Now that you have a bunch of viable options in front of you, you’re probably even more indecisive. So you put off making any decision out of paralysis.
All that research and analysis isn’t helping you make a decision because the problem isn’t that you don’t know what you want to do but that you fear making the wrong choice. Important decisions have big consequences. And that’s scary.
You try to alleviate your anxiety by offloading the responsibility of the decision to data. Data is rational. It can be tested, verified, and benchmarked against other similar cases. The proof is in the pudding, so they say.
There is no optimal decision for life
This approach falls apart in reality because:
- It’s impossible to pick the perfect life path because it doesn’t exist. You’re always changing, and so are your circumstances. Your ideal choices are always changing.
- Serendipity, randomness, and fate can take a massive dump on your head and derail your plans. You could make the best objective decision with all the available information, and you take your first step towards it and get dumpstered by a bus while crossing the street.
There is no optimal decision for life. No fixed destination that’s perfect and waiting for you. You may as well pick a direction and start walking.
“You must be the person you have never had the courage to be. Gradually, you will discover that you are that person, but until you can see this clearly, you must pretend and invent.”
— Paulo Coelho
Pick a direction and start walking
A big revelation that came to me way later than it should’ve is, you don’t have to be smarter than everyone else to succeed. I’m consistently amazed by how many fucking idiots are out there living their best lives; meanwhile, I’m drowning in worry. Because they’re not intellectualizing life; they’re living it.
You’re never going to figure everything out. So, stop trying to be so smart. Be dumb. You’re already dumber than you think. For all the reasons your mind tells you not to do something, do it anyway and see what happens.
The intellectual world is safe and sterile; you can’t really fail or get hurt by sticking to theories and hypotheses. But you also won’t get very far if you never do anything.
There’s a big difference between intelligence and intellect. Thinkers are intellectual, but they can be dumb as fuck in every other area of their lives. There’s more to being intelligent and to truly understand, you’ll have to experience, feel, and perceive—not just think. I’ll leave you with this video from Sadhguru that illustrates this difference.
If you’re the type of person to always think your way out of problems, maybe try doing the opposite for once and see what happens. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Let me know what you’re trying to be more stupid about in the comments and follow me for more stupid life advice.
