How do you beat someone smarter than you?

A powerful indicator of human intelligence is the ability to accurately predict the outcome of any given event.

Most people can think at least one step ahead (If I do A I know that B is going to happen).

But the moment we try to think two or more steps ahead, our ability to predict accurately decreases exponentially.

With this in mind, let’s assume Paul is more intelligent than Jimmy.

The more intelligent Paul is the more steps ahead he can calculate, the faster and more accurate those predictions will be.

So how could Jimmy ever beat Paul?

The only way for Jimmy to ever beat Paul without help, would be if Paul was a slacker.

Remember the hare and tortoise fable?

If Paul is not lazy, there is nothing Jimmy could ever do to outsmart Paul because while Jimmy is acquiring the skills to improve his prospection abilities Paul would have done the same. And because Paul is more intelligent he would be able to improve his skills more in the same amount of time than Jimmy.

As long as Paul keeps learning he will always be ahead of Jimmy.

In essence, Paul (hare) will never lose a race against Jimmy (tortoise) unless Paul decides to take long breaks, be lazy, or quit all together.

So here is the moral of the story. You will never be able to outsmart a more intelligent individual (on your own) but you could easily outwork many of them.

We may not have control about how smart we are but we all have control about how hard we can work. Your best chance to be more successful in life than people with superior innate abilities is to work harder and hope they slack off.

Unfortunately for the world, but luckily for you, most people (smart or dumb) are quite lazy so if you work 10% harder every day than the average, in 5 years you could be ahead of most of your peers regardless of how intelligent they are.

So what happens if you are super smart and work super hard?

Then you could be one of the very few human beings who might get to significantly change the world within your lifetime.
Those are the Elon Musks, Teslas, Steve Jobs, Bezzos, Zucks, of the world.

Don’t compare yourself to them. Instead realize that 99% of the people that we consider successful in our society are not smarter than you are.. they just worked harder!

Peace, Love and Hard Working Cookies,

Miguel

P.S: It follows that if you have above average intelligence the worst thing you can do is to become complacent and assume your intellect alone will be enough keep you always ahead.

P.2: Besides working hard, leveraging your network to seek help and advice is the most effective to get ahead in life quicker. You should work hard, but your network (and Google) will help you work smart!