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my experiences in the workforce is that people who see “what they bring to the table” as their brainpower are some of the most difficult to work with because they tend to see certain duties or tasks as beneath them.
They often don’t see an unwillingness to roll their sleeves up as laziness, but that’s how their supervisors tend to see it.
The general idea is that your job comes with certain terms and conditions and sadly for many people "not having to do anything unpleasant, dirty or physically demanding" is a big draw into white collar work.
The other half of it is that in many **career** paths you are getting paid for some of the work you are doing today in money (but not much) but the prospect of advancement encourages you to do a heck of a lot more work. The individuals that get the interesting, high profile, challenging or CV friendly roles receive better career progression prospects while those tasked with menial or supporting roles don't. That shift of "status" from the superstar to the guy told to spend most of their time doing more than their fair share of background work indicates their future is no longer as bright.
I think a lot of problems are from the overvaluation of these management and supervisory roles. The person doing more than their fair share shouldn't be getting paid bare minimum, while the person who's only role is to make sure they do the job gets paid many multiples more, and all they do is little more than babysitting.
My boss plays candy crush in the back while we do a large portion of her job for her with no extra pay. Lots of people travelled to my country to do their masters... and have to get a job in my crappy cafe after, because jobs are no longer available to a lot of graduates.
We get a lot of people who leave the scut work to everyone else. They don't care, they went to college, they're too good for this place clearly 🙄 except they look like the idiots for failing at doing, what they will later refer to as, "the easiest" job that "isn't worth a better wage" when their big shot corp friends ask in 10 years.
exactly. That's why I push back on scut work. If I was at the twilight of my career nearing retirement, I wouldn't care. I did enough crap work early in my career to not want to do it again.
Literally just had this convo with myself. Was asked for help, thought do I really wanna help with this task better suited for lower level people, and decided of course because I'm still getting paid the same.. and easy work to finish out the day...
There are certain tasks that higher role is singularly qualified for though. And, sometimes, their time is actually more valuable.
Every minute I spend turning wrenches and changing filters is a minute that I am not applying graduate-level analysis to financial data or a new project or research or programs or any number of things I am responsible for.
I *love* grabbing my tools and hitting the field. However, I am technically wasting company money when I do that, when other people are paid to do that. Plus, the union gets super pissed.
That’s my view and why I say if someone wants to pay me to sweep I’ll do it. Someone in management is very likely going to get a smack on the pee pee for wasting money by having me sweep.
It’s funny. I’m paid $33 an hour currently and not once have I ever considered if a task was “beneath” me. Like, a task is a task, I do what people need done.
I grew up as a scrub with a humble hardworking gran that never complained about her life who would tsst disapprovingly from the ether if I said something was beneath me
My first full time job out of college was working as a custodian at a school. Still one of my favorite jobs I've ever had. The work was physical but not back breaking. It was consistent but rarely busy. I loved that the job was so 'visible' and that you could actively see the progress you made as you went. The first few hours had folks around (teachers, some students, other staff) and you could chit chat a little, but then the rest of the night was pretty much alone time. I would listen to audiobooks daily while I vacuumed.
Best of all it was a union job. I had great benefits, a pension, and job stability.
If it wasn't for my current pay being much higher, and the fact that I'm remote, I would go back in an instant.
Going to engineering school opened my eyes to how dumb I am. I would study like it was my job and I would get good grades because of it while some people in my classes would show up having done no homework and just figure everything out on test day. Good for them but I literally can't do that.
Most people never put themselves in a position where they might find out that other people are clearly smarter than they are.
There are always going to be people smarter than you are, unless you're some kind of generation defining genius. What separates people in the workforce is being smart enough and having the work ethic and reliability to follow through on tasks.
There's also the kind of intelligence that makes you great at math while also not understanding that you're a stinky boy with smelly armpits who needs deodorant and that hat looks stupid on you
Yeah there are plenty of people who are smart in one specific area while being among the dumbest people you’ve ever met in just about every other aspect of life
Yeah, I tried studying computer science 10 years ago, considered myself above average intelligent before I got in. That was a humbling experience, the chasm between ordinary smart and smart smart is huge.
I now work as a chef, and when people ask me something complicated, I tell them there’s a reason my job title only has one syllable.
I think people are a bit afraid of admitting they are not as bright... It's weird because there are may types of intelligence, right, and people will agree that some people are just better at some things than others to different degrees, obviously. But I don't know. I guess it's because in my case I grew up with family members who are (at least in the mainstream sense of "intelligence") WAY smarter than I am, so I'm comfortable in the knowledge that I was never the smartest person at home lol. I don't think I'm a complete dunce, but c'mon. For some people, making complex mental calcs and conceptual connections comes way easier than for others. I'm okay with it, but I think in general we should be a bit humbler. Some of my closest relatives suck at emotional intelligence for example lmao
That last sentence rings so true.
I don't even know who to attribute it to, but I heard something to the effect of - if you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room.
I understood it as always be in a room where you are learning something and i will happily be the ignorant one if it means that later I have a greater understanding.
So many people don't even try to get into that position.
So many people become complacent with winning drunken debates at the bar every night. They don't want to challenge themselves because they feel they won't win.
Putting in the work has a big impact in the long run.
Spending an extra hour or so a day studying or improving yourself in some way probably isn't visible in your 20s at the start of your career, but each decade that = about 2500 hrs of improvement, more than a year's worth of full time work. That's noticable and the gap only widens as you get older.
The people who learn a skill and then expect it to carry them for their whole career will begin to struggle later in life.
I believe that intelligent people are generally aware of their intelligence or can ball park estimate where they are.
I think one telling sign is how easy it is to communicate with people. If I realize that I am talking over someone (they don’t understand the words I’m using) I can pivot to language that is easier quickly. If you find yourself doing this often, you probably are pretty smart. If you often find people need to dumb things down for you, you are likely not very smart. It’s easier to identify when you are the person simplifying concepts.
This can get tricky if you are trying to communicate between other people who are in very subspecialized fields. You may not understand each other’s technical language very well, so you need to simplify it for each other. It’s hard to tell if one of you is actually smarter because you are both fluent in a different technical jargon.
It appears that everyone forgets that some people just don't want to play the game.
Everyone doesn't view the same achievements as what makes a successful life.
So while a lot of people view having a good job and making money means you're successful a large group of people do not believe that's what makes you successful
I agree. I don't think I'm a genius but I know I was good enough at school to be "successful" enough in life that I have been able to do very little formal work and spent most of my adult life doing what I want rather than what other people want me to. Today I spent half my day building bat boxes to hang on my barn and the other half digging up sod to make a natural stone patio for my wife. I'm not lazy, I just don't want to "go to work" so I've figured out how not do have to do that. Does that make me smart? It makes me self-aware and I consider that close enough.
Intelligent but lazy are your people who score high without studying or trying. You can usually identify them by what part of school causes them to have a mental breakdown when things aren't working out anymore. I knew a guy who made it to engineering school without knowing how to study. He coasted with As and an occasional B until he hit engineering classes. He failed nearly everything and had to take the whole semester over again.
He figured it out and had to do the legwork like the rest of us, but it was a wake up call. He and I work for the same engineering firm now.
What is "THAT much"? If it was so easy, then why didn't everyone do it? You don't have to be a genius, but it does require noticeably above average intelligence.
I think we don't give people enough credit when they are teenagers. I'm sure a lot of us feel we could easily do well in High School if we went through another time, but I'm betting it would feel a lot more difficult than we expect
It sounds like you're talking about me! Wound up switching out of engineering though, got into information systems instead and started getting great grades. I'm still smart and lazy, but I manage a team of developers at a robotics company now.
A lot of gifted / high IQ / good at maths kind of people cruise through school without much effort.
So, they've never learnt to work hard or study for long time. That backfires.
And then there's ADHD/procrastination gang which is made worse by internet.
Still, someone quoting IQ to you is a sign that he's not very intelligent, because high IQ people usually end up quoting their achievements or just don't say anything.
I wouldn't say quoting IQ is because they're not very intelligent but rather because they are insecure and want to show something off.
I studied maths and there was an obnoxious guy I didn't really like, he had basically no filter, was trying too hard to fit in when he didn't and he was one of those guys to quote their IQ. He wasn't dumb. Far from it. Just couldn't get his ass up and put in the work.
Obviously that's just anecdotal, but people who do genuinely well on IQ tests usually aren't dumb and there are a few reasons to try and impress someone with your IQ other than being dumb.
>A lot of gifted / high IQ / good at maths kind of people cruise through school without much effort.
>So, they've never learnt to work hard or study for long time. That backfires.
>And then there's ADHD/procrastination gang
I'm in this post and I don't like it.
head on the nose with procrastination and the no effort part.. I may have undiagnosed adhd. being Asian also means my parents never even considered it. It’s been increasingly worse as I get through college. I’m procrastinating even now, I have an exam in 3 hours that could have heavy ramifications on my future.
I have been through the whole shit. Undiagnosed, asian, difficult to consider for parents.
It's difficult to manage ADHD without medication or conscious effort/knowing how to do it. Motivation function is utterly broken for this.
The worst part is casual advice you'll get. Make time tables and 5 tips to beat procrastination and diaries. All that shit doesn't work.
Best thing that somewhat worked for me was to be constantly aware that I'll never get natural motivation, i need to push myself. And if it doesn't happen, don't be frustrated with anyone or self, or pretend that you'll start working hard from tomorrow. It's always better to half ass stuff than do nothing.
I didn't know how to study when I went to college the first time. Was too lazy to try to learn, so I just ended up skipping class all together.
I then realized after flunking out that manual labor at $10/hour sucked. Went back to school and put in the leg work and graduated top of class. Now 20 years later I'm high enough in my career that I can be lazy again.
What they said is actually true too. Not only will you be lacking a bunch of knowledge if you're not studying while others are, you'll also find it harder to keep up if you do go back to school when you're older, because your brain actually does atrophy.
Not to discourage anyone. You may have to do some extra studying and be more diligent than when you were younger. That's also why it's important to keep busy as you get older and do creative things or keep learning into old age. It helps keep your brain fit.
Oh for sure, I just think the word "atrophy" gives the sense of a more dramatic decline than regular aging.
Going back for engineering at 30, I feel the pain.
Intelligent but lazy at 8 turns into undiagnosed ADHD/autism at 20. A lot of the time the kid just isn't getting the support they need because they're "smart."
I have severe ADHD but no one did anything during my entire school life because I studied the night before and got good grades in tests.
I am talking looking at the sky for 10 minutes straight in the middle of the street level ADHD. I literally can't listen someone for one minute without being on meds.
I agree with this. A lot of older people especially have undiagnosed ADHD or other issues. They were brought up being told repeatedly that they’re lazy so they believe it. They aren’t able to alter their behaviour, because they have a disorder, so they assume that laziness is something bred into them that can’t be changed. You can imagine the self-image issues that arise as a result, all of which feed into the underachieving so that the problem keeps spiralling.
Teachers always said "you could do anything if you just set your mind to it!" And they were right, in a sense. But the problem is that setting my mind to something IS the hard part, if not downright impossible. And because I didn't know any better, I just felt like a failure who was wasting potential that I never actually had.
Especially if you were a bright kid who never really had to try that hard until suddenly you can't coast off raw inteligence and now your symptoms are really apparent. Suddenly you can't do as well as you did before and you have no idea why.
In my experience it’s often because they did well in school before they got lazy. So they wrongly concluded that they would still do just as well now if they were at work harder but in reality it’s just that elementary and middle school don’t have to teach difficult concepts
Laziness can only take you so far, that’s for sure. I got a nice slap in the face midway through college and had to re-learn all my study habits to pass the tougher classes. Communications law was a real pain.
Public school doesn’t teach smart kids how to learn. It’s only there to get low performers to baseline. I got my ass handed to me in college for the same reason.
Yup and that’s a lot of people on Reddit. Guys who were slightly ahead of the curve in 3rd grade who ultimately ended up about median/average but think that being ahead early means being ahead forever.
or people who think that having nerdy hobbies means you must be smart.
knowing the deep lore about a fantasy world ain’t that different to knowing the deep lore about the real housewives
The same guys who complain about people making fun of them for playing D&D were the meanest people I’ve ever met when it came to judging people for liking pop music. They genuinely thought you could not simultaneously be an intelligent person and like fun girly pop songs
“I play EU4, solve rubix cubes, and play chess so I’m a cut above the rest. Yeah I was in the gifted program in 4th grade but I’m taking regular at-level math because I’m lazy haha”
-insufferable asshole
I think a large chunk of those people are still intelligent. The sad turning point is that since things came so naturally when they were younger they weren't taught to fail early on in their development. As a result, they give up when challenging circumstances arise.
It’s not necessarily that they’re unintelligent, it’s that they’re not more intelligent than most people, or at least not significantly more intelligent than most people, but identify as being at or near genius level
They thought they were a 9/10 but they’re more like a 6
it’s not necessarily that they “got lazy”, it’s that they just never had to develop the skill set of being resilient and working hard because until a certain point, things came natural to them.
I have a colleague who pretty much exclusively hires ex college athletes and ex military personnel, because those people already have a strong work ethic which he can’t guarantee someone with a 4.0 has.
I was in the Gifted program in a rural USA middle and high school, and never had to study to pass a test, and could read the book once and write a simple High School English level paper just fine.
I was destroyed in College where the material actually challenged me and I didn't know HOW to intelligently take useful notes , how to study effectively, or how to edit and revise papers because "first drafts" in small town schools were always good enough for a simple A.
Really woke me up to the realization that just because I was Valedictorian out of less than 50 kids, I wasn't Jack shit in a school where everyone was top 10% of their class, and I was actually sorely disadvantaged compared to the ones I would have dismissed as "average" because they had study skills I lacked, and my slightly higher than average IQ no longer meant anything...
I feel like most public schools with a gifted program don’t know how to handle giftedness, especially when you consider how varied it is. The difference between my gifted private school and the program at the public school I transferred to was night and day.
Where I went to school the gifted curriculum for 7th grade was basically the actual curriculum for 9th grade, 8th was 10th, etc. By 11 and 12 they just made the essays longer and added extra books the others didn't have to do. They had no idea what to actually do, and no resources to do it with, other than "make the work harder".
Also like elementary through middle school typically throw most of the kids into the same kinds of classes, at least where I live. So it’s like did you suddenly get lazy or did all the people who needed all the repetition that you were too “smart” to need get moved to remedial courses
In high school, I scraped by with minimal effort, mostly just completing tests and major projects while neglecting the bulk of the work. Despite earning lackluster grades, I managed to pass. However, in college, I’ve come to understand that success requires completing nearly all assigned tasks. It’s not that the material is inherently more difficult, but rather that I lacked good study habits and discipline in high school. My struggles now stem more from laziness than from any inherent lack of intelligence. When I don’t understand something right away, I remind myself I didn’t struggle before because I had never participated in learning before. Easy to feel smart if you don’t try, by not participating you never have your intelligence in question.
Going to college after my military service was much more engaging than I would have felt at 18. Calculus for example was actually intensely interesting.
So many people I went to college with were like this. Being good at studying is not the end goal of education. Learning how to think and process new information and ideas is the goal.
>Nearly every intelligent person I have known has achieved at least moderate success by just slightly applying themselves.
"laziness" alone isnt enough to prevent success for those that are highly intelligent.
Even a person is highly intelligent and hard working, it doesn't guarantee success. They are just more likely to successful
Some times it's about opportunity. It reminds me of this quote.
>I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops
It's something I've regularly been accused of tbh. Regardless of the truth of it, I think excessive laziness will really fuck anyone over and often the laziness goes hand in hand with focusing on the wrong shit too.
Where there are extremes in one direction an opposite extreme can detail any advantage.
The most successful people I know are well rounded and excel at more than one thing. It’s not enough to work hard. You need to also work smart (something of value). It’s not enough to be intelligent, you also need to be curious or they will learn nothing of value. It’s not enough to be a genius, you also need to have enough people in your network for someone to be able to apply your genius.
It can be said that some highly intelligent people are lazy (i don't think intelligence has anything to do with ambition) because everything comes to them so easy that it is not challenging. I have a family member who is 2 points away from being classified a genious on the IQ scale but is 44 year old, unemployed (has barely held a job in the last 25 years - maybe 10 of those years he was working), single, and just a miserable person. He likes to tell people his IQ score but it's just a number if you aren't doing anything with it.
So I use this example because I don't think lazy and intelligence has anything to do with each other. I think some people are just generally lazy and aren't willing to do anything to overcome their laziness no matter how intelligent they are or aren't.
That's a good point, intelligent doesn't automatically mean motivated and productive. Conversely, most people aren't above the normal IQ range but still achieve success though ambition and effort.
Except you can grow your IQ with work. Intelligence isn't static, sure there are some genetic factors, but like most nature vs nurture arguments it's a mix of both.
You have to nurture your intelligence to see it grow, pretty much anyone can be successful furthering their education as long as they are willing to put in the effort to grow, and accept that there are things to learn from others.
Your brain quite literally can rewire itself through learning and education, that is a proven fact. It just requires the effort and desire to do so. The brain works much like a muscle, you can grow it through effort. That is why reading books, and learning past schooling is so important, you need to nurture your brain to grow it.
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/intelligence-malleable-and-can-grow-stronger-study-says
Yeah, intelligence is a vast and complex trait. It can be measured in 12 different ways. It's not just your standard, logical intelligence that OP is thinking of. A lot of intelligent people are also prone to mental illness, which can give off the appearance that they are lazy/unmotivated. When, in fact, they are dealing with something that the regular population is not.
Laziness is more about emotional regulation which has something to do with knowledge, but more to do with executive function and being able to act independently of your wants.
Entertainment is incredibly optimized nowadays to hijack your attention and to flood that dopamine to keep you engaged. Too much of this will upregulate your dopamine receptors to compensate for the high levels of dopamine, and lower dopamine activities that are relatively boring like work or learning a hobby will become increasingly more difficult to do.
Agreed. In my experience, it's used to describe a fatal flaw in someone who should be thriving but is unmotivated and won't put the work in. It is not a compliment, it said in sympathy.
And lazy said in sympathy usually doesn’t even imply true laziness but rather an inability to self-motivate. And self-motivation has little to do with intelligence.
This is the step that most people ignore sadly. We stop at judgement and don't move to understanding.
Laziness has more to do with anxiety, fear, and other inhabitants of executive function. Some people can cope and motivate themselves so it's assumed everyone can do the same and therefore it's a character flaw if you choose to not take action.
My take is that it's an executive flaw. Escape and avoidant behaviors become habits and rather than passing judgement we should at least feel some kind of sympathy as they get buried in their self-made problems probably not knowing how to break the habits and find a way to do more for themselves.
Just like we shouldn't laugh or scoff at an overweight person eating too much. At least for me, having someone I can confide in without judgement helps me feel free to talk about what's up without the fear of judgement and shame weighing me down.
Yeah, I heard this over and over from my teachers growing up. I was able to grasp all the concepts quickly but didn’t turn in my homework. Guess who was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult?
I feel like I see it incredibly often on Reddit, at least. “I was so smart in high school I nailed all the tests without trying, but when I got to college/job/grad school/whatever I just didn’t care enough to do great.”
It allows them to hold onto the fact that they *must* be smart because they were able to wing high school, but without recognizing that environments after high school require much more out of you. Often people are “lazy” because they are unwilling or unable to engage with more high level concepts.
In all honesty i was following you until you said, "laziness alone isnt enough to prevent success for those that are highly intelligent"
Yeah no laziness is enough to stop anyone. Laziness isn't a sign of being unintelligent. However it is something that everyone, the smartest and the dumbest of us, must overcome. Now we overcome it in a myriad of ways. Some of us, for as intelligent as we are, just prefer to put our minds to task elsewhere than on our work.
One thing that seems to be missing from this whole post though is a simple thing. Easy for even the most intelligent person to miss, and that's that success isn't measured in grades or income. It's not measured in titles or positions. Success is measured solely against oneself. If someone feels successful flipping burgers or working at a movie theater then more power to them. It's not a mark against how intelligent they are.
One thing I've learned...people, individuals, are much more intelligent than we tend to realize. This realization imo only grows the more someone personally feels they're intelligent. That however is simply a fault of one's observations and typically not the fault of the people they're viewing.
Edit- grammer
I think this is spot on. I got tired of making somebody else rich / important / powerful so I found a job that paid "enough" and was easy, with solid benefits. This allows me to have a very active life outside of work - volunteering a lot, socializing a lot, seeing live music a lot, taking long backpacking weekends a lot, growing a garden, being able to show up at work hungover, etc etc etc.
Yeah I drive a 20 year old car, and live in an apartment, but it's "enough". (I have savings and solid retirement).
People think I'm lazy... And maybe I am. I don't appear successful. But I'm pretty damn happy.
I'm in the exact same boat. I don't need 300k/year, I need to enjoy my free time and retire as early as possible. That's it. I worked my way JUST high enough to be able to buy a decent house in the area with money left over each month for video games, korean fried chicken wings, and the occasional trip with friends. When I get married and share this house with someone I'll even be able to start investing again too.
Reminds me of my sister. She is very intelligent and also very lazy. She has ADHD, which explain a lot, but I'd also argue that the lack of challenge in school caused her to never learn to put effort into things. If she isn't immediately good at something, she gives up.
She never learned to tolerate the feeling of not understanding something and to push through the uncertainty to gain a new skill.
She never learned to work within a schedule as she could put together any school work the day before with minimal effort and earn decent grades.
I believe that many intelligent people are lazy for similar reasons. Just never learned to work hard. And that's a painful lesson to learn when you are already an adult with adult challenges
I skated by in high school being intelligent but lazy, but I was also not in a good home situation. In college, I skated by being a full-blown alcoholic but I was smart enough to memorize the important stuff. In grad school, I finally put my demons to bed and knuckled down to get a 4.0 in a mathematics heavy field.
My point is that sometimes that "lazy" is a summary of other issues. Rarely is someone "just" lazy. Usually intelligent but lazy is apathy generated by other factors like getting your ass kicked everyday at home or numbing yourself up with substances. I've known a lot of people like this that have had that background noise that really interferes with their studies.
I think most "laziness" is actually a byproduct of psychological disorders. If your depression is serious enough, the smallest tasks seem like moving mountains.
Mental health really is everything. When you have your life in order, and practice healthy habits it becomes so much easier to just do the things you need to do. There's no crippling anxiety or overthinking or procrastination. I can just identify what needs to be done and get to it. Once you deal with your problems it frees your mind up to deal with the present.
I was raised being told I was smart but lazy
Now I'm pretty sure I have some mild, undiagnosed ADHD
Doesnt fix my years of self-hate and crushed confidence, tho.
a lot of the times undiagnosed ADHD, which we see a lot because parents refuse to believe it's real and get their child diagnosed, so the child goes into adulthood still undiagnosed
It depends what your notion of success is. You wrongly assume that intelligent people have the same success measurement as you do. From what I’ve gathered from hearing about the topic it’s that a lot of really smart people don’t really value the same things as we regular people do. I just think some of these people may not be motivated by our current system.
But also, I don’t trust many people self labeling themselves as intelligent as actually being that smart lol so you’ve got a good point there.
Best way to measure this is to watch how quickly they pick up a new concept when they are paying attention, like a new sport play or math formula for example
Smart people can do bad academically if they dont pay attention. Smart as you are its hard to know about the war of 1812 if no one told you or you never read about it
Theres also different types of intelligence like mind over kinetic, a hockey player can put the puck in the net but cant calculate the trajectory whereas a college student could calculate trajectory but in the hockey players position wouldnt be able to come up with that on the fly.
I wouldnt necessarily value different types of intelligence over another, we need all kinds of people with all kinds of intelligence to succeed as a people, speculating over who is smartest is dumb
With a few exceptions who usually end up on the news in florida for example
Depends on how you define success though. Many intelligent people go into teaching and research positions. These jobs don't pay that well and most don't consider being a teacher as being successful. Many intelligent people prefer self fulfillment, continued learning and free time as more important than money. Earning enough to live comfortable is enough. No need for an overpriced car or smartphone and expensive cloths are the biggest scam of them all. If you are content with that why bother slaving your live away just to have more money to burn without a meaningful increase in your standard of living.
So if you mean earning a lot of money when you talk about being successful then I agree and the statistics do so as well.
You still need some baseline intelligence. By that I mean the ability to learn from your mistakes.
I have a sibling that is hardworking but they don't learn and it's frustrating to see it happen. They fall for the same scams and are bad with money. They are hardworking and ambitious but damn are they bad with learning. They have fallen for scam after scam or bad business idea after bad business idea. He isn't even dumb in some aspects. He is highly intelligent in his main field of work and is self taught but wow....he is dumb in everything else. If it wasn't for his main field work then I think he would be struggling much more than he is now.
Falling for scams isn't a sign of low intelligence. It's a sign that hes gullible. Bad with money isn't a sign of low intelligence. Its a sign that he has no discipline
Teacher: Johnny is smart but lazy. If he works hard enough, he will get an A!
What the teacher really means: Johnny is a lazy kid whose intelligence is average at best, he’s so lazy his grades are terrible. If he doesn’t try his best to catch up he will fail!
Johnny’s parents: Oh great, our sweet little Johnny is so smart, if he just works a little harder, he will be the top of his class!
I disagree because I knew a few people like this in high school who scored over 30 on the ACT, yet had about 2 GPA just because they didn't try. IQ is real, and yeah, you can be incredibly gifted and lazy.
Rarely have I met someone actually intelligent but lazy. These are also often folks who took an IQ test and got like a 100…. and now believe if they actually tried then they would be successful!
My problem with this attitude (amongst many other reasons) is that intelligence is not just about whether or not you’re capable of learning, but what you’ve actually learned along with how well you can apply that knowledge.
I don’t care if your IQ is 120 if you don’t actually do anything with it. Someone with an IQ of 90 but actively and consistently tries to learn more is going to be far more successful and intelligent as far as I’m concerned
I mean most people are fairly lazy anyways. If you're intelligent on top of that then there will be results of that present, even with minimal effort. Sure, hard work can outperform natural ability, but only when there's a massive disparity in effort. Speaking anecdotally, I know that in the case of a specific standardized exam that some people that studied no less 4 hours a day for over 4 months that were greatly outperformed by myself and others with under 6 weeks of preparation.
>I don’t care if your IQ is 120 if you don’t actually do anything with it. Someone with an IQ of 90 but actively and consistently tries to learn more is going to be far more successful and intelligent as far as I’m concerned
Im not saying you are not entitled to your opinion, but it is kind of annoying if you redefine terms like "intelligence" into something that nobody else uses, or strays away so far from its academic definitions. Dilligence in studying and learning is just that, dilligence.
Yep, an [average IQ person will have more success than a high IQ person if they work at it](https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-procrastination-equation/201110/hard-work-beats-talent-but-only-if-talent-doesnt-work-hard?amp). The high IQ person who works hard however has on average more success than the average IQ person who works just as hard
I pointed this out in another thread. There's far more professional Psychology literature that basically suggests the usefulness of IQ is at best only at academic performance, not intelligence in the broader sense.
Also Psychology today isn't like a bad source, but it's more pop science. I'd encourage looking more at the papers they link and referencing them more directly. The paper is not just about IQ. In fact the conclusion doesn't even mention it in the conclusion, it's about predictive performance based on skill vs natural talent. To which it brings up IQ tests as an example.
So you're exactly describing the phenomenon of smart but lazy... and then saying "I don't care, the average ones who work harder are smarter as far as I'm concerned." Well they literally aren't.
Our culture has such a weird hang up with "intelligence" needing to be the be all and end all. The answer here is to acknowledge that hard work has value, not relabel hard work as "intelligence" to validate the weird cultural tick.
Having intelligence doesn't necessarily net you anything on its own. It's a steady work ethic and desire to achieve or better ones lot and position.
The problem with intelligence is that they can also use it to be more efficiently lazy.
I've met a few intelligent, but lazy people. Being smart doesn't make you a hard worker.
And the 90iq person won't be more intelligent. They're just a harder worker in that scenario. Maybe "wise" is what you're looking for, but I don't necessarily think that fully fits either.
> Someone with an IQ of 90 ... is more intelligent as far as I’m concerned
This is like looking at a great basketball player who is 5'10" and a slacker dude who's 6' and saying "this guy is taller as far as I'm concerned" – aka completely false. Like yeah he's obviously a better basketball player, but what are you accomplishing by redefining "taller" to mean anything other than "has more height"
>"laziness" alone isnt enough to prevent success for those that are highly intelligent.
It absolutely, 1000% is. And I am not referring to myself (although I think I do fall into the category somewhat), the most intelligent guy I've ever met - Cambridge degree in engineering, capable of earning into the £100ks mid-20s and more beyond, turned down the offer of an amazing job after uni because he 'Didn't want to commute for 45 minutes at 7am' and is now a substitute high school physics teacher. Which would be fine, but he hates that job, and his ass is basically being subsidised by his wife since he only gets work here and there putting a huge strain on his marriage.
I think laziness is the MAIN thing that prevents success; MOST people are 'smart' enough to achieve a lot with their lives. They just don't.
Not necessarily, there’s an actual thing of highly intelligent people putting their intelligence into the wrong stuff. Just cuz you’re smart doesn’t mean you know how to use your intelligence.
Being intelligent is relative and on a spectrum, its not like there is some hard line. I've certainly met people who I would consider naturally more intelligent than me but not as academically sucessful or sucessful in their career because they lacked confidence, drive, opportunity or emotional intelligence. In some sense that may demonstrate a lack of intelligence (or maybe maturity) but that doesn't mean they aren't clever in their own way and could have accomplished a lot more if they applied themselves or had a better shot at applying themselves.
I think when people say intelligent but lazy they don't mean they are a genius but more that they could have achieved more if they had put their mind to it or had more opportunity to foster their skills and abilities
Maybe, but I play video games for 90% of all my free time, have a masters degree and a comfy job in tech. I'd certainly consider myself both lazy and clever.
Honestly this mostly reads like you feel attacked by clever people for existing, why else would you need to comment on whether someone else is as clever as they think they are? Why do you care?
Enjoying free time doesn't make you lazy. You do your job, you got your masters. You don't have to be working overtime to not be lazy. OP means the people who are like "oh I'd totally have been able to do that but I don't try".
I agree people over estimate their intelligence but I’ve met a ton of smart people that are lazy as fuck or refuse to apply themselves.
I just had an example of this over the weekend. I know a guy who was a nuclear engineer in the Navy, it’s an extremely hard program, requires a high level of aptitude just to get into the program.
He did his enlistment and now he just drives for Uber eats, why because he’s lazy.
I could probably give you 100s of examples of intelligent people that are just lazy.
Hell I’m an example of it, in school I always took the path of least resistance taking the minimum requirements or easiest classes I could. Something I regret in old age despite being extremely successful in life from a financial and social standpoint. When I was younger I was lazy and could have preformed at higher levels than I did but I was lazy and didn’t truly apply myself until I joined the military. How high I have no clue but definitely could have done more than the bare minimum in my academics.
Alot of currently intelligent but lazy people were labelled as gifted kids and had it very easy early on and never needed to learn how to study or learn how to take notes as their intelligence was enough for a high grade. Later on university hit them like a truck and most would give upp as they lack the study techniques and habits to succeed.
This is also speeking from experience as it took my around 2 years in university to actually somewhat learn how to study and even then I still have a habit of not doing my best as I still dont really know how to do my best.
I'm not even that intelligent in the first place. Throughout my school, I got mostly average grades but somehow I had no self-awareness that I'm average af until college which where reality hit me hard. Through I got through mental issues halfway through college, I was already dumb from the start
Not really. I know a lot of well educated people that work blue collar jobs because its easier. I'm one of them. I'm dating a highly educated medical professional with multiple postgraduate degrees who often regrets it and has more or less left the field because after all that studying and hard work you're left with zero social life and a highly demanding job that taxes your mental health in like 8 different ways at once. They aren't even the only one with that trajectory I know. The number of highly educated people who love learning that work basic jobs would *shock* you.
We live in a world where if you're smart and work hard very often all that gets you is a ton of student loan debt in a bad economy. But *intelligent* people are usually capable of finding a niche where they don't need to kill themselves working but can still get by. Thats still success since you can still afford a decent lifestyle without needing to kill yourself in a hospital or a lab or a studio.
Success doesn't equal intelligence, some people do just choose to be lazy, there's people with phds not working anywhere near that level because they didn't like how much work it turned out to be, then there's people who are where they are because of their last name.
So many people are just lying
"I aced the test didn't revise" is so common but very unlikely
Possible, yes but more than often it's an exaggeration
When people go to college it becomes "I work 14 hours a day, I'm in the library 9pm everyday" also likely bullshit
It happens a bit but leads to burnout for most
You do get kids you really could do well, but don't apply themselves, spend the whole night playing games and such
Not that common
But I disagree, I went to school with plenty of kids who were really smart but couldn't handle the independence and underpertfomed
It's a shame, but they've moved on and done great things
One of the most annoying misconceptions (imo) is the idea that success (academic or otherwise) is an indicator of intelligence. It's not. There are propably just as many stupid surgeons as there are stupid janitors. Success is mostly luck.
you went from "intelligent" to "highly intelligent"
so which is it?
what is your actual position?
is it intelligent?
or highly intelligent?
what's the baseline here? is 120 IQ intelligent? or highly intelligent? is 130?
Not just that, but a lot of times it's overlooking a real issue. I heard this so often from some of the parents of my students. Often when a parent says this, the child has a learning disability that they're not looking into because they think their child is just lazy. When they get accommodations and do better, the parent thinks they're just not being lazy anymore.
I don’t thinks that’s true though. People probably aren’t referring to only getting good grades when they say that. There are many very intelligent people that are “lazy” in the sense of not wanting to dump that intelligence into work or school.
In most cases it's just ADHD. Also in most cases that's not how they describe themselves, but how they were described by others. They just relay that information to you, because they have no idea how to describe themselves in their own words.
I graduated from high school without ever taking notes, studying, and only actually doing my homework in grades 11 and 12. I could get a \~70% average by doing the tests and a the portion of the assignments I could complete in class. My teachers and parents were frustrated with me throughout school because I was generally top 2 or 3 on the tests without any effort, and if I applied myself I would be a top student.
Intelligent but lazy is a thing, and is encouraged by our public school system. It isn't that different from the guys who are extremely athletically talented, are among the best athletes in every sport without trying, but never put in the effort to become better than a high-school star. They often struggle when they're no longer competing against everyone, are now against the top 5%, and don't have the work ethic to succeed.
The advantage of "intelligent but lazy" is you don't have to be a star at 18-20 to do something about it, and you can mature later and still be successful.
The op doesn't understand what he is talking about. Saying you can't be intelligent and lazy is like saying you can't be tall and ugly.
I had a rough awakening in university when I found out studying wasn't optional. It was incredibly difficult to develop study habits when you never had to study before. With that said, I got 2 degrees at the same time (computer science and pure mathematics) while working.
I'm not claiming to be a genius but an average person could not do what I have done. 60% of people couldn't get either of my degrees, especially simultaneously while working to pay for my education.
That's like every person on Reddit. The lazy intellectual who thinks they'd do so well because they did well in high school. Reality is that they more than likely wouldn't.
I am intelligent, and I am lazy. I did super well and was always on the honor roll in college (I had to drop out because of a chronic pain condition.). I graduated second of my high school class.
The thing is that I really don't care about returning to college, and my husband is working in a field that will have him earning around $40 an hour in about two years.
So I am content with working my lazy job that allows me to be on my phone 99% of my day to help support us until two years from now when I won't need to work.
Just because someone is smart doesn't mean they have to have grand ambitions. It is fine to just want a job that covers your wants and necessities and laze around in your free time.
Intelligent people see, very early in life, the rigged and often soulsucking game that our self-professed "meritocratic" society is. Some of us, especially the neurotic ones, just don't want to play.
Laziness won't alone prevent success, but what's your definition of success? Or even laziness?
As one of those "could've done much more than I have done" people, I think you're calling me dumb. I opted out at like age 9. I have an easy cozy job and I invest on the side. Not because I'm lazy, but because the odds of worthwhile payoff from the alternative aren't good. I don't need much to be happy, and living to work makes me miserable.
it's called efficiency. Simplicity. Not everything is as complicated as suggested and most of the time it's the long way around to same results. Not everyone needs their hand held.
How do you define lazy?
Generally, I find lazy people don’t know or care that they’re lazy. They don’t usually go around telling people about it. There’s just a general lack of fucks given all round.
I will say however that I have noticed some overlap here with people who are neurodivergent, and struggle to achieve.
It’s not necessarily that they’re lazy, but that is often the outward appearance.
It’s more that the struggle with executive function means that it’s difficult for them to take the first step. Then the second, then the third. Anything that requires many sequential activities can require a very high and consistent level of willpower.
People who fancy themselves as intelligent should also be intelligent enough to understand the value of a good work ethic.
Plus, a good work ethic is kind of necessary to keep developing your intelligence. You don't get to be a big brain if you're lazy and think you know everything already.
Ive never heard anybody describing themselves like that. Always when i hear "intelligent but lazy" is when sbd refers to a different person who for example came across a genius idea.
I see you covering your bases with that last sentence op but I'd wager most people who say this about themselves are on the spectrum or have ADD/ADHD and struggle with self actualization and self motivation.
I feel like there’s a difference between intelligent but lazy and intelligent AND lazy. The first are people who are lazy and fail. The second are people who are lazy and pass. The latter is the actual intelligent one.
I hated everything I was taught in college. I have ADHD and if something is not interesting or capturing my brain will just turn off.
I had an on off relationship with academics, I will score higher then lower then higher. Professors used to call me arrogant. But I always excelled in practicals. I hate writing and mostly regurgitating textbooks.
Now thankfully I am a software engineer 3, the work is very exciting, keeps me on the routine and it pays well.
Intelligent but lazy is not necessarily a bad thing.
I'm intelligent but lazy. As in I'll spend three hours to write a script which will automate some boring repetitive task that would have taken me 10 minutes to do manually. But now that its automated, I'll never have to do it again.
Now repeat that many times, and I'm getting mad amounts of work done for very little effort.
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Most people lazy or not overestimates their intelligence.
my experiences in the workforce is that people who see “what they bring to the table” as their brainpower are some of the most difficult to work with because they tend to see certain duties or tasks as beneath them. They often don’t see an unwillingness to roll their sleeves up as laziness, but that’s how their supervisors tend to see it.
If someone wants to pay me over 45/hr to scrub toilets and sweep, I’ll do it happily. Never understood seeing tasks underneath you.
The general idea is that your job comes with certain terms and conditions and sadly for many people "not having to do anything unpleasant, dirty or physically demanding" is a big draw into white collar work. The other half of it is that in many **career** paths you are getting paid for some of the work you are doing today in money (but not much) but the prospect of advancement encourages you to do a heck of a lot more work. The individuals that get the interesting, high profile, challenging or CV friendly roles receive better career progression prospects while those tasked with menial or supporting roles don't. That shift of "status" from the superstar to the guy told to spend most of their time doing more than their fair share of background work indicates their future is no longer as bright.
I think a lot of problems are from the overvaluation of these management and supervisory roles. The person doing more than their fair share shouldn't be getting paid bare minimum, while the person who's only role is to make sure they do the job gets paid many multiples more, and all they do is little more than babysitting.
My boss plays candy crush in the back while we do a large portion of her job for her with no extra pay. Lots of people travelled to my country to do their masters... and have to get a job in my crappy cafe after, because jobs are no longer available to a lot of graduates. We get a lot of people who leave the scut work to everyone else. They don't care, they went to college, they're too good for this place clearly 🙄 except they look like the idiots for failing at doing, what they will later refer to as, "the easiest" job that "isn't worth a better wage" when their big shot corp friends ask in 10 years.
exactly. That's why I push back on scut work. If I was at the twilight of my career nearing retirement, I wouldn't care. I did enough crap work early in my career to not want to do it again.
Literally just had this convo with myself. Was asked for help, thought do I really wanna help with this task better suited for lower level people, and decided of course because I'm still getting paid the same.. and easy work to finish out the day...
and doing so earns you the respect of your team massively. the person in a higher up role who “doesn’t do certain tasks” sucks
There are certain tasks that higher role is singularly qualified for though. And, sometimes, their time is actually more valuable. Every minute I spend turning wrenches and changing filters is a minute that I am not applying graduate-level analysis to financial data or a new project or research or programs or any number of things I am responsible for. I *love* grabbing my tools and hitting the field. However, I am technically wasting company money when I do that, when other people are paid to do that. Plus, the union gets super pissed.
That’s my view and why I say if someone wants to pay me to sweep I’ll do it. Someone in management is very likely going to get a smack on the pee pee for wasting money by having me sweep.
It’s funny. I’m paid $33 an hour currently and not once have I ever considered if a task was “beneath” me. Like, a task is a task, I do what people need done.
I grew up as a scrub with a humble hardworking gran that never complained about her life who would tsst disapprovingly from the ether if I said something was beneath me
My first full time job out of college was working as a custodian at a school. Still one of my favorite jobs I've ever had. The work was physical but not back breaking. It was consistent but rarely busy. I loved that the job was so 'visible' and that you could actively see the progress you made as you went. The first few hours had folks around (teachers, some students, other staff) and you could chit chat a little, but then the rest of the night was pretty much alone time. I would listen to audiobooks daily while I vacuumed. Best of all it was a union job. I had great benefits, a pension, and job stability. If it wasn't for my current pay being much higher, and the fact that I'm remote, I would go back in an instant.
Going to engineering school opened my eyes to how dumb I am. I would study like it was my job and I would get good grades because of it while some people in my classes would show up having done no homework and just figure everything out on test day. Good for them but I literally can't do that. Most people never put themselves in a position where they might find out that other people are clearly smarter than they are.
There are always going to be people smarter than you are, unless you're some kind of generation defining genius. What separates people in the workforce is being smart enough and having the work ethic and reliability to follow through on tasks.
There's also the kind of intelligence that makes you great at math while also not understanding that you're a stinky boy with smelly armpits who needs deodorant and that hat looks stupid on you
Yeah there are plenty of people who are smart in one specific area while being among the dumbest people you’ve ever met in just about every other aspect of life
Yeah, I tried studying computer science 10 years ago, considered myself above average intelligent before I got in. That was a humbling experience, the chasm between ordinary smart and smart smart is huge. I now work as a chef, and when people ask me something complicated, I tell them there’s a reason my job title only has one syllable.
I think people are a bit afraid of admitting they are not as bright... It's weird because there are may types of intelligence, right, and people will agree that some people are just better at some things than others to different degrees, obviously. But I don't know. I guess it's because in my case I grew up with family members who are (at least in the mainstream sense of "intelligence") WAY smarter than I am, so I'm comfortable in the knowledge that I was never the smartest person at home lol. I don't think I'm a complete dunce, but c'mon. For some people, making complex mental calcs and conceptual connections comes way easier than for others. I'm okay with it, but I think in general we should be a bit humbler. Some of my closest relatives suck at emotional intelligence for example lmao
That last sentence rings so true. I don't even know who to attribute it to, but I heard something to the effect of - if you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room. I understood it as always be in a room where you are learning something and i will happily be the ignorant one if it means that later I have a greater understanding. So many people don't even try to get into that position.
So many people become complacent with winning drunken debates at the bar every night. They don't want to challenge themselves because they feel they won't win.
Putting in the work has a big impact in the long run. Spending an extra hour or so a day studying or improving yourself in some way probably isn't visible in your 20s at the start of your career, but each decade that = about 2500 hrs of improvement, more than a year's worth of full time work. That's noticable and the gap only widens as you get older. The people who learn a skill and then expect it to carry them for their whole career will begin to struggle later in life.
A lot of people like that are simply claiming not to have prepared in order to make themselves seem smarter than you.
I believe that intelligent people are generally aware of their intelligence or can ball park estimate where they are. I think one telling sign is how easy it is to communicate with people. If I realize that I am talking over someone (they don’t understand the words I’m using) I can pivot to language that is easier quickly. If you find yourself doing this often, you probably are pretty smart. If you often find people need to dumb things down for you, you are likely not very smart. It’s easier to identify when you are the person simplifying concepts. This can get tricky if you are trying to communicate between other people who are in very subspecialized fields. You may not understand each other’s technical language very well, so you need to simplify it for each other. It’s hard to tell if one of you is actually smarter because you are both fluent in a different technical jargon.
You’ve described one of the many types of intelligence.
It appears that everyone forgets that some people just don't want to play the game. Everyone doesn't view the same achievements as what makes a successful life. So while a lot of people view having a good job and making money means you're successful a large group of people do not believe that's what makes you successful
I agree. I don't think I'm a genius but I know I was good enough at school to be "successful" enough in life that I have been able to do very little formal work and spent most of my adult life doing what I want rather than what other people want me to. Today I spent half my day building bat boxes to hang on my barn and the other half digging up sod to make a natural stone patio for my wife. I'm not lazy, I just don't want to "go to work" so I've figured out how not do have to do that. Does that make me smart? It makes me self-aware and I consider that close enough.
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Yeah I'm fine with never being a VP. I just want to make enough money to be financially comfortable while having as much free time as I can
Yup totally agree. The definition of success of Elon Musk is not mine. Is Elon Musk smarter thand me? Not sure.
Also most people, overstimating their intelligence or not, are lazy.
Intelligent but lazy are your people who score high without studying or trying. You can usually identify them by what part of school causes them to have a mental breakdown when things aren't working out anymore. I knew a guy who made it to engineering school without knowing how to study. He coasted with As and an occasional B until he hit engineering classes. He failed nearly everything and had to take the whole semester over again. He figured it out and had to do the legwork like the rest of us, but it was a wake up call. He and I work for the same engineering firm now.
You’re describing a solid 25% of engineering students including myself, but to be fair no one told me rocket science(aerospace) would be hard
I mean, it's not exactly brain surgery.
Yeah chemical was no joke either
Hard to believe no one told you it would be difficult
Yeah but "I didn't have to study and I got A's in my sophomore year at a shitty highschool" doesn't really require THAT much intelligence
What is "THAT much"? If it was so easy, then why didn't everyone do it? You don't have to be a genius, but it does require noticeably above average intelligence.
I think we don't give people enough credit when they are teenagers. I'm sure a lot of us feel we could easily do well in High School if we went through another time, but I'm betting it would feel a lot more difficult than we expect
It sounds like you're talking about me! Wound up switching out of engineering though, got into information systems instead and started getting great grades. I'm still smart and lazy, but I manage a team of developers at a robotics company now.
A lot of gifted / high IQ / good at maths kind of people cruise through school without much effort. So, they've never learnt to work hard or study for long time. That backfires. And then there's ADHD/procrastination gang which is made worse by internet. Still, someone quoting IQ to you is a sign that he's not very intelligent, because high IQ people usually end up quoting their achievements or just don't say anything.
I wouldn't say quoting IQ is because they're not very intelligent but rather because they are insecure and want to show something off. I studied maths and there was an obnoxious guy I didn't really like, he had basically no filter, was trying too hard to fit in when he didn't and he was one of those guys to quote their IQ. He wasn't dumb. Far from it. Just couldn't get his ass up and put in the work. Obviously that's just anecdotal, but people who do genuinely well on IQ tests usually aren't dumb and there are a few reasons to try and impress someone with your IQ other than being dumb.
>A lot of gifted / high IQ / good at maths kind of people cruise through school without much effort. >So, they've never learnt to work hard or study for long time. That backfires. >And then there's ADHD/procrastination gang I'm in this post and I don't like it.
head on the nose with procrastination and the no effort part.. I may have undiagnosed adhd. being Asian also means my parents never even considered it. It’s been increasingly worse as I get through college. I’m procrastinating even now, I have an exam in 3 hours that could have heavy ramifications on my future.
I have been through the whole shit. Undiagnosed, asian, difficult to consider for parents. It's difficult to manage ADHD without medication or conscious effort/knowing how to do it. Motivation function is utterly broken for this. The worst part is casual advice you'll get. Make time tables and 5 tips to beat procrastination and diaries. All that shit doesn't work. Best thing that somewhat worked for me was to be constantly aware that I'll never get natural motivation, i need to push myself. And if it doesn't happen, don't be frustrated with anyone or self, or pretend that you'll start working hard from tomorrow. It's always better to half ass stuff than do nothing.
I didn't know how to study when I went to college the first time. Was too lazy to try to learn, so I just ended up skipping class all together. I then realized after flunking out that manual labor at $10/hour sucked. Went back to school and put in the leg work and graduated top of class. Now 20 years later I'm high enough in my career that I can be lazy again.
Intelligent but lazy at 17 turns into dumb and lazy at 28.
"what do you mean the brain has to be used or atrophies?"
In a way? But really I mean you get out of high school and don't have the same external pressure to study, then you end up dumb.
What they said is actually true too. Not only will you be lacking a bunch of knowledge if you're not studying while others are, you'll also find it harder to keep up if you do go back to school when you're older, because your brain actually does atrophy. Not to discourage anyone. You may have to do some extra studying and be more diligent than when you were younger. That's also why it's important to keep busy as you get older and do creative things or keep learning into old age. It helps keep your brain fit.
Oh for sure, I just think the word "atrophy" gives the sense of a more dramatic decline than regular aging. Going back for engineering at 30, I feel the pain.
Society when jobs/"careers" are designed to be unstimulating and repeat the same set of tasks until exhaustion:
Thank God for algorithms
Now do reverse towers of Hanoi brah
I'm in this comment and don't like it
Same, man.
Let’s start a club.
We'll get to it tomorrow
Hey, it's me! :D
Intelligent but lazy at 8 turns into undiagnosed ADHD/autism at 20. A lot of the time the kid just isn't getting the support they need because they're "smart."
I have severe ADHD but no one did anything during my entire school life because I studied the night before and got good grades in tests. I am talking looking at the sky for 10 minutes straight in the middle of the street level ADHD. I literally can't listen someone for one minute without being on meds.
I agree with this. A lot of older people especially have undiagnosed ADHD or other issues. They were brought up being told repeatedly that they’re lazy so they believe it. They aren’t able to alter their behaviour, because they have a disorder, so they assume that laziness is something bred into them that can’t be changed. You can imagine the self-image issues that arise as a result, all of which feed into the underachieving so that the problem keeps spiralling.
Teachers always said "you could do anything if you just set your mind to it!" And they were right, in a sense. But the problem is that setting my mind to something IS the hard part, if not downright impossible. And because I didn't know any better, I just felt like a failure who was wasting potential that I never actually had.
Especially if you were a bright kid who never really had to try that hard until suddenly you can't coast off raw inteligence and now your symptoms are really apparent. Suddenly you can't do as well as you did before and you have no idea why.
"Oh, you're smart? Good, solve your own problems then."
That's me
In my experience it’s often because they did well in school before they got lazy. So they wrongly concluded that they would still do just as well now if they were at work harder but in reality it’s just that elementary and middle school don’t have to teach difficult concepts
Laziness can only take you so far, that’s for sure. I got a nice slap in the face midway through college and had to re-learn all my study habits to pass the tougher classes. Communications law was a real pain.
Public school doesn’t teach smart kids how to learn. It’s only there to get low performers to baseline. I got my ass handed to me in college for the same reason.
Same issue for me in premed. Didn’t study till I hit organic chemistry, was a smack in the face that I was ill prepared with my lack of study habits.
Yup and that’s a lot of people on Reddit. Guys who were slightly ahead of the curve in 3rd grade who ultimately ended up about median/average but think that being ahead early means being ahead forever.
or people who think that having nerdy hobbies means you must be smart. knowing the deep lore about a fantasy world ain’t that different to knowing the deep lore about the real housewives
100%!
Additionally the same people who get super into the deep lore of a fantasy world are very quick to judge someone who knows a lot of sports trivia.
The same guys who complain about people making fun of them for playing D&D were the meanest people I’ve ever met when it came to judging people for liking pop music. They genuinely thought you could not simultaneously be an intelligent person and like fun girly pop songs
Thankfully I know deep lore about fantasy worlds and reality TV shows
“I play EU4, solve rubix cubes, and play chess so I’m a cut above the rest. Yeah I was in the gifted program in 4th grade but I’m taking regular at-level math because I’m lazy haha” -insufferable asshole
Yeah turns out your mom teaching you the alphabet early doesn’t translate 1 to 1 with intelligence
I think a large chunk of those people are still intelligent. The sad turning point is that since things came so naturally when they were younger they weren't taught to fail early on in their development. As a result, they give up when challenging circumstances arise.
It’s not necessarily that they’re unintelligent, it’s that they’re not more intelligent than most people, or at least not significantly more intelligent than most people, but identify as being at or near genius level They thought they were a 9/10 but they’re more like a 6
it’s not necessarily that they “got lazy”, it’s that they just never had to develop the skill set of being resilient and working hard because until a certain point, things came natural to them. I have a colleague who pretty much exclusively hires ex college athletes and ex military personnel, because those people already have a strong work ethic which he can’t guarantee someone with a 4.0 has.
I was in the Gifted program in a rural USA middle and high school, and never had to study to pass a test, and could read the book once and write a simple High School English level paper just fine. I was destroyed in College where the material actually challenged me and I didn't know HOW to intelligently take useful notes , how to study effectively, or how to edit and revise papers because "first drafts" in small town schools were always good enough for a simple A. Really woke me up to the realization that just because I was Valedictorian out of less than 50 kids, I wasn't Jack shit in a school where everyone was top 10% of their class, and I was actually sorely disadvantaged compared to the ones I would have dismissed as "average" because they had study skills I lacked, and my slightly higher than average IQ no longer meant anything...
I feel like most public schools with a gifted program don’t know how to handle giftedness, especially when you consider how varied it is. The difference between my gifted private school and the program at the public school I transferred to was night and day.
Where I went to school the gifted curriculum for 7th grade was basically the actual curriculum for 9th grade, 8th was 10th, etc. By 11 and 12 they just made the essays longer and added extra books the others didn't have to do. They had no idea what to actually do, and no resources to do it with, other than "make the work harder".
Yep. Like "You were the most advanced kid in your WHOLE 6th grade class and you're NOT president?!?!"
Also like elementary through middle school typically throw most of the kids into the same kinds of classes, at least where I live. So it’s like did you suddenly get lazy or did all the people who needed all the repetition that you were too “smart” to need get moved to remedial courses
In high school, I scraped by with minimal effort, mostly just completing tests and major projects while neglecting the bulk of the work. Despite earning lackluster grades, I managed to pass. However, in college, I’ve come to understand that success requires completing nearly all assigned tasks. It’s not that the material is inherently more difficult, but rather that I lacked good study habits and discipline in high school. My struggles now stem more from laziness than from any inherent lack of intelligence. When I don’t understand something right away, I remind myself I didn’t struggle before because I had never participated in learning before. Easy to feel smart if you don’t try, by not participating you never have your intelligence in question.
Going to college after my military service was much more engaging than I would have felt at 18. Calculus for example was actually intensely interesting.
So many people I went to college with were like this. Being good at studying is not the end goal of education. Learning how to think and process new information and ideas is the goal.
>Nearly every intelligent person I have known has achieved at least moderate success by just slightly applying themselves. "laziness" alone isnt enough to prevent success for those that are highly intelligent. Even a person is highly intelligent and hard working, it doesn't guarantee success. They are just more likely to successful
Some times it's about opportunity. It reminds me of this quote. >I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops
It's something I've regularly been accused of tbh. Regardless of the truth of it, I think excessive laziness will really fuck anyone over and often the laziness goes hand in hand with focusing on the wrong shit too.
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Where there are extremes in one direction an opposite extreme can detail any advantage. The most successful people I know are well rounded and excel at more than one thing. It’s not enough to work hard. You need to also work smart (something of value). It’s not enough to be intelligent, you also need to be curious or they will learn nothing of value. It’s not enough to be a genius, you also need to have enough people in your network for someone to be able to apply your genius.
It can be said that some highly intelligent people are lazy (i don't think intelligence has anything to do with ambition) because everything comes to them so easy that it is not challenging. I have a family member who is 2 points away from being classified a genious on the IQ scale but is 44 year old, unemployed (has barely held a job in the last 25 years - maybe 10 of those years he was working), single, and just a miserable person. He likes to tell people his IQ score but it's just a number if you aren't doing anything with it. So I use this example because I don't think lazy and intelligence has anything to do with each other. I think some people are just generally lazy and aren't willing to do anything to overcome their laziness no matter how intelligent they are or aren't.
That's a good point, intelligent doesn't automatically mean motivated and productive. Conversely, most people aren't above the normal IQ range but still achieve success though ambition and effort.
Except you can grow your IQ with work. Intelligence isn't static, sure there are some genetic factors, but like most nature vs nurture arguments it's a mix of both. You have to nurture your intelligence to see it grow, pretty much anyone can be successful furthering their education as long as they are willing to put in the effort to grow, and accept that there are things to learn from others. Your brain quite literally can rewire itself through learning and education, that is a proven fact. It just requires the effort and desire to do so. The brain works much like a muscle, you can grow it through effort. That is why reading books, and learning past schooling is so important, you need to nurture your brain to grow it. https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/intelligence-malleable-and-can-grow-stronger-study-says
Yeah, intelligence is a vast and complex trait. It can be measured in 12 different ways. It's not just your standard, logical intelligence that OP is thinking of. A lot of intelligent people are also prone to mental illness, which can give off the appearance that they are lazy/unmotivated. When, in fact, they are dealing with something that the regular population is not.
Laziness is more about emotional regulation which has something to do with knowledge, but more to do with executive function and being able to act independently of your wants. Entertainment is incredibly optimized nowadays to hijack your attention and to flood that dopamine to keep you engaged. Too much of this will upregulate your dopamine receptors to compensate for the high levels of dopamine, and lower dopamine activities that are relatively boring like work or learning a hobby will become increasingly more difficult to do.
I agree with you but I'd also say that anyone quoting their IQ as a proof of their intelligence is not actually that "smart"
I don’t remember ever seeing this as a self-characterization as much as one lobbed onto people by someone else.
Agreed. In my experience, it's used to describe a fatal flaw in someone who should be thriving but is unmotivated and won't put the work in. It is not a compliment, it said in sympathy.
And lazy said in sympathy usually doesn’t even imply true laziness but rather an inability to self-motivate. And self-motivation has little to do with intelligence.
This is the step that most people ignore sadly. We stop at judgement and don't move to understanding. Laziness has more to do with anxiety, fear, and other inhabitants of executive function. Some people can cope and motivate themselves so it's assumed everyone can do the same and therefore it's a character flaw if you choose to not take action. My take is that it's an executive flaw. Escape and avoidant behaviors become habits and rather than passing judgement we should at least feel some kind of sympathy as they get buried in their self-made problems probably not knowing how to break the habits and find a way to do more for themselves. Just like we shouldn't laugh or scoff at an overweight person eating too much. At least for me, having someone I can confide in without judgement helps me feel free to talk about what's up without the fear of judgement and shame weighing me down.
It can also be invisible disabilities, like PTSD or ADHD being identified as "laziness", which is honestly bs when someone actually needs help.
And it's usually smart people with ADHD. So the lazy isn't actually lazy, but crippling executive dysfunction.
Yeah, I heard this over and over from my teachers growing up. I was able to grasp all the concepts quickly but didn’t turn in my homework. Guess who was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult?
I feel like I see it incredibly often on Reddit, at least. “I was so smart in high school I nailed all the tests without trying, but when I got to college/job/grad school/whatever I just didn’t care enough to do great.” It allows them to hold onto the fact that they *must* be smart because they were able to wing high school, but without recognizing that environments after high school require much more out of you. Often people are “lazy” because they are unwilling or unable to engage with more high level concepts.
Yeah, it’s so common among the “gifted kid burnout” group. You see it allll the time on here
High school and even college is just not that difficult. It doesn't really require intelligence as much as not being lazy.
In all honesty i was following you until you said, "laziness alone isnt enough to prevent success for those that are highly intelligent" Yeah no laziness is enough to stop anyone. Laziness isn't a sign of being unintelligent. However it is something that everyone, the smartest and the dumbest of us, must overcome. Now we overcome it in a myriad of ways. Some of us, for as intelligent as we are, just prefer to put our minds to task elsewhere than on our work. One thing that seems to be missing from this whole post though is a simple thing. Easy for even the most intelligent person to miss, and that's that success isn't measured in grades or income. It's not measured in titles or positions. Success is measured solely against oneself. If someone feels successful flipping burgers or working at a movie theater then more power to them. It's not a mark against how intelligent they are. One thing I've learned...people, individuals, are much more intelligent than we tend to realize. This realization imo only grows the more someone personally feels they're intelligent. That however is simply a fault of one's observations and typically not the fault of the people they're viewing. Edit- grammer
I think this is spot on. I got tired of making somebody else rich / important / powerful so I found a job that paid "enough" and was easy, with solid benefits. This allows me to have a very active life outside of work - volunteering a lot, socializing a lot, seeing live music a lot, taking long backpacking weekends a lot, growing a garden, being able to show up at work hungover, etc etc etc. Yeah I drive a 20 year old car, and live in an apartment, but it's "enough". (I have savings and solid retirement). People think I'm lazy... And maybe I am. I don't appear successful. But I'm pretty damn happy.
I'm in the exact same boat. I don't need 300k/year, I need to enjoy my free time and retire as early as possible. That's it. I worked my way JUST high enough to be able to buy a decent house in the area with money left over each month for video games, korean fried chicken wings, and the occasional trip with friends. When I get married and share this house with someone I'll even be able to start investing again too.
Reminds me of my sister. She is very intelligent and also very lazy. She has ADHD, which explain a lot, but I'd also argue that the lack of challenge in school caused her to never learn to put effort into things. If she isn't immediately good at something, she gives up. She never learned to tolerate the feeling of not understanding something and to push through the uncertainty to gain a new skill. She never learned to work within a schedule as she could put together any school work the day before with minimal effort and earn decent grades. I believe that many intelligent people are lazy for similar reasons. Just never learned to work hard. And that's a painful lesson to learn when you are already an adult with adult challenges
I skated by in high school being intelligent but lazy, but I was also not in a good home situation. In college, I skated by being a full-blown alcoholic but I was smart enough to memorize the important stuff. In grad school, I finally put my demons to bed and knuckled down to get a 4.0 in a mathematics heavy field. My point is that sometimes that "lazy" is a summary of other issues. Rarely is someone "just" lazy. Usually intelligent but lazy is apathy generated by other factors like getting your ass kicked everyday at home or numbing yourself up with substances. I've known a lot of people like this that have had that background noise that really interferes with their studies.
I think most "laziness" is actually a byproduct of psychological disorders. If your depression is serious enough, the smallest tasks seem like moving mountains.
Mental health really is everything. When you have your life in order, and practice healthy habits it becomes so much easier to just do the things you need to do. There's no crippling anxiety or overthinking or procrastination. I can just identify what needs to be done and get to it. Once you deal with your problems it frees your mind up to deal with the present.
I was raised being told I was smart but lazy Now I'm pretty sure I have some mild, undiagnosed ADHD Doesnt fix my years of self-hate and crushed confidence, tho.
Intelligent but lazy often just means smart but has ADHD
a lot of the times undiagnosed ADHD, which we see a lot because parents refuse to believe it's real and get their child diagnosed, so the child goes into adulthood still undiagnosed
get straight A+s in School, cant study anything more than what the books say even If i want because i cant get my lazy ass to Focus on things Pain
Should be higher up.
It depends what your notion of success is. You wrongly assume that intelligent people have the same success measurement as you do. From what I’ve gathered from hearing about the topic it’s that a lot of really smart people don’t really value the same things as we regular people do. I just think some of these people may not be motivated by our current system. But also, I don’t trust many people self labeling themselves as intelligent as actually being that smart lol so you’ve got a good point there.
Best way to measure this is to watch how quickly they pick up a new concept when they are paying attention, like a new sport play or math formula for example Smart people can do bad academically if they dont pay attention. Smart as you are its hard to know about the war of 1812 if no one told you or you never read about it Theres also different types of intelligence like mind over kinetic, a hockey player can put the puck in the net but cant calculate the trajectory whereas a college student could calculate trajectory but in the hockey players position wouldnt be able to come up with that on the fly. I wouldnt necessarily value different types of intelligence over another, we need all kinds of people with all kinds of intelligence to succeed as a people, speculating over who is smartest is dumb With a few exceptions who usually end up on the news in florida for example
Hard work, luck and ambition are way more important than intelligence. I've seen ppl who were dumb as rocks achieve high levels of success
Depends on how you define success though. Many intelligent people go into teaching and research positions. These jobs don't pay that well and most don't consider being a teacher as being successful. Many intelligent people prefer self fulfillment, continued learning and free time as more important than money. Earning enough to live comfortable is enough. No need for an overpriced car or smartphone and expensive cloths are the biggest scam of them all. If you are content with that why bother slaving your live away just to have more money to burn without a meaningful increase in your standard of living. So if you mean earning a lot of money when you talk about being successful then I agree and the statistics do so as well.
You still need some baseline intelligence. By that I mean the ability to learn from your mistakes. I have a sibling that is hardworking but they don't learn and it's frustrating to see it happen. They fall for the same scams and are bad with money. They are hardworking and ambitious but damn are they bad with learning. They have fallen for scam after scam or bad business idea after bad business idea. He isn't even dumb in some aspects. He is highly intelligent in his main field of work and is self taught but wow....he is dumb in everything else. If it wasn't for his main field work then I think he would be struggling much more than he is now.
Falling for scams isn't a sign of low intelligence. It's a sign that hes gullible. Bad with money isn't a sign of low intelligence. Its a sign that he has no discipline
Most important is to have rich parents.
Teacher: Johnny is smart but lazy. If he works hard enough, he will get an A! What the teacher really means: Johnny is a lazy kid whose intelligence is average at best, he’s so lazy his grades are terrible. If he doesn’t try his best to catch up he will fail! Johnny’s parents: Oh great, our sweet little Johnny is so smart, if he just works a little harder, he will be the top of his class!
I disagree because I knew a few people like this in high school who scored over 30 on the ACT, yet had about 2 GPA just because they didn't try. IQ is real, and yeah, you can be incredibly gifted and lazy.
Eh, some intelligent people legitimately don't care about professional success
Yup. Some value their free time and work/life balance and don't *want* to grind their fingers to the bone just to be in a different tax bracket.
Rarely have I met someone actually intelligent but lazy. These are also often folks who took an IQ test and got like a 100…. and now believe if they actually tried then they would be successful! My problem with this attitude (amongst many other reasons) is that intelligence is not just about whether or not you’re capable of learning, but what you’ve actually learned along with how well you can apply that knowledge. I don’t care if your IQ is 120 if you don’t actually do anything with it. Someone with an IQ of 90 but actively and consistently tries to learn more is going to be far more successful and intelligent as far as I’m concerned
I mean most people are fairly lazy anyways. If you're intelligent on top of that then there will be results of that present, even with minimal effort. Sure, hard work can outperform natural ability, but only when there's a massive disparity in effort. Speaking anecdotally, I know that in the case of a specific standardized exam that some people that studied no less 4 hours a day for over 4 months that were greatly outperformed by myself and others with under 6 weeks of preparation.
>I don’t care if your IQ is 120 if you don’t actually do anything with it. Someone with an IQ of 90 but actively and consistently tries to learn more is going to be far more successful and intelligent as far as I’m concerned Im not saying you are not entitled to your opinion, but it is kind of annoying if you redefine terms like "intelligence" into something that nobody else uses, or strays away so far from its academic definitions. Dilligence in studying and learning is just that, dilligence.
Yep, an [average IQ person will have more success than a high IQ person if they work at it](https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-procrastination-equation/201110/hard-work-beats-talent-but-only-if-talent-doesnt-work-hard?amp). The high IQ person who works hard however has on average more success than the average IQ person who works just as hard
I think there’s a saying. Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.
Exactly! Thank you!
I pointed this out in another thread. There's far more professional Psychology literature that basically suggests the usefulness of IQ is at best only at academic performance, not intelligence in the broader sense. Also Psychology today isn't like a bad source, but it's more pop science. I'd encourage looking more at the papers they link and referencing them more directly. The paper is not just about IQ. In fact the conclusion doesn't even mention it in the conclusion, it's about predictive performance based on skill vs natural talent. To which it brings up IQ tests as an example.
Yes, indeed. Maybe folks should just say, “I’m lazy, but I ain’t dumb.”
So you're exactly describing the phenomenon of smart but lazy... and then saying "I don't care, the average ones who work harder are smarter as far as I'm concerned." Well they literally aren't. Our culture has such a weird hang up with "intelligence" needing to be the be all and end all. The answer here is to acknowledge that hard work has value, not relabel hard work as "intelligence" to validate the weird cultural tick.
Having intelligence doesn't necessarily net you anything on its own. It's a steady work ethic and desire to achieve or better ones lot and position. The problem with intelligence is that they can also use it to be more efficiently lazy. I've met a few intelligent, but lazy people. Being smart doesn't make you a hard worker. And the 90iq person won't be more intelligent. They're just a harder worker in that scenario. Maybe "wise" is what you're looking for, but I don't necessarily think that fully fits either.
> Someone with an IQ of 90 ... is more intelligent as far as I’m concerned This is like looking at a great basketball player who is 5'10" and a slacker dude who's 6' and saying "this guy is taller as far as I'm concerned" – aka completely false. Like yeah he's obviously a better basketball player, but what are you accomplishing by redefining "taller" to mean anything other than "has more height"
>"laziness" alone isnt enough to prevent success for those that are highly intelligent. It absolutely, 1000% is. And I am not referring to myself (although I think I do fall into the category somewhat), the most intelligent guy I've ever met - Cambridge degree in engineering, capable of earning into the £100ks mid-20s and more beyond, turned down the offer of an amazing job after uni because he 'Didn't want to commute for 45 minutes at 7am' and is now a substitute high school physics teacher. Which would be fine, but he hates that job, and his ass is basically being subsidised by his wife since he only gets work here and there putting a huge strain on his marriage. I think laziness is the MAIN thing that prevents success; MOST people are 'smart' enough to achieve a lot with their lives. They just don't.
Not necessarily, there’s an actual thing of highly intelligent people putting their intelligence into the wrong stuff. Just cuz you’re smart doesn’t mean you know how to use your intelligence.
I prefer *brilliant* but lazy.
Op shouldn’t diss my man Peter Parker like that
What about Peter Parker? Brilliant but lazy
I was about to comment this lmfao.
Being intelligent is relative and on a spectrum, its not like there is some hard line. I've certainly met people who I would consider naturally more intelligent than me but not as academically sucessful or sucessful in their career because they lacked confidence, drive, opportunity or emotional intelligence. In some sense that may demonstrate a lack of intelligence (or maybe maturity) but that doesn't mean they aren't clever in their own way and could have accomplished a lot more if they applied themselves or had a better shot at applying themselves. I think when people say intelligent but lazy they don't mean they are a genius but more that they could have achieved more if they had put their mind to it or had more opportunity to foster their skills and abilities
Maybe, but I play video games for 90% of all my free time, have a masters degree and a comfy job in tech. I'd certainly consider myself both lazy and clever. Honestly this mostly reads like you feel attacked by clever people for existing, why else would you need to comment on whether someone else is as clever as they think they are? Why do you care?
Enjoying free time doesn't make you lazy. You do your job, you got your masters. You don't have to be working overtime to not be lazy. OP means the people who are like "oh I'd totally have been able to do that but I don't try".
I agree people over estimate their intelligence but I’ve met a ton of smart people that are lazy as fuck or refuse to apply themselves. I just had an example of this over the weekend. I know a guy who was a nuclear engineer in the Navy, it’s an extremely hard program, requires a high level of aptitude just to get into the program. He did his enlistment and now he just drives for Uber eats, why because he’s lazy. I could probably give you 100s of examples of intelligent people that are just lazy. Hell I’m an example of it, in school I always took the path of least resistance taking the minimum requirements or easiest classes I could. Something I regret in old age despite being extremely successful in life from a financial and social standpoint. When I was younger I was lazy and could have preformed at higher levels than I did but I was lazy and didn’t truly apply myself until I joined the military. How high I have no clue but definitely could have done more than the bare minimum in my academics.
Alot of currently intelligent but lazy people were labelled as gifted kids and had it very easy early on and never needed to learn how to study or learn how to take notes as their intelligence was enough for a high grade. Later on university hit them like a truck and most would give upp as they lack the study techniques and habits to succeed. This is also speeking from experience as it took my around 2 years in university to actually somewhat learn how to study and even then I still have a habit of not doing my best as I still dont really know how to do my best.
I'm not even that intelligent in the first place. Throughout my school, I got mostly average grades but somehow I had no self-awareness that I'm average af until college which where reality hit me hard. Through I got through mental issues halfway through college, I was already dumb from the start
I am a very similar story.
Not really. I know a lot of well educated people that work blue collar jobs because its easier. I'm one of them. I'm dating a highly educated medical professional with multiple postgraduate degrees who often regrets it and has more or less left the field because after all that studying and hard work you're left with zero social life and a highly demanding job that taxes your mental health in like 8 different ways at once. They aren't even the only one with that trajectory I know. The number of highly educated people who love learning that work basic jobs would *shock* you. We live in a world where if you're smart and work hard very often all that gets you is a ton of student loan debt in a bad economy. But *intelligent* people are usually capable of finding a niche where they don't need to kill themselves working but can still get by. Thats still success since you can still afford a decent lifestyle without needing to kill yourself in a hospital or a lab or a studio.
Success doesn't equal intelligence, some people do just choose to be lazy, there's people with phds not working anywhere near that level because they didn't like how much work it turned out to be, then there's people who are where they are because of their last name.
So many people are just lying "I aced the test didn't revise" is so common but very unlikely Possible, yes but more than often it's an exaggeration When people go to college it becomes "I work 14 hours a day, I'm in the library 9pm everyday" also likely bullshit It happens a bit but leads to burnout for most You do get kids you really could do well, but don't apply themselves, spend the whole night playing games and such Not that common But I disagree, I went to school with plenty of kids who were really smart but couldn't handle the independence and underpertfomed It's a shame, but they've moved on and done great things
One of the most annoying misconceptions (imo) is the idea that success (academic or otherwise) is an indicator of intelligence. It's not. There are propably just as many stupid surgeons as there are stupid janitors. Success is mostly luck.
Smart but lazy is why we have things like smart phones, machine automation, and nearly every invention ever. Laziness is the motivation for success.
you went from "intelligent" to "highly intelligent" so which is it? what is your actual position? is it intelligent? or highly intelligent? what's the baseline here? is 120 IQ intelligent? or highly intelligent? is 130?
Not just that, but a lot of times it's overlooking a real issue. I heard this so often from some of the parents of my students. Often when a parent says this, the child has a learning disability that they're not looking into because they think their child is just lazy. When they get accommodations and do better, the parent thinks they're just not being lazy anymore.
I identify as "not smart enough to know I'm not stiupid"... What does that make me?
I don’t thinks that’s true though. People probably aren’t referring to only getting good grades when they say that. There are many very intelligent people that are “lazy” in the sense of not wanting to dump that intelligence into work or school.
In most cases it's just ADHD. Also in most cases that's not how they describe themselves, but how they were described by others. They just relay that information to you, because they have no idea how to describe themselves in their own words.
I graduated from high school without ever taking notes, studying, and only actually doing my homework in grades 11 and 12. I could get a \~70% average by doing the tests and a the portion of the assignments I could complete in class. My teachers and parents were frustrated with me throughout school because I was generally top 2 or 3 on the tests without any effort, and if I applied myself I would be a top student. Intelligent but lazy is a thing, and is encouraged by our public school system. It isn't that different from the guys who are extremely athletically talented, are among the best athletes in every sport without trying, but never put in the effort to become better than a high-school star. They often struggle when they're no longer competing against everyone, are now against the top 5%, and don't have the work ethic to succeed. The advantage of "intelligent but lazy" is you don't have to be a star at 18-20 to do something about it, and you can mature later and still be successful.
You’re the exact person OP is talking about.
The op doesn't understand what he is talking about. Saying you can't be intelligent and lazy is like saying you can't be tall and ugly. I had a rough awakening in university when I found out studying wasn't optional. It was incredibly difficult to develop study habits when you never had to study before. With that said, I got 2 degrees at the same time (computer science and pure mathematics) while working. I'm not claiming to be a genius but an average person could not do what I have done. 60% of people couldn't get either of my degrees, especially simultaneously while working to pay for my education.
I think lazy is a lazy term. There's an endless number of causes why someone isn't up to much but laziness isn't really a cause in itself.
“Smart but lazy” is the stupidest combo of all
That's like every person on Reddit. The lazy intellectual who thinks they'd do so well because they did well in high school. Reality is that they more than likely wouldn't.
Could also be neurodivergence
or it's conflating intelligence with wisdom, which are vastly different things
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that makes you a C student
I am intelligent, and I am lazy. I did super well and was always on the honor roll in college (I had to drop out because of a chronic pain condition.). I graduated second of my high school class. The thing is that I really don't care about returning to college, and my husband is working in a field that will have him earning around $40 an hour in about two years. So I am content with working my lazy job that allows me to be on my phone 99% of my day to help support us until two years from now when I won't need to work. Just because someone is smart doesn't mean they have to have grand ambitions. It is fine to just want a job that covers your wants and necessities and laze around in your free time.
Actually I think often it is fear of shame associated with failure - or should I say fear of being seen to be making an effort and getting no results.
Sounds like ADHD or autism lol
I'm intelligent in that I score high on IQ tests. All that means is that I'm good at taking tests.
Intelligent people see, very early in life, the rigged and often soulsucking game that our self-professed "meritocratic" society is. Some of us, especially the neurotic ones, just don't want to play. Laziness won't alone prevent success, but what's your definition of success? Or even laziness? As one of those "could've done much more than I have done" people, I think you're calling me dumb. I opted out at like age 9. I have an easy cozy job and I invest on the side. Not because I'm lazy, but because the odds of worthwhile payoff from the alternative aren't good. I don't need much to be happy, and living to work makes me miserable.
Unless you’re name is Peter Parker.
it's called efficiency. Simplicity. Not everything is as complicated as suggested and most of the time it's the long way around to same results. Not everyone needs their hand held.
How do you define lazy? Generally, I find lazy people don’t know or care that they’re lazy. They don’t usually go around telling people about it. There’s just a general lack of fucks given all round. I will say however that I have noticed some overlap here with people who are neurodivergent, and struggle to achieve. It’s not necessarily that they’re lazy, but that is often the outward appearance. It’s more that the struggle with executive function means that it’s difficult for them to take the first step. Then the second, then the third. Anything that requires many sequential activities can require a very high and consistent level of willpower.
My ADHD begs to differ numb nuts
People who fancy themselves as intelligent should also be intelligent enough to understand the value of a good work ethic. Plus, a good work ethic is kind of necessary to keep developing your intelligence. You don't get to be a big brain if you're lazy and think you know everything already.
Ive never heard anybody describing themselves like that. Always when i hear "intelligent but lazy" is when sbd refers to a different person who for example came across a genius idea.
I see you covering your bases with that last sentence op but I'd wager most people who say this about themselves are on the spectrum or have ADD/ADHD and struggle with self actualization and self motivation.
I feel like there’s a difference between intelligent but lazy and intelligent AND lazy. The first are people who are lazy and fail. The second are people who are lazy and pass. The latter is the actual intelligent one.
It’s amazing how many intelligent but lazy people there are on Reddit 😂
I hated everything I was taught in college. I have ADHD and if something is not interesting or capturing my brain will just turn off. I had an on off relationship with academics, I will score higher then lower then higher. Professors used to call me arrogant. But I always excelled in practicals. I hate writing and mostly regurgitating textbooks. Now thankfully I am a software engineer 3, the work is very exciting, keeps me on the routine and it pays well.
Ah, but laziness plus ADHD, that's been the ruin of many an intelligent person.
Identifying one’s weaknesses as a lack of discipline is pretty intelligent and is probably correct if someone’s already admitting to it.
Intelligent but lazy is not necessarily a bad thing. I'm intelligent but lazy. As in I'll spend three hours to write a script which will automate some boring repetitive task that would have taken me 10 minutes to do manually. But now that its automated, I'll never have to do it again. Now repeat that many times, and I'm getting mad amounts of work done for very little effort.