Big Little ThingsSmart-people traps
A friend of mine recently introduced me to a concept she calls “smart-people traps.” It’s a loose idea, but still useful. A smart-person trap is a limiting situation that is particularly common or tempting for smart people to get themselves into. And given that you’re reading this blog, you’re probably a smart person, so I thought I’d pass these along, lest you find yourself in a pickle.
1. The Professions
Smart people go into The Professions (you know, white collar work: lawyer, doctor, banker, career-track desk jockey) for any number of reasons: they are tempted by the rewards, or they are pressured by family and culture, or they cannot leave the security of a pre-defined track, or they are unwilling to explore themselves enough to see an individual course. The problem is that The Professions are a grind, and for many there is no passion or purpose, no vision or meaning, no intuitive individual truth. And if you’ve ever been trapped doing work that has no meaning for you, you know how soul-sucking this can be.
2. Academics
Smart people are good at school, and so they are tempted to stay in school their whole lives. The problem with this is that for most academics, they get into a spiral of irrelevance and isolation from the rest of the world.
3. Politics
Smart people often want to use their gifts to help the world, and politics seems like a good path. The trap is that in order to change the world through politics, you must gain power, and the game of gaining power will fuck you up for sure.
4. Critical thinking
Smart people generally get very educated, and higher education (in the US at least) teaches only critical thinking. Smart people spend all their formative years getting rewarded for finding problems, for focusing on the negative. They leave school thinking that the way to be useful and show your smarts is to point out why things won’t work, rather than using some of those smart to find a way forward. Of course, critical thinking IS useful, but it is not a complete toolbox. (Consider, for example, how useful it is to know how to do creative thinking.) The problem is that most smart people have only one tool, but because they don’t know any better, they operate as if their toolbox is full.
The thing about traps is that once you see them, you can avoid them. So let’s hear it: what other smart people traps can you think of?
July 31st, 2008 at 9:15 am
This is a variation on #4.
Idle hands
Smart people are most comfortable up in their heads. So they often neglect learning how to do actual things - fix a bike, code a web page, kern type, build a desk, grow a tomato - for themselves. They see it as something some trade school type can do. And they wake up one day and realize they don’t know how to do anything.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Here’s great article from a former teacher English at Yale on this topic:
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/su08/elite-deresiewicz.html
The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
“Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers”
August 1st, 2008 at 10:55 am
I like this background effect when you scrollwheel.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:49 pm
A good smart people trap would be a BMW on the edge of a cliff!
When the Yuppie got into it, it’d fall down the cliff as his/her weight unbalanced it!
Oh oh oh also another good smart people trap would be to put a copy of Godel, Escher, Bach in a pit filled with crocodiles!
Smart people can’t resist that book, and when they fell into the pit….CHOMP!
This is all the smart people traps I can think of for now.
August 1st, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Blogging. Smart people often think that they need to prove to rest of the world hoe smart they are by wasting ours on their hobby. They try to rationalize it anyway they can but in the end they are doing it just to get some attention.
August 1st, 2008 at 2:54 pm
OK, now after knowing I’m trapped; How do I get out?
August 1st, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Good stuff. Here’s another trap. Hubris.
Excessive confidence in your own abilities. I’m thinking specifically of people’s excessive belief in their ability to make decisions independently of external influences (e.g. doctors and their relationships with drug companies).
August 2nd, 2008 at 12:29 am
Another variant on #4:
Debate
Smart people often like to debate ideas/details for long past what is a useful discussion. Being able to “Get Things Done” is half the mantra: “Smart and Gets Things Done”.
I actually think the other traps boil down to this one above. A lack of focus on the end goal is what causes #1, #2 and #3 to be traps…
August 2nd, 2008 at 5:28 am
Tamer Salama: you are smart by definition (read first paragraph). Redefine your context and just be smart.
August 2nd, 2008 at 7:37 am
On the other hand, the whole getting attention things works.
August 3rd, 2008 at 12:41 am
Your description of critical thinking is not quite right. It’s about figuring out the less obvious, subtle meanings and implications in something, NOT “thinking like a critic/focusing onthe negative.” That’s what critical thinking is to arrogant lazy people who want to show off, not think.
August 5th, 2008 at 7:17 am
i’ve definitely been trapped by all of these, and the more i think about it, the dumber i feel.
August 5th, 2008 at 8:38 am
@ Tina
I agree with your point. And I don’t mean to give Critical Thinking short shrift. As you describe it, it’s an amazing tool.
What I was trying to get at in this section of the post is that smart people are often rewarded for showing off, for being arrogantly critical. I’ve seen people make whole careers in this way. But they are not happy, and nobody likes them, and they don’t put their smarts to good use.
August 7th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
I remember as a kid saying to my Dad, “I want to get paid for what I know, not what I do.” I didn’t know anything then. Now I think I do, and all I do is question it…
August 18th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Maybe I’m taking #2 too personally but isn’t the whole concept of smart people traps an example of #4? ; )
What is a not-trap for smart people to fall into? Some other common smart-pursuits not named are the career arts, serial entrepreneurship, constant traveling… I’m sure we could come up with sour-sounding descriptions of the traps inherent in each of these.
Maybe the real generating idea behind this trap idea is conducting oneself too cautiously or taking oneself too seriously. You can do pretty much anything - even banking! - with passion or at least a feisty irreverence, and if you’re of that mindset then it’s hard to do it any other way, let alone fall into a ‘trap.’ To me, it’d feel more constructive to focus on ways to achieve that, if it is even the sort of thing you can teach.
September 17th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
A big trap I see smart people fall into is believing that thinking is the same as doing.