I believe -- unscientifically -- that sometimes high intelligence or high ability, can be detriments to greatness.
I often see things that I think were done in a half-assed manner that are quite successful. I see people shipping things that I would never ship, and being successful at it. I'm not talking about spending inordinate amounts of time to get every pixel right (Though Apple may be a contrary example to my thesis here) ... I'm talking about spending an extra %1-%5 of time to make your site not be butt ugly.
I think PlentyOfFish.com is probably good example. He focused on different things and was a huge success. Its still ugly now, but it used to be, and for many years, was totally butt ugly.
Sometimes people of very average intelligence but great social skills do really well. Downright dumb people with the right personality -- e.g. the jocks who are now venture capitalists-- do better than smarter people.
This is an ongoing debate between my cofounder and I. Normally, my cofounder is the one putting forth this thesis.. the claim being that we're too smart to be successful. (Not in an arrogant way, there are lots of smarter people I know.) But I am starting to think my cofounder may be right. For instance, I do tend to over engineer, over optimize, and under execute.
So, our personal motivational theme these days is "just ship it". Can't fight the desire to make it not be crap, but we're shipping more.
PS-- another example of this is thinking you've got a key functionality right, because you're smart, you "know" this is the right way to do it, and then focusing on optimizing in other areas. So, you ship a game that looks gorgeous but has poor gameplay, or you completely miss the mark on the way your customers want to use your product because most people are not like you (because most people are average and you're not.) etc.
> sometimes high intelligence or high ability, can be detriments to greatness.
I'm always bothered when I read this kind of conclusion. From the rest of your comment the detriments come from high standards, not high intelligence. Choosing a better overall strategy at the expense of precise execution is not evidence of lower strategy, just of lower standards when it comes to the execution.
> Sometimes people of very average intelligence but great social skills do really well.
Social skills are a form of intelligence that are arguably important in the real world, where it is difficult to succeed without having a good team. I would argue that the Darwinian way it is now taught (the grade school system) is not the best. There are so many things people know intuitively, that I have to be conscious of.
> [...] my cofounder is the one putting forth this
> thesis [...] that we're too smart to be successful.
> [...] For instance, I do tend to over engineer, over
> optimize, and under execute.
Surely, knowing up to what point optimization has tangible benefits constitutes a crucial part of being "smart." I realize that defining smartness as whatever makes you successful may steer us towards boring tautology territory, but your rationalization seems self-serving.
I often see things that I think were done in a half-assed manner that are quite successful. I see people shipping things that I would never ship, and being successful at it. I'm not talking about spending inordinate amounts of time to get every pixel right (Though Apple may be a contrary example to my thesis here) ... I'm talking about spending an extra %1-%5 of time to make your site not be butt ugly.
I think PlentyOfFish.com is probably good example. He focused on different things and was a huge success. Its still ugly now, but it used to be, and for many years, was totally butt ugly.
Sometimes people of very average intelligence but great social skills do really well. Downright dumb people with the right personality -- e.g. the jocks who are now venture capitalists-- do better than smarter people.
This is an ongoing debate between my cofounder and I. Normally, my cofounder is the one putting forth this thesis.. the claim being that we're too smart to be successful. (Not in an arrogant way, there are lots of smarter people I know.) But I am starting to think my cofounder may be right. For instance, I do tend to over engineer, over optimize, and under execute.
So, our personal motivational theme these days is "just ship it". Can't fight the desire to make it not be crap, but we're shipping more.
PS-- another example of this is thinking you've got a key functionality right, because you're smart, you "know" this is the right way to do it, and then focusing on optimizing in other areas. So, you ship a game that looks gorgeous but has poor gameplay, or you completely miss the mark on the way your customers want to use your product because most people are not like you (because most people are average and you're not.) etc.