There is a difference between a smart person, and a smart person who is also practical.
In school, there are many smart people. These people learn subjects well, can work within the structure and pick up ideas quickly. They can recite countless facts, engage in debate, and prove themselves to others. You can see this pattern everywhere in real life as well – people who perform well and follow their orders, and succeed within a structure.
In order to be practical, these smart people need to remove themselves from the system. They need to see the hamster wheel they’re running in, and find a way to escape it. To design a lifestyle that leverages their intelligence so that the world is working for them. Otherwise, they are no better off than a manual laborer. They are exchanging hours of repetitive thinking time for a paycheck, just like a manual laborer exchanges hours of repetitive labor.
The practical smart people will look at the system, and rearrange it. Instead of thinking for someone else, they will begin to think for themselves. Come up with a nice idea and turn that into a reality. Create a life structure where they design a system to have others thinking and working for them. These “others” could just be a computer program running a process that generates them money all day long. Leverage.
Intelligence by itself is useless. It takes the willpower to change your surroundings and design your reality in order to make good use of it.
How are you using your intelligence? Is it working for you, or for someone else? Are you running around in a hamster’s wheel, or are you building the platform for a higher cause?
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