The IQ Trap: How We Overestimate Intelligence

As a society, we massively overestimate the importance of intelligence. At the same time, we completely underestimate the power of long-term thinking.

It doesn’t really matter how good you are at solving math problems or how eloquently you can talk about current issues. What ultimately matters is whether you understand this simple truth: to succeed, you must put off immediate pleasure to be rewarded later.

You must practice long-term thinking.

The Genius Paradox

Walk into any PhD program, and you’ll find brilliant minds drowning in student debt. Meanwhile, the guy who barely graduated high school is building a seven-figure landscaping business by showing up consistently for 15 years.

Smart people love complexity. They want the perfect plan, the optimal strategy, the intellectually elegant solution. So they research and theorize, while single-minded people just start doing the work.

Also, intelligence is an ego trap. To be seen as especially smart strokes our pride, even when that intelligence isn’t applied to anything useful.

However, in the real world, results care little about your IQ score. What they do care about is grit.

The 2% Club

Think about your own environment.

How many people do you know who have been consistently working out for 20+ years and eating healthy? Maybe 2%.

How many have been systematically investing for decades in the stock market instead of mindlessly buying more toys? Another 2% or so.

How many have been consistently talking to strangers for years, building that social muscle? Almost nobody. Maybe one in a hundred.

The vast majority of people — including very smart people — fail because of consistency issues.

They can explain compound interest, progressive overload, and network effects better than most experts. But they don’t do it. They get bored or convinced there’s a smarter way.

The Phone-Zombie Epidemic

In the past decade, this problem has exploded — thanks to social media and smartphones. These platforms were specifically designed to destroy your ability to think long-term.

We are like rats in a lab: Every scroll, like, and notification rewires our brains to prefer quick dopamine hits over delayed rewards.

Just consider this one number: The average American checks their phone 205 times per day now. That’s 205 instances of training your brain to be impatient. Every. Single. Day.

Smart people like to think they are immune because they use their phones for “productive” activities like reading the news or listening to podcasts. They’re not immune. They’re just procrastinating with higher-quality content.

The result? A generation of highly educated people who can’t stick to simple habits for more than a few days.

Your Unfair Advantage

But here’s the opportunity: Because everyone else is getting weaker at long-term thinking, it’s never been easier to succeed by mastering it.

This is the jogging-shoes analogy (which I’ve been using a bit too much recently): two people running from a lion. One puts on running shoes. The other asks: “Why? You’ll never outrun the lion.” The first replies: “I don’t need to outrun the lion. I only need to outrun you.”

You don’t need to be absolutely perfect. You only need to be better than the current average.

And with social media driving almost everyone into short-term gratification mode, the average has never been lower. Which means if you stay consistent with long-term habits, you can secure outsized gains — whether in business, in dating, or in life overall.

How To Implement This

So, how do you actually become a long-term thinker? Ironically, it starts at the smallest level: your daily habits. What you do every day determines what you get in the long run.

Want to build a business? Reach out to 3 potential clients daily. Not 5 on Monday when you’re motivated and 0 on Friday when you’re not. Three — every single day.

Want to get fit? Lift weights 3 times per week, walk 8000 steps daily, and eat unprocessed foods. For years. Not until you see results or get bored. For years.

Want better relationships? Talk to 3 strangers a day. Call your parents weekly. Show up when important people need you. Again, for years.

The magic isn’t in the method. We all have a pretty good idea of what we should be doing. It’s in the relentless repetition of simple actions that most smart people find too boring to sustain.

The Ultimate Question

There is a deeper level to this: Long-term thinking isn’t just about achieving your goals. It’s about who you choose to become.

Long-term thinkers believe they have a large degree of control over their lives. They trust that they can positively influence their health, their wealth, and their relationships.

People who avoid long-term thinking refuse that responsibility. Deep down, they believe life is out of their control. To them, health, wealth, and relationships are like a lottery: some people win, some people lose.

Where the long-term thinker assumes abundance — “If I do the work, I will get what I want” — the short-term thinker assumes scarcity — “If I don’t grab this thing now, it’ll be gone forever.”

Be Different

Put this way, everyone says they want to be the first type. But how many people are serious about implementing a long-term perspective on life? Like I said — probably about 2%.

Most people will read an article like this one, feel inspired for 48 hours, then go back to scrolling their phones and wondering why smart people like them can’t get ahead.

Don’t be the rest. Be different.

Pick one area of your life. Break it down into a simple daily habit. Then do that habit every single day for the next year, regardless of how you feel, what’s happening in the world, or how bored you get.

Do that, and you’ll succeed — whether you understand quantum physics or not.

I like to think of myself as a smart person (who doesn't), so I struggled with learning this lesson. But it finally hit home when I met a certain friend in my late 20s. Don't get me wrong — he is smart enough. But above all, he is a consistency machine. When he picks a project, he will do it every day for 10–20 years. I have never seen anything like it. And predictably, he eventually overtakes anyone, in whatever he does. It's mind-blowing.

Talk soon!

Niels